Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It starts in a bathroom.

And maybe a little piece deep down inside of Charlie knows right then and there that, already, he’s latching right onto Nick and won’t be able to let go so easily. It’s not like they’ve never met before, you know? It’s not like they didn’t sit together and say “hi” to each other five days a week from January to July, and it’s not like that little bit of interaction didn’t stir up trouble somewhere between Charlie’s stomach and his chest every single goddamn morning.

Charlie’s always found Nick attractive—not in the normal way, not in the way Tao and Elle talk about when they talk about each other, but in his way. In Charlie’s way.

It’s not that much different than the norm, not really. When Charlie likes someone, he really likes them, wants to spend all his time with them, lies awake in bed at night and pictures the zing he would feel in his fingertips to kiss them and tell them he loves them, and isn’t that close enough? Is it really so different just because appearances aren’t what attract Charlie to people?—just because the reasons he thinks about sex sometimes have nothing to do with sex and everything to do with emotional closeness?

So okay, Charlie’s always found Nick attractive—romantically attractive—which is the closest Charlie Spring equivalent anybody’s ever going to be to sexually attractive, anyway. They said “hi” to each other five mornings a week, and the acquaintanceship stopped there—but Charlie could recognize the beginnings of that zing in his fingertips. He could recognize it, even if he was too tied up in Ben at the time to deal with it.

That was last year, though. That was before, you know, shit really hit the fan and Charlie wound up in acute psychiatric care and—when he got out with his shiny new diagnoses, feeling worse than he had when he’d gone in—discovered that Ben had blocked him on Insta.

So yeah, maybe he winds up crying about it in the loo. Maybe Charlie’s done a hell of a lot of things he’s not proud of in the past year, up to and including destroying himself—destroying himself—for a guy who didn’t even—and Charlie’s not saying that’s Ben’s fault. He’s not saying that’s Ben’s fault at all. It’s because of Charlie and his bad boundaries and his total inability to stand on his own two feet that he—

Anyway, he should have locked the door, but he didn’t, and that’s how he ends up crying in the loo and not alone on his first morning back at school. Even feeling like a mess, he’s horrified enough when the bathroom door opens that he manages to stuff his fist in his mouth and mostly pipe down—but apparently, he’s not quite quiet enough, because he hears just a few seconds later, “Uh, hi?”

Great. Charlie’s not just crying in front of someone in the bathroom: he’s crying in front of Nick Nelson. Cute rugby lad Nick Nelson that Charlie had a crush on all last year. And apparently, Nick Nelson just figured that out. Well, figured out that someone is crying in here with him, anyway.

Charlie stops breathing long enough to force himself to stop crying. He’s usually pretty good at that—not crying. It takes a lot for Charlie to lose it, especially when he’s somewhere like fucking school.

Shit.

Nick’s halfway through saying “hi” again (like old times, Charlie thinks slightly hysterically) by the time Charlie is calm enough to force out a reply. “Hi. Sorry.”

There’s a pause. “Charlie?”

“Hi, Nick,” Charlie mumbles, humiliated.

“It’s—you don’t have to apologize for that.” Nick sounds rather taken aback. “Um, can I help? Do you want to, like, come out?”

I already have, Charlie thinks hysterically again.

That’s not what Nick means, of course. Charlie’s gay—or close enough, anyway—and the whole school already knows it. Well, technically, the school just thinks he’s gay, but it’s accurate enough that Charlie doesn’t mind. It’s easier than trying to explain asexuality to a bunch of homophobes.

Obviously, Nick knows Charlie is gay-ish. Nick just means he wants Charlie to stop crying long enough to come out of the stall and act like a person.

Oddly, it’s easier to calm down with another person here in the bathroom with him. That’s not entirely surprising—when he’s trying to perform healthy, Charlie always has performed best for an audience—but the odd part is that it doesn’t just feel like a performance. It really does give Charlie reassurance, even if just a little, to open the stall door on Nick’s concerned face and blue hands—

—wait. Blue hands?

Nick must see Charlie looking at him funny because he glances down at his own hands and smiles wryly. “My pen exploded. I probably left blue streaks on about four different door handles on the way down here.”

“Well, that explains why you’re in the bathroom when you should be in form,” says Charlie, smiling.

He means it as a joke, kind of, but Nick obviously doesn’t take it that way. “Hey,” he murmurs. Hitching his bag higher on his shoulder, he takes one step—two—three—closer to Charlie until they’re face to face. Well, forehead to chin. Nick really is so much taller than Charlie, Charlie marvels as Nick continues, “You don’t have to be embarrassed, okay? I mean, you—uh—you were just in the hospital, right? Don’t feel bad for—you know—having trouble—um—adjusting.”

“You can say it,” Charlie mutters. “It was a psych hospital. I had a psych hospitalization, and now I’m crying like a crazy person because I am a crazy person.”

“You’re not crazy. I know I don’t know literally anything about your situation, but… well… friends don’t let friends use slurs about themselves,” Nick trails off.

The funny feeling in the space below Charlie’s ribcage is starting to come back, and maybe that’s when that piece of him realizes it, you know? Maybe that’s when Charlie’s core of cores is like, oh, shit, this hasn’t gone away, and it’s not going to just go away, not unless he cuts contact and does it now and does it permanently, probably. But Charlie’s just not quite strong enough to accept that reality yet. It’s hard enough just existing in this bathroom right now without cutting contact with the one person who’s trying to show him a little kindness about it.

Instead, he asks, “Friends?”

Nick purses his lips. “Yeah. Friends. If you want, I mean. I know we don’t have form together anymore, but—we could hang out. I would like that. Or just talk on Insta. Or—I mean, just if you wanted—you could join the rugby team.”

Okay, that is not a turn Charlie was expecting this conversation to take. Literally, he’s still sniffling, and Nick Nelson is standing here with his hands bright blue, asking Charlie to join the rugby team?

“W-what?”

It seems to occur to Nick just then how absurd this all is and how close they’re standing because he backs up toward the sinks and starts attempting to rinse the ink off of his hands. He doesn’t seem to be having very much luck, Charlie reflects as he walks over toward the sinks, too, standing what he hopes is a respectable couple of paces away and watching Nick empty half a bottle of soap onto his palms and start rubbing.

“Yeah,” continues Nick, his voice picking up a little strength. “We have enough players for the team, but to play against other teams, we need a reserve. You could be our reserve. I’ve seen you run in P.E., and you’re, like, really fast.”

“But I—but I—”

And Charlie just has no idea how to convey the enormity of how dangerous it is, this thing that Nick’s offering him. Seriously, he just got out of the thing with Ben, okay? He doesn’t even want to be out of the thing with Ben, if he’s being honest, even though that’s fucked up when Ben was—well—and for Nick to stand here inviting Charlie into what Nick clearly thinks is going to be some kind of normal-ass friendship where Nick helps Charlie get better and they ride happily ever after off into a straight-ass sunset where nothing is gay and Charlie’s not broken and—?

He can’t do this. He can’t do this at all.

(Nick’s watched him run in P.E.? They’re a year apart. They’ve never had a P.E. class together. What’s Nick doing watching—)

“I like boys,” he blurts.

That’s not it, of course. That’s not even a little bit of it. But whatever tiny part of it Charlie just gave away, Nick’s clearly not getting even that because he replies, “Okay.”

None of this is going according to plan, none of it. Charlie splutters, “But—but—”

“I mean, it’s not like you’re going to be—ogling all of the lads in the changing room before practice, right? That’s not what you’re saying. That’s not how being gay works. Right?”

He clears his throat. “No. No, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m not even—it’s not like that. It’s never like that.”

“Then what’s it like?”

Seeming to give up on the vain hope that he can scrub any of the ink off, Nick switches off the faucet and stands there wiping his hands dry and watching Charlie with the most open—

And Charlie just—

“It’s not… physical. For me. With anyone. I fall for guys, but I’m not—I’m not physically attracted to guys. I’m not physically attracted to anybody. I mean, I like kissing and stuff, but not because—it’s not—it’s just about the feelings. It’s not about being sexually attra—I don’t even know what that means, Nick. I think I’m defective or something. When I fancy people, it’s not about—but it doesn’t mean I don’t fancy anybody. I do. I fancy people too hard. What if… what if…”

He has no idea what’s happening right now, half of him wanting to start crying about Ben again and the other half trying to warn Nick to run before it’s too late and a third half, a secret half, wanting to just cling to this boy and his kindness and not let him out of Charlie’s sight. And then Nick reaches forward with his dry blue hand and squeezes Charlie’s shoulder (and there’s that bloody zing in Charlie’s fingertips again) and just—

“Can we slow down here?” Nick asks carefully. “We don’t need to get so far ahead of ourselves. I want you to be my friend, and I want you to join the rugby team if you want me to be your friend, too. We can keep having all of these conversations, but none of them have to mean that we can’t be friends. I don’t think you’re defective. I’m weird about people, too, but I don’t think I’m defective, and if I’m not, then you’re definitely not, either.”

And that has Charlie’s head reeling. What the hell does that mean, “weird about people, too?” Does Nick mean—but Nick’s not gay. Nick’s just about the straightest person Charlie has ever met.

Maybe, if Charlie were braver, he’d ask right now. But Charlie’s not brave. Charlie’s not anything good at all. Mostly, he just wants to hide in this bathroom forever, but if he can’t, then he at least doesn’t want to have to exit it alone.

So he nods slowly, even though he doesn’t understand. “Okay,” he whispers. “Um, sorry. I do that a lot—freak out about stuff. If we’re going to do this, you might have to get used to me doing that a lot.”

And Nick smiles and says, “I don’t mind. So—you’ll join the team?”

And god help him, Charlie nods again. “Yeah. Okay. I… I guess I’m joining the team.”

Nick’s smile breaks out into a beam. “Great. I’ll tell Coach Singh. Meet me in the changing room after school for practice?”

Chapter Text

By lunchtime, word has somehow already gotten around the entire school that Nick Nelson talked Charlie Spring—who’s out of the hospital, by the way—into joining the rugby team. Unfortunately for Charlie, this also means that word has reached Tao and Isaac not only that he’s joining the rugby team, but that he and Nick are friends now, apparently.

“Nick Nelson?” Tao hisses pretty much the moment Charlie joins him and Isaac out on the field. It’s still basically winter, which means it’s frigid out, even though there’s no snow on the ground. Seriously, Charlie’s ass feels like he’s just stuck it inside a freezer as soon as he sits down on the dead, cold wooden bench. “You get out of the hospital, and the first thing you do is go running to Nick Nelson to be a rugby player?”

“‘Welcome back to civilization, Charlie. We missed you, too,’” parrots Charlie, rolling his eyes.

He should have known that this—not concern for Charlie’s well-being, but this—would be Tao’s first reaction to seeing Charlie again after a two-week hospital stint that literally, as much as he hated it, was probably the only reason Charlie didn’t kill himself instead. Maybe, if Charlie had just managed to keep the gossip from reaching Tao’s ears—if he had just been able to hold it together in that bathroom—if he had just fucking shut up and not said anything when Nick asked who was crying in the stall—Tao would be asking right now if Charlie is okay and how the shrinks treated him when he was inpatient and everything. But that’s not who he is, and he doesn’t have that kind of power. He didn’t have the power to resist the draw of a friendly ear when he was bawling his eyes out this morning, anyway. And now he’s paying for it.

Isaac, at least, seems to be tactful enough to realize that Tao has screwed up. Narrowing his eyes, he whacks Tao upside the head with the book he’s otherwise engrossed in. Charlie’s a little pleased to see that it’s a hardcover.

Tao winces. “Ow! Isaac!”

“Show some respect,” says Isaac simply. Turning back to Charlie, he adds, “We missed you so, so much when you were gone, Charlie. We all wanted to visit about a million times, but your dad said the visiting hours were really limited, so…”

“It’s okay. I know.” He did get visitors two nights a week in there for a couple of hours, but each patient was only allowed two guests at a time, and Mum and Dad seemed to think that those two guests should only be selected from themselves, Tori, and Oliver. Fair enough: Charlie knows his family was worried sick about him the whole time he was gone. It’s not like Charlie was in much condition to make himself presentable to the outside world, anyway. But he still missed his friends, and it’s also not like it was much more comfortable seeing his parents and siblings than it would have been to see his friends instead. Mostly, Charlie didn’t want anyone to see him like that, even though he also desperately didn’t want to be alone in there.

Charlie got out last night and came home to a deluge of texts from Isaac, Tao, and Elle—but none from Ben. When he saw Ben had blocked him completely, he didn’t really want to talk to anyone at all, just wanted to shut himself up alone in his bedroom and cry all night long—which he did, thank you very much.

What? It was safer than dying, which was his other preferred option.

He feels like shit today—not just because of all the crying, but because he was up half the night doing it. Then he spent half of form crying in the loo, too. Genuinely, for someone who almost never cries, Charlie is sure doing his fair share of it these past twenty-four hours.

Anyway, he didn’t exactly respond to any of his messages last night—or this morning, for that matter—so this is the first time he’s actually spoken to Tao or Isaac since Charlie went into the hospital fifteen days ago. It would have been nice for Tao to greet him with something other than a fuck you and fuck rugby and fuck your friend Nick Nelson. That’s all.

At least Isaac seems to be on Charlie’s side here. With another dirty look at Tao, Isaac continues, “We’ve been worried sick. Are you okay?”

Suddenly, Charlie doesn’t feel much like talking to his friends about what happened. Talking to his friends about what happened requires, you know, talking about what happened, and Charlie’s been dodging it for weeks for a reason. They don’t exactly, uh, know about the whole Ben situation. Nobody does.

“I’m fine,” says Charlie stiffly.

Narrowing his eyebrows, Tao jumps in, “Are you sure? People don’t check themselves into the hospital because they’re fine, Charlie.”

Charlie glances to Isaac for support, but Isaac seems to be on Tao’s side this time. “We just care about you. We just want to know what’s going on and be in the loop. What…” His eyes go big and earnest. “What happened, anyway?”

Charlie purses his lips. Closes his eyes. Shakes his head. “I don’t really want to talk about it. I had a crisis, I checked myself in, and now it’s over. Can we just move on? Please? I’ve been prodded at enough in the past two weeks without having to talk about it with you, too.”

Tao and Isaac exchange an unsatisfied look, but Charlie really doesn’t give a shit. Scowling, he grabs his sandwich and buries himself in it. It’s a small bite—it’s not like the doctors cured his anorexia overnight—but at least it’s someplace to hide.

He ends up inventing some bullshit excuse to get out of there, like, halfway before the lunch period is actually over, just because it’s so exhausting to try to perform healthy for his best friends on top of everything else going on. It’s not like he’s even doing a good job of it. He’s clearly not, and even if he were, the whole hospitalization thing would negate whatever performance he did otherwise manage to pull off. It’s not very plausible that Charlie would be okay right now, not when he, you know, almost died and definitely not when he’s been having to listen all day to people whispering about him. Look, that weird kid is back. Charlie Spring. Did you hear he was in the hospital? Did you hear what for? Did you hear it was a psych thing? What a freak.

This is okay, Charlie tells himself. This is fine. He just needs some damn alone time, okay? He just needs to get to—not the loo again, not after this morning. Mr. Ajayi’s room. He just needs to get to Mr. Ajayi’s room so he can—

“What, are you stalking me now?”

And there’s Ben, nearly smacking directly into Charlie in the corridor just past the double doors. The sight of him makes Charlie feel like he’s going to throw up. After two solid weeks of feeling like he was going out of his mind without being able to reach Ben, now that Ben’s actually here, peering down at Charlie like Charlie’s nothing more than gunk on the bottom of Ben’s dress shoe, something filthy and disposable and persistent that poor Ben just can’t seem to shake—

It makes Charlie feel like shit. Frankly, Charlie is shit. He knows he is, and Ben knows he is. They may not agree on many things anymore, but they’re at least in agreement on that.

“I’m sorry,” Charlie croaks. “Ben, I’m sorry. I know I fucked up, okay? But if you’ll just give me a chance to explain—”

“I don’t want your explanations. I just want you out of my life. I want you gone. Do you understand me? No more fucking chasing me around the corridors like—”

“I’m not—I’m not chasing you. I didn’t even know you would be here. Please. I just—”

“Fuck off,” barks Ben. He very bodily shoves past Charlie, who staggers backward at the force Ben uses to bang past Charlie’s shoulder.

And that is too much. That is past Charlie’s limit. “Ben, wait. If you’ll just let me explain—”

He hears a door bang open somewhere behind him; when he turns around, he finds a couple of giggling Year Tens coming out of what he thinks might be Mr. Farouk’s classroom. Suddenly having company seems to have spooked Ben like Charlie couldn’t, though, and now, Ben won’t answer him at all. Ben won’t even look at him, just picks back up and dashes off like he doesn’t even know who Charlie is.

And that’s probably for the best. Charlie doesn’t want anybody to know about this little relationship, either. He did when he was in it, kind of, but now that it’s over? Different story.

Two more hours, he tells himself miserably. Two more hours, and then he can go the fuck home and—

—oh, wait. He can’t. He can’t because he promised Nick Nelson he’d go to rugby practice tonight after school.

Charlie groans.

It feels like it takes about nineteen years to get to the end of the school day before it’s time to learn how to play rugby, apparently. The absolute last thing Charlie wants to do at this point is go perform healthy for a locker room full of hostiles, but he said yes, didn’t he? And maybe he even had a reason for saying it. Wanting to live out his little crush on Nick may not be a good reason, but it is a reason, and Charlie will take all the reasons he can find right now to even want to bother to stay alive, seeing as he has to and doesn’t want to end up in the hospital again if he falters on that.

So he summons every nerve in his body and uses them all to force himself to walk down to the locker room and push open the door after fifth period lets out. It’s pretty immediately apparent that everybody in here has been talking about him: he hears a few complaints of “…gay-ass boy even doing joining the team?” and “…even know how to play?” and “…didn’t know you were friends with that little faggot, Nick” while he’s standing outside the door working up the willpower to open it.

At least at that last one he hears Nick say sharply, “Not cool, Harry. Take it the fuck back.” Then the room goes deathly quiet, and Charlie figures it’s as good a time as any to reveal that he’s actually standing right out here and, yeah, probably could hear what you all were saying about him, thanks very much.

He pushes open the door. Nick’s on his feet positively towering over Harry Greene, but when he sees Charlie come in, Nick shrinks back a little and stuffs his hands into his pockets. “Hi, Charlie.” He’s all out of breath, but his voice has lost its edge and rounded out into something a little milder. “Come here. I’ll show you around once you’ve gotten changed.”

Show me around? Charlie wants to ask. Like, how difficult is it to find your way around a rugby field, anyway? But he doesn’t ask this. Mostly, he seems to have forgotten how to talk, so he just nods and swallows and tries to pretend like it’s normal to take off all his clothes in front of a room full of boys who apparently think it’s funny to torment him.

It turns out that “showing Charlie around” involves teaching him the rules of rugby, which makes more sense. It’s not a surprise to anyone here, least of all Nick, that Charlie doesn’t know the rules, and it shouldn’t be one, anyway. It is a surprise to Charlie that golden boy Nick is taking time away from tackling the shit out of his teammates to try to help Charlie, but then, that shouldn’t be a surprise, either, right? Nick did say he wanted Charlie on the team so they could spend more time together. It’s just weird for Charlie to try to get his head around that when Nick said nothing more than “hi” to him every morning for an entire term.

They could have become friends sitting together in form last year, and they didn’t. That always bummed Charlie out a little, but he never dreamed that the feeling could possibly be mutual.

“Try to tackle me.”

Charlie blinks and snaps back to reality. “What?”

Nick doesn’t laugh, so he must be dead serious. “Try to tackle me,” he invites again. “I won’t dodge, I promise.”

Waiting until Nick’s backed up a fair bit, Charlie takes a deep breath and, feeling pretty foolish, takes it at a run and charges straight for Nick. True to his word, Nick doesn’t dodge. How does he do that? How could anyone not dodge when somebody tries to tackle them? Maybe he’s just a wimp (he’s probably just a wimp), but Charlie can’t even imagine just standing there and knowing it’s coming and not trying to get out of the way. It’s why he’s so bad at the killing himself thing: that requires pain, and Charlie avoids pain at all costs.

He may not be much of a rugby player, but he does know how to hit a stationary target, which means he collides with Nick dead on. They both go down, Nick slamming onto his back with a painful-sounding thud and Charlie landing right on top of him in the grass. For a second before they hastily reposition, he can feel his own body rising and falling with Nick’s heavy breaths beneath him.

It feels good.

Shit.

Chapter Text

It’s very weird to think you’re one thing your whole life and then turn out to be something else entirely. Charlie’s not talking about being gay-ish—that much made sense. It was always boys. But being ace? That part was a bit of a shocker.

He thinks he understands now what happened, not that that makes it any less strange to him. He’s not, like, full-on gay-gay, but he is gay. It’s just that he’s homoromantic, not homosexual. He doesn’t know why he can fall for boys when he’s not physically attracted to them—and he especially doesn’t know why he can’t fall for girls despite not being physically attracted to them, either, given that he can do it for boys. If it’s not about bodies, then why isn’t it gender-indiscriminate? Charlie doesn’t know. All he knows is that he’s never had a crush on a girl in his life, but he’s had plenty of crushes on boys. He just didn’t understand until relatively recently that crushes don’t feel to him the way they do to other people.

He misattributed it, you know? There are all these symptoms that are the same for him with his crushes as they are for the normies with theirs: getting flustered, fantasizing, wanting to spend all his time with the person. When he likes somebody, he even starts thinking they’re more attractive—not sexually attractive, but attractive nonetheless.

He just thought that was what it meant to be sexually attracted to someone. How could he have known that it wasn’t when he didn’t know that not experiencing that kind of attraction to anyone was even an option?

So it took a while to connect the dots in his head and realize that normies like to picture each other naked and that’s what makes them different from him. When Charlie gets flustered or fantasizes, he’s not picturing the other person naked. He thinks naked boys are just as gross as naked girls. When he pictures sex, he doesn’t really picture it visually, exactly, and if he does, he’s only willing to picture it with clothes on. When he thinks someone is attractive, he just means he thinks they have a nice face. And honestly, you could be the butt-ugliest person in the world, and he’d still start to think you had a nice face if he got to know you and developed a crush on you.

The crushes just don’t have anything to do with how people look, that’s all. He just clicks with certain people? It’s just the way some people carry themselves and talk and smile. It’s not even that the smile has to be handsome—it’s just that it has to be genuine. Charlie likes those: genuine smiles. But even that isn’t a foolproof criterion. There are plenty of people with nice smiles who are enjoyable to talk to that he doesn’t fancy. He doesn’t have a type, not one that can be pared down to criteria. It’s just whether his brain latches onto you in this specific way.

It usually doesn’t. He really doesn’t fall for every guy who’s nice to him, no matter what Tao claims. Like, in the past year, there’s been Ben, and there’s been Nick, and there’s been Jack Henry Maddox, and… that’s it, actually. Charlie can’t think of anybody else he’s fancied, not even any other celebrities, and Maddox doesn’t really count as a crush.

And after Ben, he just sort of wanted to be done, you know? Like, he knew things were going south. He acts clingy (more than clingy) and insane sometimes, but even Charlie could read the signs and recognize that this relationship did not have any of the hallmarks of a healthy partnership. He was just like, if and when this thing with Ben fell apart, that would be it. He wanted to shove it in a box and not go there ever again with anybody else ever. How could any relationship be worth what the thing with Ben did to Charlie? All he wanted was to curl back up in his hole, lick his wounds, and recover. And he was pretty sure that recovering was going to take more than a lifetime—so that was it. He was all done. No more dating for Charlie.

So why does he keep imagining dating Nick?

He knows why, of course. He’s been on the rugby team for a couple of weeks now, and it’s going well—really well. Rather, the rugby isn’t going well—Charlie is probably the shittiest player who’s ever attempted to play the sport in its entire storied history—but spending time with Nick after school every day is going quite well, thank you. They mostly just play rugby, awkwardly avoid looking at each other naked in the locker room, and then chat for maybe thirty seconds on the walk out before saying goodbye. But it’s going smoothly, and it feels a lot more normal than whatever happened in the loo when Charlie got back from the hospital. Charlie has that vibe again, and he just can’t seem to shake it.

He wants to shake it. Now that Ben’s gone, Charlie is done—forever—and anyway, there’s no way in the world that Nick likes him back. Nick is definitely straight. When he made that comment in the bathroom about being “weird about people” or whatever it was, he was clearly just talking about his social skills or something, not his sexuality being anything other than straight. Nick Nelson is straight, full stop, and Charlie needs to stop pretending otherwise to himself.

It would be great if Charlie could stick to only vibing with people who vibe back. Actually, it would be great if Charlie could stop vibing with anybody at all. He’s done, remember? No more heartache. No more being one-half of the most dysfunctional relationship in the room. Poof. Gone. Over.

But it’s hard to feel like it’s over. He’s got Nick in his space every afternoon at rugby, for one thing, reminding Charlie that he does still want things he’s not allowed to have, and then there’s Ben, whom Charlie keeps fucking running into in the corridors. It doesn’t help that Ben appears to be friends with Nick and Charlie keeps seeing them together outside in the mornings like some kind of big, looming Wall of Not Allowed blocking Charlie from entering the building. Like, he just wants to get to class here, and instead, he has to deal with Ben giving him dirty looks out the side of his eye while Nick awkwardly says hello so that Tao can torment Charlie about his “little crush” on Nick the second they’re out of earshot.

God. Charlie just wants to catch a damn break. Well, technically, Charlie wants to die, but that didn’t go so well the last time he tried, so he’s running out of other options to try here besides catching a damn break.

And then it kind of comes to a head one day when Charlie’s walking out of rugby and runs into Ben goddamn again. Nick’s not with him: they started walking out together, and then Nick realized he’d forgotten his biology textbook in his locker and doubled back for it. Charlie kind of wanted to ask (or, like, offer? would that be weird?) to go with him, but he decided against it. Didn’t want to come across as needy. He worries enough about being needy without having to look like it, too. But now he’s nearly smacked directly into Ben when they both rounded a corner at the same time directly in each other’s paths, and Charlie’s definitely wishing he’d done the needy thing and gone off with Nick after all.

“Look where you’re going, asshat,” sneers Ben, as if Charlie is just some stranger in Ben’s way who didn’t spend more than a year of their lives loving him and trying to be close to him and trying to deserve to be close to him and needing him and hating himself for needing him and feeling so rejected by him all of the time and then really being rejected by him because Ben blocked him when Charlie was in the hospital and Charlie just—

—snaps. He snaps. He’s sorry, but he can’t do this, not anymore.

“Can we just be real about this for once in our lives?” Charlie says flatly. Seriously, his monotone right now could rival Tori’s. “Can we stop pretending? I don’t want to pretend anymore. I can’t. It happened, and—”

“Nothing happened,” hisses Ben. “Unless if what you mean by ‘it happened’ is that you stalked me for a fucking year when I repeatedly tried to get you to back off—”

This stings so badly that it gives Charlie the courage to keep going. Or maybe it’s not courage. Maybe he doesn’t have the courage to stop and preserve what little dignity, if any, that he has left. Either way, he says, “It wasn’t like that, and you know it. You came onto me. You wanted it just as much as I did—”

“Jesus fuck, Charlie, was it not a strong enough signal when I blocked your contact? ‘I wanted it?’ I didn’t want—”

“I’m not saying you kept wanting it, but you can’t just—you can’t just—you can’t just act like I’m this psychopath who made the whole thing up! You started this—”

“Oh, so because I started it, I’m a bad person for not wanting it for the rest of my life? I owed it to you to be whatever the fuck you wanted this to be to you forever?”

Even though that hurts—and it hurts just as much to hear out loud that Ben doesn’t want to be here as it does to know that Ben thinks Charlie thinks he’s owed anything (because Charlie doesn’t think that, not about anything, not even the dignity he’s looking for right now)—Charlie feels at least slightly vindicated by this. “So you do admit it. It was real.”

“It was never real. I was bored and wanted to mess around a little. I did not sign up for whatever the fuck level of psychotic you are,” Ben snarls. “Threatening suicide because I wouldn’t be your boyfriend? Are you kidding me? You disgust me.”

And it’s not like Charlie forgot what happened, but hearing it distorted into whatever Ben is making it out to be right now really pulls him back to the reality of what a piece of shit he is the way that nothing else so far has. He’s rapidly tipping over into that strained, defensive space where he feels like he has to justify himself to Ben because Charlie doesn’t know if he’s a bad person or not. But if he can convince Ben he’s not bad—if he can make Ben love him—he may not believe anything good about himself, but if Ben does—

Charlie doesn’t actually know what he did, doesn’t know what his motivations were, doesn’t know if he did what Ben’s accusing him of having done and threatened suicide if Ben didn’t become his boyfriend, but if he can just make Ben believe that he didn’t do those things, then maybe he can stop hating himself for it. He doesn’t know, okay? He doesn’t think he even knew at the time. He hopes that’s not what it was, and he knows he wasn’t consciously trying to do it like that, but—at least in Charlie’s view—it’s very, very possible that he was doing it subconsciously. And he needs Ben to believe he wasn’t so that Charlie can believe he wasn’t.

Charlie’s pretty sure he worries much, much,  much more than the average person does about whether doing bad things on accident is proof that he did them on purpose. Half the time, he doesn’t even believe himself that he did do them on accident.

“It wasn’t like that,” he croaks, and shit, now his voice is wobbling. There’s nothing Charlie hates more than other people being able to hear the crying in his voice because it means the control is slipping away from him. If other people can hear it, it’s real, and he can’t allow it to be real, but he doesn’t have a choice, and—“I didn’t threaten anything. I wasn’t trying to trap you, Ben. I was just trying to get help, okay? It hurt so bad I couldn’t stand it anymore. I just wanted the hurt to stop. I wanted—and I didn’t want to say anything about it because I didn’t want to trap you, but I couldn’t hold it in anymore, and nobody else was safe to tell but you, and I just needed something.” Yeah, Charlie’s sobbing now. “I just needed you. I’m sorry I needed you, but I did. I didn’t want to need you. I didn’t want to hurt you. I never wanted to hurt you. Please don’t be mad at me. Please. You don’t have to love me anymore, but please don’t hate me.”

And Ben rolls his eyes and spits, “‘Anymore?’ Charlie, I never loved you. Fucking clingy, delusional little scumbag. Goes to show what I get for trying to have something nice with someone for once in my damn life.”

And this is so entirely unfair when Ben went rooting around for “something nice” with so many girls that Charlie can’t keep track while Ben and Charlie were supposed to be together—but what can Charlie say? Ben never promised Charlie exclusivity. Charlie was the one who wanted that, not Ben. Maybe Ben’s right. Maybe Charlie did take something light and fun and twist it into a nightmare because he couldn’t keep his fucking feelings tamped down and safe, away from the people they could hurt. Maybe Charlie pressured Ben too much when Ben was clearly still in the closet and struggling to accept his own feelings. Maybe Charlie is a master fucking manipulator who deserved to be abandoned every goddamn time Ben tried to leave. Maybe—

“You’re pathetic, you know that?” Apparently, Ben isn’t done. “You’re pathetic. Go on, cry like you always do. See if I care. I’m done with your little games.”

“But I loved you. I did. That wasn’t a game. You played games. You made me think—you said you loved me. You said we’d figure it out together when I got discharged from the hospital. You said you’d wait for me. I believed you, Ben. I—”

“Yeah, because I didn’t want your fucking death to be my fault. I don’t need that shit on my conscience. You’ve done enough bullshit to me without adding that, too. This isn’t my fault. I didn’t ask you to be crazy, you psychotic—”

“That’s enough,” comes a quiet, firm voice from behind them.

Stunned, horrified, recognizing that voice, Charlie whips around to find—okay, so this is pretty much his worst nightmare right now. This is worse than any of what Ben is saying right now. This is even worse than the way Ben makes Charlie feel about himself. (Can Charlie even call it that? That Ben “makes” him feel that way? Charlie is responsible for his own feelings. Charlie is the one whose fault this all is. Charlie—)

No matter. The point is, even worse than rejection, even worse than abandonment, even worse than the person he loves most in the world chewing him up and setting fire to the remains, is the idea of getting caught in the thick of his crazy. And Charlie is guessing from the look on Nick’s face that Nick has just heard more than enough to catch him.

Chapter Text

On the bright side, seeing Nick call them out like that doesn’t just seem to have scared Charlie shitless: it seems to have scared Ben shitless, too. In fact, Ben seems so scared that he doesn’t try to feel out whose side Nick is on (because honestly, Charlie has no idea which side Nick is on) or defend himself or even beg Nick not to say anything to anyone the way Charlie wants to beg him right now. Instead, Ben just stands there with all the blood draining out of his face, his lip wobbling, his eyes wide and shocked—and then he picks up his feet and bolts down the corridor and out of sight.

Shit. Nick knows. Nick knows.

Charlie doesn’t actually have to ask how much of that Nick heard because he’s certain Nick heard more than enough to piece together what’s going on here. Still, he asks anyway. It’s not like he believes there’s any hope, but he has to at least try. It’s his only option left: try. If he doesn’t, then he has to accept that Nick heard everything and knows everything and could tell anyone he wants anything he wants, and that reality is unacceptable.

“How… how much of that did you hear?”

Charlie doesn’t understand the look on Nick’s face. It’s not that he realizes how Nick feels and doesn’t get why. No. He straight-up does not know what the hell is going through Nick’s head right now. It doesn’t help matters when all Nick says is, “Enough,” in this quiet, unreadable voice.

Gulping, Charlie glances back in the direction Ben took off, then back at Nick. “Sorry.”

Nick’s forehead creases. “You—you don’t owe me an apology. Christ, Charlie.”

“Sorry.”

There’s a short pause. “You say sorry a lot.”

“Sor—”

“Don’t. Just—just don’t do this to yourself. Please.”

Charlie’s getting enough emotion now from Nick that he’s starting to puzzle out what it means, and he thinks Nick sounds—scared? But that can’t be right. Charlie is the one who has something to fear here. What could Nick possibly be afraid of when he has all the power?

Charlie whispers, “Can we please not? Can we please not talk about this ever again? And—and can you please not tell anybody?”

Okay, Nick definitely looks scared. And sad. “Charlie, of course I won’t tell anyone. I would never tell anyone. And… and we don’t have to talk about this again if you really don’t want to, but if you ever want someone to listen—”

Charlie snorts. “I don’t. Ever. My therapist knows, and that’s one too many people already.”

For some reason, Nick looks a little wounded by this—and then Charlie’s guilt overpowers his fear. Here Nick is, stumbling across a nightmare sprawl of relationship drama that he didn’t ask to see, and all he’s trying to do is comfort Charlie, who doesn’t even deserve it. Charlie’s the one at fault, not Ben, yet Nick seems to be taking his side—Charlie thinks. He’s not actually sure—Nick hasn’t actually said—but Charlie is the one Nick stayed behind to check on.

And how does Charlie react? By lashing out and refusing to open up. It’s not like he owes Nick any kind of explanation, but he kind of owes him an explanation. Doesn’t he?

He groans. “Shit. I’m sorry. Nick, I’m really sorry—”

“No S word,” Nick murmurs.

Charlie purses his lips. “But I don’t know how to stop. It makes me feel better to say it. I can’t handle pushing this much guilt down, Nick. I can’t do it. Everything is already hard enough without… shit.”

He’s crying again. Great.

Frowning, Nick murmurs, “Hey. No. Charlie, it’s okay. Um, do we hug now? Is that what you need from me?”

Attempting to force it down, bottle it up, man up, Charlie takes a few shaky breaths and gets himself under control. He’s not alone. He has an audience. He has to perform for the audience.

“No,” he croaks. “I’m okay. Thanks.”

When he opens his eyes again, Nick is frowning even harder. “It’s okay to be upset. He said some completely horrible things to you.”

“Can we not talk about it? Please?”

Charlie’s not convinced Nick will actually give it up, but he does. For now, anyway. “Yeah. Sorry.”

Smiling faintly, Charlie points out, “Now you’re saying it.”

“I did something wrong. I kept pushing after you’d said you didn’t want to talk about it. I shouldn’t have done that.” Nick pauses. “I hope you know I only pushed because I care about you. I just want to help, but I don’t know how. I…”

Attempting to process the fact that Nick apparently cares about him, Charlie asks quietly, “What, Nick?”

It takes Nick a few seconds to keep going. “I kind of figured this might happen someday, you know? I mean… I wouldn’t talk shit about you. I haven’t done that. But—well—obviously, you had a psych hospitalization. I figured, if I spent as much time with you as I want to, I might end up seeing you in… like… a you crisis. And I also figured I might not be very good in a you crisis. I want to be, though. I want to learn.”

Charlie’s not entirely sure where he’s supposed to start unpacking that. For one thing, Nick just implied he’s heard people talking shit about Charlie’s hospitalization. For another, he just basically came right out and admitted he doesn’t think Charlie is mentally stable—which is fair. Charlie isn’t mentally stable, and the whole school knows it. But Nick also—if Charlie’s hearing this correctly—just said he wants to get close enough to Charlie that Charlie trusts him enough to lean on him when Charlie’s acting crazy.

Ben never wanted this side of Charlie, and Charlie never blamed him for that. Not even Charlie wants this side of himself. He just didn’t realize it was even an option to have anybody in his life, family or friend or boyfriend or anything, who would see—really see—Charlie acting insane and not want to abandon him for it.

It feels kind of good. But it also feels really scary. Just because Nick’s not abandoning him now doesn’t mean Nick won’t reach his threshold and abandon him later, and if Charlie gets attached before that happens—which is inevitable, isn’t it? Nick doesn’t know him. Nick’s barely seen anything. If he thinks this is a crisis when Charlie’s not even directing it at him—

“Please don’t leave me,” Charlie breathes. “Please. I know I’m a lot, okay? I know I am. And I know it pushes everybody away when I show it to them, but please, please, just don’t—just—”

Biting his lip, Nick puts his hands on both of Charlie’s shoulders and squeezes. It’s not really a hug, but it still makes Charlie want to beg Nick to validate him forever. “It’s okay, Charlie. I’m not leaving. Who said anything about leaving?”

“Sorry. I’m sorry. I’m projecting, aren’t I? You’re just trying to be normal, and I’m making all these assumptions and—and not listening to anything you’re saying—and—what are you saying? I mean, do you actually think…?”

He doesn’t finish his thought. Can’t bring himself to do it.

Nick hesitates. “Does that mean it’s okay if I say something about—what I just heard?”

“No. Yes. Just—no details. Please? I can’t…”

“Yeah. Yeah, okay. Charlie…”

Pursing his lips, Nick gives Charlie this big, earnest look with wide, round eyes, and god, Charlie could absolutely kiss this boy if everything weren’t fucked and Nick weren’t straight, which he is, remember? Just because Nick’s looking at him like this—

“I’m saying I think he’s the ass, not you,” mumbles Nick. “Nothing that I heard was anything that should embarrass you. He’s the one who should be embarrassed for how he acted. That was really, really mean of him. He had no right to talk to you or anyone that way, no matter how he feels, especially when you’re—you know—like—”

“Acting insane,” Charlie mutters, huffing a laugh under his breath.

Nick shakes his head. “No. Um, the words I had in my head were ‘feeling vulnerable.’”

Charlie isn’t really sure where the hell to start sorting through any of what Nick’s just said, so he doesn’t really bother to try. Nick’s wrong about him—so, so wrong—but Nick doesn’t need to know that, not yet. Maybe it makes Charlie a horrible person, but he doesn’t have the strength or the willpower right now to explain to Nick why he needs to be running in the exact opposite direction and believing everything Ben says about what a burden Charlie is.

“We shouldn’t argue about it,” Charlie whispers.

“But—”

“No. I can’t. Can we—can we please just go home? And—and maybe just start over tomorrow?”

That seems to stump Nick for a second. Finally, he asks, “And what if I don’t want to start over? What if I accept you for everything I’ve seen of you so far?”

And oh, god, Nick is going to be the death of Charlie if he keeps it up saying shit like that that he’s going to want to take back someday when he finds out enough of the truth to realize how very dangerous it would be to love him, Charlie Spring, Truham’s most manipulative pupil and the craziest to boot. For Charlie, there’s no way out of being this person, but for Nick, there’s a way out of getting in too deep with him. Charlie just has to show him before it’s too late and Nick gets hurt and it’s all Charlie’s fault. But if you’re asking Charlie if he’s strong enough to turn Nick away—

Charlie’s not strong enough for this. What he really wants with Nick—if he’s being utterly, brutally honest with himself—is not just a friendship, but a relationship. And that’s the one thing Charlie is just way too fucked up to ever have again. Ever.

He’s too broken, okay? He doesn’t know if Ben broke him or if his own brain broke him or if this is all rooted in his mommy issues or what, but something destroyed Charlie somewhere along the way, and he’s just not allowed to try to start over with anybody, no matter what he just said to Nick. He can’t handle this. He’s too damaged. It doesn’t matter how much he might want it, even if Nick doesn’t know that: it’s not safe, and all Charlie can do at this point is try to keep himself safe, even if that means cutting off the person in Charlie’s life who’s been the nicest to him since this all went down.

It’s just so, so hard to say no to any of it. All Charlie wants is to say yes, really. He wants Nick to scoop him up and save him, get him away from all of the pain and nurture him back to life, love him and care for him and never judge him and always want him and, maybe most of all, believe Charlie is a good person until Charlie believes Charlie is a good person, then keep believing it even after that day comes. It’s a nice fantasy. It’s not realistic, but it’s nice to think about. Problem is, it’s so nice to think about that Charlie doesn’t think he has the will to resist what Nick’s offering him.

He just wants someone to be kind to him. Someone. And Charlie’s not talking about in a friend way.

“This is happening too fast,” he tells Nick. It’s not even a fraction of the real problem, but it’s something Nick will probably listen to, at least. “We don’t even really know each other. I can’t… we don’t know each other, Nick.”

Nick shrugs. “Okay. Then can we get to know each other?”

None of this is happening how it’s supposed to. At the same time, this is all happening exactly how it’s supposed to. “I mean, we are already, aren’t we? Wasn’t that the point of me joining rugby?”

“Yeah, but how well can we really get to know each other just from tackling each other all day? We need somewhere to talk. I want us to talk.”

“But… why? I mean, I haven’t done anything for you. I’m just this… lump of sad-crazy. You have no reason to like me.”

“I have lots of reasons to like you.” Nick smiles at the look on Charlie’s face. “I do. Really. You’re smart and funny and seem like a really nice person—” he keeps going even when Charlie scoffs at this “—and you’re always asking me how I am and thanking me for helping you learn and showing up because I want you there every single day, even when… you know… the lads can be really shitty. You show up for me. So I want to show up for you, too.”

Jesus, the way Nick talks is lethal. “So you’re saying…”

“Come round my house on Saturday? Or we can hang out over the half term. Or both. I want to get to know you, Charlie.”

And oh, god, Charlie shouldn’t be agreeing to any of this—but he wants to. Fuck, does he want to.

“Saturday,” he murmurs. “We’ll start with that, okay?”

Chapter Text

Charlie spends basically the rest of the week dreading seeing Nick on Saturday. On the one hand, Nick is kind and thoughtful and sweet and caring and seems to really like Charlie—like, really like him—and of course Charlie can’t help but be drawn to that: of course Charlie wants Nick in his life. Needs Nick in his life, maybe, or at least thinks he does. Charlie’s romantically attracted to him, and Nick actually wants him around? How could Charlie ever say no to that?

It’s complicated, though, because Nick is straight, probably, and there’s no way he’ll ever give Charlie what Charlie really wants to have with him. And anyway, Charlie has no business pursuing friendships with attractive boys, straight or not, when he’s a fucking mess. He just got out of the Ben thing, and he’s not even a little bit over it—and it’s not even that Charlie feels guilty about having overlapping feelings for two people, you know? Like, okay, yes, he feels guilty about that, but it’s about more than that.

He’s just shattered. He just cannot cope with the way he looks at relationships or looks at himself ever since the Ben thing, and he can’t go through it again, not even if Nick is nice to him, not even if Nick doesn’t hurt him like Ben did. Just because Nick is nice doesn’t mean Charlie feels safe. Charlie doesn’t feel safe, and the idea of getting closer to Nick, someone who is fundamentally unsafe because of Charlie’s feelings for him, scares the shit out of him.

So there’s that mess swirling around Charlie’s head, and it makes him really apprehensive about seeing Nick outside of school and rugby. It feels dangerous. And even besides how scared Charlie is of getting hurt, he’s scared of needing Nick as much as he feels like he needs him. Charlie just—he needs people more than is healthy. Like, at the end there with Ben, he pretty much lost his shit anytime he had to go a day or more without spending a good chunk of time at least texting Ben, even if he couldn’t see him. And what if that happens with Nick, too? What if Charlie falls apart every time Nick is far away if they get too close? Charlie can’t afford to feel that way about another person again. He can’t go through it, and he can’t do it to Nick, either—can’t subject Nick to that kind of obsession.

So by the time he walks the half-hour from his house to Nick’s on Saturday morning, he pretty much feels like he’s about to throw up all over the driveway. This is fine, he reminds himself as he walks up to the front door and raises his finger near the doorbell. It’s just Nick. They’re friends now, remember? Charlie has it under control. As long as he keeps his fat mouth shut and doesn’t say anything to give himself away, everything will be fine. Rugby has been going well, hasn’t it? Maybe this will be like that, too, except less risky because he won’t have to spend any time with Nick in a changing room with their clothes off. (It’s not like Charlie has any desire to see Nick with their clothes off, but it feels weird and intimate and makes Charlie feel weird and intimate about the whole thing, which feels just sort of inherently dangerous. (A lot of things about this friendship are starting to feel inherently dangerous.))

His finger is hovering a centimeter away from the doorbell, and he’s pretty sure he’s going to puke out his heart, but it’s too late to back out now: he’s walked all the way here, and Nick’s expecting him. This isn’t so bad, right? Charlie knows how to perform healthy for an audience: he’s been doing it his whole life and became an expert in the past year. He just has to remind himself that he’s not allowed to get personal, and he’ll be fine.

Swallowing the lump in his throat, he rings the doorbell.

Immediately, he can hear a dog barking inside the house. About five hours later, the door swings open to reveal said dog, a border collie with the cutest little face Charlie has ever seen, and Nick, who—okay. Maybe the border collie’s face isn’t the cutest. Maybe it’s the second cutest. And that’s really, really mortifying to admit.

“Hi,” says Nick. “This is Nellie.”

It’s easier to look at Nellie than it is to look at Nick, so Charlie crouches down and does exactly that. “She’s adorable,” he tells Nick, scratching behind Nellie’s ears. He doesn’t look at Nick when he says this, either.

“Thanks. Um, come on inside?”

It just takes a minute for Nick to give Charlie a tour—his mum, Sarah, says hello from the kitchen and smiles broadly—and then Nick leads Charlie up to Nick’s bedroom with Nellie right on their heels. “So this is my room,” says Nick unnecessarily. “Um, we can do whatever you want. We could watch something—play video games—anything.”

“Video games sound good,” agrees Charlie, relieved. If they stay focused on an activity, they won’t have to figure out things to talk about. Plus, Charlie is good at video games. And he likes them.

And it works for a while. They climb on top of Nick’s bed to play Mario Kart, which is great until Nick apparently gets tired of Charlie demolishing him in every round they play. “Come on, just let me win once,” Nick wheedles.

“Nope.”

“You’ve won six times!”

“Guess you’re just going to have to admit that someone is better at video games than you,” teases Charlie. “I think your ego can handle it.”

“It’s not fair.” Nick is smiling widely. “You’re so good at everything.”

Biting his lip, Charlie mutters, “No, I’m not.”

“Yes, you are.”

“No, I’m not.”

There’s something odd happening inside Charlie’s head right now, but Nick clearly hasn’t cottoned on to any of it. “You are, though. Let’s see—”

“No, I’m serious.” Charlie’s voice sounds odd, too. “What, being good at video games and getting good marks in a few classes suddenly makes me a good person? I’m not a good person, Nick. I’m fucking insane—”

The smile has entirely faded from Nick’s lips by now. “You’re not insane.”

But Charlie isn’t done. “And I’m overemotional, and I don’t self-regulate very well. I bottle things up until they explode. Like right now. All over you—and you don’t even know me. You don’t deserve that. I’m mean, and I’m selfish, and—”

“I don’t think you’re selfish,” murmurs Nick. “I don’t think needing to take care of yourself makes anybody selfish, much less you. Put on your own life mask before helping others, right? And all you ever do is think about whether your actions are helping other people.”

Oh, Christ. This isn’t happening. It’s not actually happening. Is it? It feels awful to be having this conversation, most of all because Charlie knows he needs to set Nick straight—but it feels so good to hear what Nick is saying. And that’s exactly why Charlie feels guilty: because he doesn’t deserve to hear this. Not really.

“You can’t say that,” Charlie protests. “You don’t know me well enough to say that. None of that is true about me. I wish it were, but it’s not.”

“Isn’t it? I mean, you’re always telling me I should get away from you to—to—to protect myself from you or something. I don’t think there’s anything I need protecting from—”

“There is,” Charlie scoffs under his breath.

Undeterred, Nick continues, “But you are always thinking about my needs—or what you think they are, anyway. And then… I mean… there’s Ben.”

Shit. Charlie goes from hot to cold in about half a second flat. “What about Ben?”

“It’s just… and I’m sorry to bring it up, but…”

Charlie purses his lips. “It’s okay. You, uh, can tell me.”

“Okay. You just… I mean, it seems pretty clear to me that he’s the one who’s been mean to you—like, really mean—but it seems like you’re always… getting down on yourself and stuff for not having been a good enough boyfriend to him. You’re the one who seems to care about being kind. I wasn’t there to know if you did anything wrong or not, but it’s pretty obvious that you don’t want to do the wrong thing. It seems like you beat yourself up a lot for thinking you haven’t been good enough. Bad people don’t beat themselves up for being bad people, Charlie.”

Charlie has no idea where to even begin parsing any of what Nick’s just told him. The thing is, Nick wasn’t there to know what Charlie did wrong. Charlie knows he fucked up, but Nick has no concept of that because he hasn’t seen it. All he’s seen has been Ben calling Charlie out for his shit, and didn’t Charlie deserve that? Wasn’t Ben justified in that? Charlie’s not saying Ben was the most supportive person in the world or anything, but didn’t Charlie push him to the end of his rope? Things didn’t get this fucked up in a vacuum. They got this fucked up because Charlie fucked them up.

But he doesn’t know how to explain any of that to Nick. He doesn’t think he can stand to sit here and list out all his crimes, and even if he could, he’s not sure Nick would be able to hear any of it. So instead, Charlie just mumbles, “He wasn’t my boyfriend. Not really. I just wanted him to be so badly.”

“Well, he should have said yes to that,” says Nick firmly. “Any guy would be lucky to have you. Really.”

And Charlie knows Nick is trying to boost Charlie’s confidence here, but all it really does is confuse the shit out of him. How can Nick say that when he wouldn’t want to be Charlie’s boyfriend, either? Or does this mean that he would want that? How could he want that when he’s straight? But is he really straight, or is Charlie just putting him into the “straight until proven otherwise” box that society puts everyone into whether they’re straight or not? It’s just—Charlie can’t afford to get his hopes up here. If he tells himself there’s a chance when there isn’t a chance—

There’s nothing for it. He’s going to have to ask. He doesn’t want to ask, but he has to do it before he torments himself even deeper into insanity than he already is.

“Nick, are you straight?”

For a second, they just stare at each other. Charlie can’t read Nick’s face at all right now, and he pretty much immediately starts to panic. He backtracks, “Sorry. Shit. You don’t have to answer that if you don’t want to. I’m not trying to, like, call you out or get you to answer anything that you don’t—and I’m not, like, trying to say I wouldn’t believe you if you said you were straight. I would. It’s just really rude to press anybody to come out as anything they’re not ready to, and I have no way of knowing if any of this is anything you’ve been struggling with that I don’t know about. I don’t know, is what I’m trying to say. I don’t know, and it’s okay if you don’t want me to know, but I—”

“Hey. No. It’s okay. We’re okay. I just don’t know if I—know how to answer, that’s all.”

And oh, shit, this conversation is actually happening, and Nick isn’t confirming that he’s straight. Nick isn’t confirming anything, really. He’s—what—questioning? How can Charlie understand what’s within the realm of possibility and what’s not if Nick doesn’t even know himself?

Struggling to understand, Charlie probes, “It’s okay not to know. And it’s okay not to answer.”

“I know. Um, it’s okay. You can ask,” says Nick simply.

Holy actual fucking shit, they’re doing this. “So—you might be gay?”

“No. Um, no, I’m definitely not attracted to boys.”

Oh. It kind of feels like someone’s just taken a needle and popped both of Charlie’s lungs at once. He can feel himself getting hot in the face. “Oh. Then—you’re not attracted to girls, either?”

Nick shrugs one shoulder. “No, I definitely am. It’s definitely girls for me.”

Charlie is getting more confused by the second. “Then—how are you anything but straight?”

“I mean, that’s why I don’t know. Maybe I am straight. I guess I just… girls are different than boys. Girls make me feel things boys don’t. But I don’t think I… I mean, what you were saying earlier about not really having those feelings for anyone kind of… made sense, I guess. It’s different, though, because you still—you still were in love with Ben and liked doing physical stuff with him and everything, right?” (Charlie nods, breathing shallowly.) “I think I might be—kind of the reverse? There are girls I think are fit, but I don’t know that I’d actually want to do anything with any of them. It doesn’t sound nice to me. And even the girls I’m attracted to—it’s pretty much just physical. I don’t think I’ve ever, like, fancied any of them. I don’t think I’ve ever had a crush. There’s never been anyone I wanted to go out with. It makes me sad sometimes when I think I might never connect with anybody like that, and I definitely don’t like the idea of going my whole life without ever kissing anyone at least once, but I don’t know. I just don’t feel like I’ve ever wanted any of that with anyone I’ve ever met, and I don’t feel like I need it to be happy.” Nick chuckles a little. “You don’t have anything to feel self-conscious about when you ramble about stuff. I guess I do that sometimes, too.”

Well, shit. Charlie doesn’t want to put words in Nick’s mouth, but what he’s hearing sounds a lot like Nick is probably aro and somewhere on the ace spectrum, too. If he’s only attracted to girls and doesn’t even want to have any kind of relationship, physical or romantic, with any of them, then there’s no way in hell he’d ever want anything with Charlie.

It sounds like his chances with Nick are pretty much in the negatives. And as much as Charlie wants to be an actual good friend right now and support Nick and give him a safe space to work through sexuality stuff, all he can think about is the insurmountable weight of that rejection.

What kind of a monster is Charlie, anyway, for making this all about himself? And what kind of a monster is he for caring more about whether or not he’s a monster than about whether or not Nick feels accepted?

But he has to try. He has to at least try to be there for Nick, who’s only ever been a hundred percent there for Charlie. So he swallows his pride and says, “It’s okay. Um, thanks for telling me. I won’t tell anyone, I promise.”

“Thanks.” Nick smiles slightly. “I’ve never actually told anyone that before. No one ever asked. It actually feels really good to have a friend who cares enough to ask things like that about me.”

Surging with guilt, Charlie says, “Well, I’m happy to listen. I’m glad you felt comfortable telling me. I’m not ever going to judge you for anything you say, okay? And if you ever want to talk through, like, how to label it or whatever, you can talk to me. My experience isn’t the same, but I’ve gone down this research rabbit hole before. Like, a lot.”

“How would you label something like that?”

“Um, try googling ‘asexual’ and ‘aromantic.’ Two different terms. That should get you started, anyway. You’re probably not, like, completely ace, but it sounds like you’re on the spectrum.”

Nick nods. “Okay. I’ll do that later. Thanks. Um, not that it’s a bad thing, but why did you ask me?”

Oh, shit. Charlie’s pretty sure Nick had said something about Ben having been lucky to have Charlie that had made Charlie wonder if Nick would feel lucky to have Charlie, but he can’t say that now, not when Nick’s all but confirmed that the answer to that question is no. So he buys some time. “Sorry. That probably was really out of nowhere.”

“No sorries allowed,” says Nick gently.

Weakly, Charlie smiles. “Yeah. Okay. I guess… I mean, you said something… before… about you being ‘weird’ when I told you about my ace stuff. I’ve just been wondering what you meant, that’s all. We were talking about my gay stuff, and… my brain went there or whatever.”

Miraculously, Nick seems to buy this. “That makes sense. Don’t apologize for that, okay? You can always ask me anything or tell me anything. If I don’t want to talk about it, I’ll tell you, but it’s always okay to ask if you don’t know.”

Guiltier than ever, Charlie nods again. “Okay. Got it. Thanks, Nick.”

There’s no hope, he reminds himself. There’s no hope, and he needs to intercept this little crush of his now before it gets any deeper and he falls any harder. He shouldn’t even be entertaining this. He’s in love with Ben. He’s trying to get over Ben. He doesn’t have room in his head to deal with feelings for two different people at the same time.

Snap out of it, he tells himself firmly, and then he tries to tune back in as Nick tells him it’s snowing outside.

Chapter Text

By now, word is very much getting around that Charlie Spring and Nick Nelson are friends, and Charlie doesn’t like it. Why does the whole school have to have an opinion about it, anyway? Being Nick’s friend is confusing enough without the entirety of Truham (and part of Higgs) inserting itself into this relationship. Charlie just wishes he could figure out what’s happening here for himself without having to deal with people whispering in the corridors about how they don’t understand what a person like Nick is even doing with a person like Charlie or whatever the hell it is that Charlie keeps hearing.

It would be one thing if it were just random strangers (not that that would have been great, but still)—but it’s not. It’s Charlie’s friends, too.

And he’s not talking just about Tao, although he’s certainly the loudest of the bunch about it. It’s film night at Elle’s house when Tao brings it up again, and it’s pretty clear that he’s just itching to dissect the matter in front of an audience.

“Charlie,” he declares not two minutes after Charlie has let himself into Elle’s living room, “we need to have a conversation about the dangers of crushing on straight boys. As your token straight friend, it’s my duty to remind you that, sometimes, people are straight.”

Charlie rolls his eyes. It’s a little hard to believe Tao actually sympathizes when Tao’s saying this with his arms draped around Elle’s waist and his chin nuzzling into her shoulder.

Anyway, for all Tao knows, Charlie doesn’t even fancy Nick. Especially since he found out that the odds of Nick fancying him back are in the negatives, Charlie’s been careful to keep tight-lipped to everyone in his life about those feelings. He already knows he needs to get over it, thank you, and it’s not going to help him to feel the shame of other people criticizing him, too, for not getting over it as fast as he knows he needs to. He criticizes himself enough all on his own.

“I’m not crushing on any straight boys,” says Charlie dully, which, for the record, is actually true. Nick may not be gay or bi or interested in boys whatsoever, but Charlie knows for a fact that he’s not your typical heterosexual heteroromantic, either.

Tao, of course, isn’t buying it. “Oh, come on. I’ve seen the way you look at him when we pass him in the mornings. It’s obvious you’re thinking about kissing him every time you—”

“Give him a break, Tao,” cuts in Tara sharply. “It’s probably hard enough for Charlie to fancy the guy without you giving him all this shit for it every chance you get.”

Tara and her themfriend, Darcy, are the last two members of Charlie’s friend group. Elle, Tao’s girlfriend, met Tara and Darcy last year when she transitioned and subsequently transferred from Truham to Higgs. Not long after that, she introduced them to Charlie, Tao, and Isaac, and their little group has been a bit less little ever since.

It’s a little hard for Charlie sometimes that most of his friends have partners within the group: Elle and Tao, Tara and Darcy. It’s not because it makes Charlie feel like he’s the only single one: Isaac is aroace, and anyway, Charlie was with Ben for the whole past year. It’s more that he spent that whole year feeling kind of trapped in something really dysfunctional—not because Ben was trapping him, more because Charlie had fucked-up boundaries and couldn’t leave, regardless of whether Ben wanted him to or not—and he didn’t feel like any of his friends would understand if he tried to explain it to them. He didn’t try, but not because he didn’t want someone to talk to about it.

Elle, Tao, Tara, and Darcy just seemed adorable and blissed-out and functional in their relationships all the damn time, and Charlie has always been paranoid that, if he confided in them, they would judge him—or, worse, try to understand and just not be capable of comprehending it. Isaac is the only one of Charlie’s friends who’s not in a super happy relationship, but he probably wouldn’t understand, either: he’s never wanted to be in a relationship, let alone been in one, let alone been in one that was as fucked-up as Charlie’s was. Anytime Charlie’s mentioned anything about still wanting to be in relationships or liking the thought of doing sexual stuff, Isaac’s just laughed about how insane that sounded to him. He laughed kindly, but still.

In the meantime, Tao is now rolling his eyes. “I’m just trying to protect my best friend. If he gets in too deep with this Nick guy—and how do we even know we can trust Nick, anyway? Look at his mates! Look at his—he’s on the rugby team!”

“Charlie is on the rugby team,” points out Darcy, looking amused.

“Yeah, to make Nick happy. Nick is the one that made him do it.”

“Nick didn’t make Charlie do anything,” says Elle in a long-suffering sort of way. “Charlie can be Nick’s friend and take up new hobbies to spend more time with him if he wants to.”

Feeling slightly mollified, Charlie relaxes his shoulders just a tiny bit. “Nick is nice. He’s nice to me. And not everyone else on the rugby team is an ass, either. Otis and Christian are okay, and Sai, too.”

“Wishful thinking,” retorts Tao. “You only think any of those things because you fancy Nick and want it to work.”

Turning a page of his novel, Isaac says dryly, “I thought you thought the whole reason Charlie fancied Nick was because Nick was nice to him.”

“He’s nice to him for now,” says Tao in a rather ominous voice. “It won’t last. He’ll show his true colors eventually. He’s obviously leading Charlie on on purpose.”

“Why would he even do that, Tao?” presses Tara.

“I don’t know. To get a laugh, maybe. To snicker about it with his little rugby team when Charlie’s not in the room. How should I know? These people’s minds don’t work the same way as yours or mine.”

Elle rebuts, “And if that’s actually true, then you have no way of knowing Nick’s real intentions. Have you ever heard of giving people the benefit of the doubt? If Charlie says Nick is a good friend, then I believe him.”

“Elle’s right,” adds Darcy. “Charlie is the person in this room who knows Nick the best to be able to make that call.”

Accepting defeat (for now, anyway), Tao crosses his arms over his chest and slumps back against the back of the couch. “Fine. We’ll trust Charlie. But when Nick breaks his heart, and we’re the ones picking up the pieces, you’ll wish you’d listened.”

“Uh, no, we won’t. Maybe Charlie will if that happens, but we’ll just be glad we respected him enough to let him make his own choices so he could figure things out for himself,” says Elle.

“Plus, we don’t know Nick is straight,” adds Darcy. “We shouldn’t be assuming anyone is straight unless they say so themselves.”

Tao glares at Darcy, then turns to Charlie. “Okay. Fine. Charlie, has Nick said anything to you about—”

“No,” interrupts Tara. “We shouldn’t get to ask him to repeat anything Nick may or may not have said to him in confidence. If Nick had told Charlie that, A, he wasn’t straight and, B, it was okay to share that information, I’m guessing Charlie would have done so already. Let’s just leave him alone.”

Although Charlie appreciates that, all he can think miserably to himself is that Nick isn’t gay or bi or anything that might give Charlie a chance with him. He may not be, like, fully ace, but he’s the kind of ace that probably wouldn’t enjoy physical relationships even with people he is attracted to, and that’s not boys: that’s girls. If you pressed him, Charlie could probably agree to never having sex again—it wouldn’t be his preference, but it probably wouldn’t, like, super upset him—and it would probably be good, actually, not to make out and stuff, so that he wouldn’t get aroused and be tempted to have sex that he couldn’t have. But possibly not even kissing more than once in their lives? Would Nick even be okay with cuddling?

Besides, if he’s aro, there’s no way he’s falling in love with Charlie. There’s no point in Charlie bargaining with himself about how much physical affection he can or can’t sacrifice when there’s no chance whatsoever that Nick would want any kind of relationship at all.

It’s not that Charlie only is talking to Nick to try to get him to be his boyfriend. Charlie can’t handle having a boyfriend right now or probably ever again. Anyway, he does value his friendship with Nick. He values it a lot, actually. Like, Charlie has best friends, but he doesn’t really have any one person who is just his—someone whom he puts first and who puts him first, too. He gets glimpses sometimes of what it could be like for Nick to be that person, and he wants it almost as much as he wants to go out with Nick.

Nick is so kind to him, and Charlie wants so badly to reciprocate that. He doesn’t know how, and he thinks he’s doing a really shitty job of it, but he wants to.

So no, it’s not all about swindling Nick into giving him a romantic relationship. They’re friends, and that friendship is really, really important to Charlie. He feels greedy for even wanting more than that from Nick when Nick’s doing a great job as a friend and has been up front that there’s nothing else he can give Charlie.

He just—he fancies Nick so much that he feels like he’s going to explode with it sometimes. It’s not really about getting anything from Nick, exactly. Like, yeah, of course he wants Nick to reciprocate, and it would be nice for Nick to say all the right things and make Charlie feel adored, but that’s not really the thing Charlie’s missing. Even being able to kiss and hug Nick wouldn’t be the most important part. Wanting physical affection is more a symptom of the problem than it is the problem, really.

The most important part would just be to—to have these feelings for Nick and be accepted for them. To fancy Nick and maybe even (can Charlie say this yet? he’s honestly not sure) love him and not be—you know—mocked or turned away or told it was gross or inappropriate the way Ben did for almost their entire relationship. Of course he wants Nick to feel the same way—of course he does—it’s not like this would work if Nick didn’t—but more than that, Charlie just wants Nick to see what Charlie feels for him and want to receive it. Want Charlie to be himself. Not think that Charlie is Too Much whenever he’s being honest about what he thinks and feels and wants.

That will never happen, though. Nick’s never in a million years going to feel the same way, and what kind of a relationship could they possibly have if Nick never returned Charlie’s feelings? Charlie can’t do the thing where Nick goes, Thanks for loving me, that’s nice to hear, and then shoves Charlie into the friend zone and expects him to tamp down his feelings and never demonstrate them in any of the ways he thinks about all day and night. That’s not a relationship. If that’s the closest thing to a relationship Nick can offer him, then Charlie would rather bury these feelings forever so that Nick never finds out and never, ever rejects him.

He’s just not sure how long he can hold out before he says something. With most people, Charlie seems to be an expert at hiding his real feelings, but his self-control all falls apart the second (he might as well admit it) he loves someone. He did it in every conversation he ever had with Ben, and pretty soon, he’s probably going to do it with Nick, too. Lose the ability to hide things. Admit to everything, even the things he doesn’t even want Nick to know.

Charlie should get out now, right? He should get out now before he falls in any deeper and really fucks himself over. The problem is, he thinks he might already be in too deep to get out.

Chapter Text

So they basically hang out for the entire duration of the half-term.

Charlie doesn’t do it on purpose, exactly. It’s not like he wakes up that Saturday after the last day of school and thinks to himself, I’m going to move into Nick’s house for the next nine days. But Nick texts him that morning to ask whether he wants to come round. And then, the next afternoon, Charlie texts Nick to ask if he’s busy, and Nick says no, he’s not busy at all, why doesn’t Charlie come round? And before Charlie knows it, he’s basically spent the last nine days living out of Nick’s house, watching films and playing video games and getting into snowball fights and eating sandwiches with Nick’s mum and talking. Like, literally doing so much talking.

Mostly, they talk about harmless stuff. You know, Mario and school and stuff. Did you know Nick wants to play professional rugby someday? Yeah, Charlie didn’t know that, either. Nick seems to think it’s stupid, like he doesn’t have a shot, but Charlie thinks (and says) he doesn’t think it’s stupid at all—he’s seen Nick out on the field, and Nick is brilliant. “Besides,” he tells Nick earnestly, “even if it doesn’t happen, you don’t have to be embarrassed for wanting it or trying for it. I think it’s better to try, even if you don’t get what you want, than it is to never find out what would have happened if you had tried. You can have a backup plan, but that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with also having a dream. Shoot for your dream, you know? I think you should be proud of that.”

Nick is blushing furiously by the end of this. “Thanks, Charlie. Nobody’s ever said that to me before.”

“Really? No offense, but that’s not great friendship behavior if your friends are telling you you shouldn’t try. Have they seen you play?—because I have.”

Shrugging one shoulder, Nick says, “I haven’t actually told any of my friends that. Like, they know I want to play in uni, but nobody’s ever asked if I want to keep going after that, and I guess I’ve been too scared to bring it up. I mean, my family hasn’t been very supportive, so…”

Charlie frowns. “That sucks. I’m sorry. Do you mean your mum or…?”

“Well, my mum hasn’t outright told me she doesn’t think I’m good enough, but she says a lot of carefully-worded stuff about how dreams need to be realistic and there are a lot of great rugby players out there who will be competing for it and stuff like that. I know she just doesn’t want me to be disappointed, but it would be nice if she were more supportive, I guess. My dad doesn’t actually know anything about what I want to do after school. He hasn’t asked and doesn’t seem very interested. My brother knows—I’ve been talking about it at home since I was a little kid—but any time I would bring it up, he’d just laugh in my face and call it a pipe dream and tell me I needed to take my ego down a notch.”

Wincing, Charlie says, “I’m so sorry, Nick. You deserve better.”

“You don’t have to be sorry. You say sorry way too much, and all of it is stuff you don’t even have to apologize for.”

“It wasn’t an apology sorry. It was a sympathy sorry.”

Nick smiles faintly. “Okay. I’ll let it go. This time.”

Charlie’s own faint smile fades. “Um, no offense, but your brother sounds like an ass, and so does your dad.”

Nick laughs hollowly. “That’s probably because they are asses. My dad hasn’t given a shit about me in years, and my brother is just mean. He did everything he could to make my life hell when he was still living here.”

Swallowing his “sorry” (it’s really damn hard not to say it, for the record), Charlie asks instead, “Is he at uni, or…?”

“Yeah. He’s in his final year. I can’t wait until he graduates and stops moving back in during summers and half-terms and reading weeks and just—all of it. I just want him out of my life.”

“That’s more than understandable with the way it sounds like he treats you. Um, and your dad?”

“In France,” Nick mutters. “He moved back there after the divorce. I’ve barely seen him since. I was four.”

Mostly, Charlie just wants to wrap Nick in a gigantic hug right about now, but he sits on his hands—literally sticks them under his bum and traps them between his own body and Nick’s mattress. They’re not on hugging terms. They’ve never hugged before. Anyway, if he started hugging Nick now, it would just remind him of all the things besides hugging that he wants to do to Nick, and now is not the time for Charlie to get selfish.

“I’m—shit. I don’t know how to say this without telling you I’m sorry. I am sorry. I’m really sorry. You’re, like, probably the best person I know, and you deserve to have the perfect happy family.”

The left corner of Nick’s mouth quirks up. “Thank you. That’s very kind of you to say.”

“It’s true. You’re great, Nick. You’re so, so good. Can you not see that?—how amazing you are? I mean, can you really not see it?”

“Um, thank you. It’s not like I hate myself. There are things about myself that I like. I just don’t think I’m all that interesting, I guess. You talk me up to be this, like, superstar, and I’m just not that. I’m boring. I’m not that smart. I’m good at rugby, but I’m not very good at anything else.”

Charlie purses his lips. “You’re good at being my friend,” he murmurs. “You’re good at being my…”

Nick raises his eyebrows, but Charlie isn’t totally sure where he’d been going with that sentence. Nick’s good at being Charlie’s best friend? Tao, for one, would take offense to that, and Charlie doesn’t want to be unappreciative of everything the best friends he already has do for him. Good at being Charlie’s love interest? As if. Charlie knows as well as Nick does that there’s negative odds of that ever happening. Ever.

Fortunately, Nick doesn’t press him to keep going. “Thanks, Charlie. You’re good at being my friend, too, you know.”

While Charlie privately disagrees, he doesn’t take the opportunity to protest. Nick would just argue back, and Charlie doesn’t need to get into it with Nick right now about whether or not Charlie is a terrible person. That’s not the point. The whole goal here is supposed to be not to manipulate Nick into being nicer to Charlie than he deserves.

And it’s really annoying that Charlie seems to have no one to express these anxieties to. Every time he brings Nick up to his friends, they just give him shit for fancying a rugby lad who’s going to break Charlie’s heart—or, at least, Tao gives him shit for that. The rest of Charlie’s friends seem to be on Charlie’s side in that particular debate, but he thinks it’s probably more because they trust Charlie’s assessment of Nick’s character and not really because they don’t believe Charlie fancies Nick. They would be right, anyway. Charlie does fancy Nick. Charlie might even love Nick. And if all of Charlie’s friends think Nick is straight—well—they might not be entirely right about that, but they would be right in thinking that Nick will never in a million years return Charlie’s feelings.

Anyway, the whole thing makes Charlie just never want to bring Nick up to his friends on purpose. He doesn’t need anybody to give him pitying eyes about falling for someone he’s got no chance with. He knows he’s got no chance, thanks, and reminds himself enough of that without having to see the looks on his friends’ faces when he mentions Nick’s existence, too.

The problem is, he seems to be spiraling deeper and deeper into this friendship, and he’s very concerned that he’s not going to be able to claw his way out when he needs to—and he knows he’ll need to. This can only last so long when Charlie needs Nick to fancy him and already knows it’s impossible. It’s been hard enough getting over Ben without having to get over Nick, too—at the same time, no less.

In some ways, it’s been kind of helpful to have Nick around to fancy—means that Charlie has somebody else to put all his attention on, somebody who would absolutely reject Charlie, yes, but who’s at least nice to him and says nice things about how Charlie is a good person that Nick wants in his life. It’s a nice change of pace from chasing after somebody who alternated between rage-fucking Charlie and telling Charlie to go away and get fucked, for all Ben cared. That still sucks, don’t get Charlie wrong—still keeps him up at night picturing the look on Ben’s face every time Ben ever said that Charlie was a piece of shit on Ben’s shoe—but at least he has the distraction of new feelings for somebody who actually likes Charlie, even if he doesn’t like Charlie.

It doesn’t make Nick a rebound, though. Sometimes, Charlie feels guilty thinking that Nick might ever feel like he’s Charlie’s rebound crush (even though that’s ridiculous, even though Nick doesn’t even want anything more than friendship from Charlie)—but he’s not that. Charlie fancies Nick for Nick. He just happened to meet him before he was over Ben, that’s all.

Besides, there’s no point in obsessing over how Nick—who’s probably aro, probably acespec, and definitely not attracted to boys—might hypothetically feel about Charlie (whom Nick doesn’t even fancy) liking two people at once. Charlie knows this. He realizes it’s a non-factor. He hasn’t deluded himself into thinking any of this would make Nick feel anything other than sorry for him.

It just feels like more evidence, you know? It’s like Charlie spends his whole life rooting around for proof: proof that his feelings for people aren’t genuine, that he’s manipulative, that he’s evil, and, maybe most of all, that everyone in his life is going to realize that and leave him. He finds what feels like proof, and he goes, Great, I was right. I am manipulative. I am evil. People will leave. It’s just really fucking hard to feel like he’s constantly finding the proof of it, that’s all. So he sees himself wishing he had a relationship with Nick when that wouldn’t be fair to Nick without Charlie being beyond the Ben thing, and he hates himself for it.

It’s not really exactly that he still wants to get his relationship with Ben back. If anything, being friends with Nick and fancying him on the side has shown Charlie that it feels a lot better to actively fancy someone who’s nice to him than someone he isn’t. He doesn’t think he could handle going back to Ben and getting treated like that again, even if Ben wanted that, which he doesn’t. He just wishes, in his fantasy world where he and Nick have a chance, that he could give Nick his undivided mental energy.

Charlie doesn’t think there’s any world where that’s happening, though, whether it’s Nick or not and whether it’s mutual or not. It’s probably safer that Nick’s not interested. If Nick were interested, Charlie would probably freak out and get scared and dump him after, like, two hours. It’s not that Charlie wouldn’t want the relationship—he’s just way beyond the point of believing that he would deserve the relationship or could possibly hold it together.

He literally just saw Nick this afternoon on their last free day before it’s back to Truham for them, so it feels odd when his phone lights up not two hours after Charlie gets home with a text from—you guessed it—Nick. Hey Charlie, you busy?

Fuck, it feels so good for Nick to be interested, though, even if Nick’s not interested in the same way Charlie is. But it’s dangerous. It feels a little too good, to be honest, like Charlie’s going to lose his actual shit if and when he loses this.

Biting his lip, Charlie texts back, Not busy. Long time no talk :)

And then he waits. And waits. It seems to take forever for Nick to start typing again, and when he does, it seems to take an additional forever for Nick’s reply to come through. Haha. I guess. I know we just saw each other but I wanted to talk to you. Lately I want to spend all my time talking to you. If I’m free I text you or invite you over. Hope that’s okay.

And that’s more than okay—that’s all Charlie wants to hear—like, Charlie just wants to sit here and listen to Nick say things exactly like that all night long—but that’s exactly why it’s dangerous. The thing is, Nick doesn’t know things about Charlie. Nick doesn’t know that Charlie will glom on tight to any scrap of affection Nick affords him. If he knew any of that, he’d go running in the opposite direction.

But Charlie is too selfish to warn him. He should, but he can’t.

So he very, very carefully monitors himself as he replies, Of course that’s okay!! I like talking to you too. We can talk anytime you want.

Nick’s reply is swift this time. Ok cool :) so do you wanna come over for dinner after rugby tomorrow? Mum’s making meatballs.

Oh, fuck Charlie. Fuck Charlie to hell and back.

Chapter Text

So Charlie settles into a kind of routine: his new life without Ben. He hangs out with Tao and Isaac all day at school; sticks close to Nick during rugby; catches up with Elle, Tara, and Darcy on weekends; and just generally tries to remind himself that he doesn’t need Ben to be okay anymore. If anything, Ben was probably a big part of the reason why Charlie wasn’t okay—though Charlie doesn’t feel quite comfortable framing it like that. Ben was never the problem: Charlie was. The problem was Charlie being Too Much and always forcing himself on Ben, who made it pretty clear by the end that he didn’t even want Charlie around.

But that’s over now, right? Ben is gone, and Charlie is better off without having to watch himself act like a monster all day long to the person he loves most. Ben isn’t even the person Charlie loves most anymore. He’s not sure who that is, but it’s not Ben.

He hopes it’s not Nick. It would really, really suck for it to be Nick, given that Charlie already knows Nick will never want Charlie the way Charlie wants him.

It’s getting hard to separate himself from his feelings for Nick, though, with Nick hanging around in Charlie’s life so much of the time. Charlie’s absolutely not complaining—he doesn’t really want anything these days more than he wants to be near Nick—but it scares him, too, to need someone this much. Will Nick ever understand that the way Charlie feels about him is so far past platonic that it’s not even just romantic, but disordered? Charlie hopes not. Charlie hopes he can keep this all under wraps from Nick forever, knowing that it’ll all fall apart if he can’t.

And then Nick invites Charlie to Harry Greene’s birthday party.

Charlie should say no, right? It’s one thing to see Nick at rugby or even to go round his house for dinner sometimes, but it’s quite another for them to go to an event together. Like a date. This isn’t going to be a date to Nick—the thought probably hasn’t even crossed his mind—but in Charlie’s head, that’s exactly what this will be if they do it. And it’s dangerous for Charlie to delude himself into believing that this relationship—no, this friendship—is anything other than what it is to Nick: exactly that. Friendship.

But Charlie has no willpower, especially not when Nick looks at him with these big doe eyes and tells Charlie that he, Nick, only wants to go to this thing if Charlie goes with him. Charlie’s pulse is ramming along at double speed. “Don’t you have, like, tons of other friends going to this thing? Harry’s probably inviting everybody else from rugby, isn’t he?—and, like, Imogen and stuff?”

Nick shrugs. “Yeah, but I don’t want to go for Harry or any of the rest of them. I want to spend time with you. You’re nicer to me and more fun to be around than any of them, anyway. I’ll go alone if I have to, but I would enjoy it so, so much more if you went with me. You’d be doing me a favor.”

Jesus Christ, if Nick keeps talking sappy to Charlie like this, Charlie might have an actual heart attack. Or blurt out all his repressed romantic feelings for Nick right to his face. Or both.

After that, Charlie doesn’t stand much of a chance, does he? He knows he could say no—Nick would never force him—but Charlie can’t say no. He doesn’t have it in him to say no. He will wholly and always—or, at least, until shit hits the fan and Nick’s rejection shatters him—do anything and everything he can to get close to Nick, even when it scares the shit out of him, even when he knows he shouldn’t.

As luck would have it (though Charlie’s not sure whether this makes him lucky or not), Nick’s not the only one of his friends who’s been invited to this thing: apparently, Tara and Darcy are going, too. On the bright side, Darcy offers to have them stay round their and their gran’s house afterward for the night, which means Charlie will have other people there to distract him if Nick ditches him to hang with Harry or Imogen or whoever. On the downside, what if Nick doesn’t want to ditch Charlie for anybody else? What if Charlie gets stuck in the middle, trying to prioritize Nick (who invited him, after all) without making it painfully fucking obvious to Tara and Darcy how gone for Nick Charlie really is?

As it turns out, he needn’t have worried. They’ve no sooner walked into the hotel than Tara and Darcy start dancing together out on the floor and leaving Charlie feeling distinctly like a third wheel. He doesn’t think that’s their intention—they invite him to join them and everything—but it feels pretty obvious to Charlie, at least, that they want nothing more right now than to start making out in front of Harry’s entire guest list right here and now. And Harry apparently has a long guest list with how crowded this place is. Nick said his dad rented out the entire hotel for the occasion, even.

“I’m going to go find Nick,” he informs them. He basically has to shout to be heard over the music and chatter around them.

“What?” Tara hollers back.

“I’ll find you later.”

Neither Tara nor Darcy bothers to question this, let alone argue with it. No more than five seconds after Charlie starts walking away, he glances back over his shoulder to find them—yep—snogging their hearts out.

Fortunately, it doesn’t take long after that for Charlie to find Nick. More accurately, Nick finds him. Charlie can’t even really hear that Nick is saying his name until Nick startles him by tapping him on the shoulder from behind.

“Hi,” calls Charlie.

“Hi,” Nick calls back. “You came.”

“I mean, you asked me to.” Charlie feels distinctly embarrassed. “My friends Tara and Darcy are here, too, but I think they’re too busy making out right now to even really have noticed that we got split up. We’re staying the night at Darcy’s after this.”

Nick purses his lips. “I’m sorry. For what it’s worth, if we got split up, I would definitely notice.”

Charlie’s embarrassment deepens. “Thanks. Me, too. I mean, I’d notice if you—yeah.”

He can’t read Nick’s facial expression at all right now. Nick continues, “Is it bad that I’m kind of glad? Like, I’m sorry you got left behind, but I was sort of looking forward to having you all to myself tonight.”

Blushing, Charlie stammers, “Y-you were?”

“That’s okay, right?”

“Yeah—of course—it’s just—you have me all to yourself all the time. I’m round your house, like, four days a week.”

“Four days a week isn’t all the time. I want you all the time.”

Fucking hell, Charlie’s going to die. He’s going to have that heart attack he was worried about, and he’s going to drop dead right here in St. George’s fucking Hotel.

“Should we…?” he tries to propose. Then he realizes he’s not sure what he could propose they do that doesn’t sound like a bad idea, and he shuts up.

Unfortunately, Nick autocompletes that suggestion with pretty much the riskiest possibility. “Go somewhere quieter?”

“Uh, sure. Yeah.”

“There’s probably empty rooms upstairs,” Nick goes on. “Harry rented this whole place for the night, and I doubt many people are up there.”

Oh, lord. Okay. This is actually happening.

And then it gets even worse. After Charlie chases Nick up the long, winding staircase to the next floor, they’re kind of jogging along the thinly-populated landing when Charlie smacks directly into—

—yup. If you guessed Ben, you guessed correctly.

They don’t actually say anything to each other. For a second, Ben stares at Charlie, and Charlie stares back, hating himself, hating his life—not really hating Ben, but certainly wishing he’d never, ever met this person or known what this kind of pain feels like.

Charlie may not love Ben anymore, but he still feels pain. He still feels this pain all the time.

That’s when Nick, who’d run a few paces ahead of Charlie, realizes that they’re no longer in step together, looks back over his shoulder, and notices. Instantly, Nick’s face goes dark. “Get the fuck out of here,” he snarls. “Go.”

Ben’s eyes narrow as they focus on Nick. “But—”

“Go. Now.”

Ben mutters something under his breath—something nasty, Charlie’s sure—but, importantly, he leaves. It hardly matters, though, because the damage is done, and Charlie’s already spiraling.

When Nick looks back at Charlie, his eyes are round and kind again. “Here. In here.” And he crosses to the nearest door and opens it.

By the time Charlie makes it into the ballroom, his palms are sweating, and his heart is thudding so hard in his chest that it feels like it’s going to burst out of his ribcage any second now. Shit. Fuck. It’s hard enough to act normal around Nick on a good day, and any day when Charlie has to directly interact with Ben is not a good day. If he can’t find a distraction now—

But Nick doesn’t seem to be interested in helping Charlie find a distraction. Pulling the door shut behind them, Nick crosses to the window on the opposite wall, sits down against it, and then haltingly pats the space on the floor beside him. “Hi,” he murmurs, even though that’s ridiculous, even though they greeted each other a while back.

Charlie’s breath catches. “Hi.”

He shouldn’t sit down next to Nick, but he does. He shouldn’t even stay in this room with Nick, but he does. They need to find something else to talk about right now, or else—

“Are you okay?” Nick asks.

No, Charlie’s not fucking okay. Charlie’s probably never going to be fucking okay ever again at this rate. But he can’t afford to be honest about that, so he just nods instead. “Yeah.” His voice comes out hoarse and weird.

“Are you sure? It’s just… it’s okay if you’re not. I would get it. You wouldn’t have to, like, hide it.”

At this point, Charlie is starting to enter panic mode. “It’s fine. Please don’t,” he croaks.

Unfortunately, Nick entirely misinterprets this. “Shit. I’m sorry. I’m not trying to pressure you. You don’t owe me anything, okay? I don’t ever want you to get hurt because of me. I just want to support you. If I don’t always do a good job of it—”

Look. Charlie is not a person who has a lot of willpower to begin with, and increasingly, it’s been taking every bit of what little willpower he does have inside of him to shut up in Nick’s presence and not unravel the whole thing into chaos. He needs Nick to stop talking like this, okay? He needs Nick to cut it out. The more Nick says this shit, the harder it’s getting for Charlie to keep quiet about how it really makes him feel, and everything will be ruined if Charlie shares how he really feels.

Anyway, he tries. He tries really hard. “It’s not that you don’t do a good job. You do a great job, Nick.”

“Right. Okay. That’s good to hear.” Nick smiles, and Charlie never wants to stop watching him do it. “Then what’s the best way that I can help—”

Why is Nick like this? Why does he have to be so nice to Charlie all the time? If he doesn’t stop being nice right now, Charlie’s just—

They’re sitting so close together on the ground. Trying to ground himself, Charlie lays his palm flat on the cool wooden floor, but all that really does is make him realize that his pinky finger is only a couple centimeters away from brushing against Nick’s.

Oh, fuck. Charlie would give anything right now to be able to kiss Nick. Name it, and he’d do it. He—

“You can’t help,” he breathes. “I appreciate you wanting to, but you can’t.”

Nick frowns. “Why not? I know I can’t solve your problems for you, Charlie, but can’t I do something? You don’t have to go through this all alone. If you think you don’t deserve any support, you’re wrong. You do. I care about you—”

And that’s what pushes Charlie over the edge. That’s what makes him snap. Nick cares about him, and that’s so much more than Charlie even deserves, but Charlie loves Nick, and he can’t do it anymore. He can’t have this conversation and fake it and act like he’s normal because he’s not normal. He loves Nick, and he’s held that in for as long as he can stand—and he just can’t hold it in anymore.

“You can’t help because I’m in love with you, Nick.”

Charlie’s never been able to successfully get Nick to stop being nice to him before, but that shuts him up, at least for a moment. “You—wait. What?”

Seriously, if Charlie knew what was good for him, he’d stop talking and run for it—go find Tara and Darcy downstairs and quit the rugby team on Monday and never speak to Nick ever again if he could manage it. Unfortunately for Charlie, he can’t manage it.

“Don’t tell me you didn’t know,” he says slightly hysterically. “I mean, I’ve been trying to hide it, but I haven’t exactly done a very good job. Fawning all over you seven days a week, making googly eyes at you every time you open your mouth—I don’t know how you could have missed it, unless you have no gaydar at all, which I guess is possible because you’re aro. You’re aro, and when you do feel attracted to people, they’re always girls, and I’m never going to be a girl, Nick. I would do a lot for you, okay? But I can’t do that. I physically can’t do that. I can’t be trans for you. I can’t be anything for you. I’m just this ass who sees you being so nice to me for god knows what reason all the time and twists it into this—”

Appearing to regain his ability to speak, Nick murmurs, “Charlie, slow down.” He twists his shoulders a little so that he’s facing Charlie properly, but it doesn’t matter. Charlie can barely hear him, and he doesn’t want to hear anything Nick has to say, anyway. Nick would just reject him. Or feel sorry for him. Or both.

Charlie retorts, “I can’t slow down. Don’t you understand? This is what it’s like to be the person I—I can’t slow down. I’m disgusting. I can’t even be your friend without tainting it. I’m not even over my ex—”

He giggles. “And I’m not over it, but here I am, fancying you, because I guess Tao was right. I guess I do fall for any guy who’s nice to me. You’re so nice to me, and I don’t understand it at all. I’ve never done anything good for you. I’m selfish, and I’m not even that nice. I make everything all about me, and I don’t understand why you’re still here, and I keep trying to hold it in, like I can somehow pull this off if you just never find out, but what was I thinking, anyway? That I’d get over you without leaving you? I can’t get over you. You’re too tempting. You’re way too good to me.

“And I should leave because there’s no way this ends well, but I love you too much, which means you’re going to have to leave me, and I just can’t handle that, okay? I have—I have a thing about rejection. It was bad enough from Ben. I can’t do it again. I can’t do this again. I told myself no more boys, but did I listen? No. I didn’t even wait until I was over him. I couldn’t even be fucking faithful, and how fucked up is that when you’re the one who’s nice to me? How fucked up is it that I feel guilty when you’re not even my boyfriend? And you never will be because you don’t like boys. I mean, I should just leave now. I already know this only ends one way, and that means I have to leave before you can leave me because—” Charlie’s eyes are stinging with tears “—you don’t want me. And I understand that. I do. I may be insane, but I’m not delusional. I just—fuck. I’m sorry. Fuck. This is why I didn’t want to tell you. God damn it.”

For what it’s worth, Nick sort of snaps into motion at that. “No. Please. Please don’t leave. We can talk about this. Charlie—”

“I’m sorry,” Charlie chokes out. “I’m so sorry I’m like this. I’m just going to go now, okay?”

Nick stretches a hand out—for what, Charlie doesn’t know—but it’s too late: Charlie’s already pulled himself up off the floor and started scrambling for the door like his life depends on it. Nick knows. Charlie couldn’t hold it in. Nick knows, and all there’s left to do is leave.

Chapter Text

Charlie hasn’t even left the ballroom before he starts absolutely panicking about the mess he’s just made. Nick knows. Charlie went and told him. Even though he knew it would ruin everything if he said something, he couldn’t hold it in—he went and said it anyway—and now, everything is fucked. His friendship with Nick is over, obviously, because Nick will have no desire to keep hanging around someone who’s admitted to being in love with him, and anyway, how could Charlie possibly stand to stay friends with someone who knows how Charlie feels and doesn’t want it? He’s going to have to go through the pain of losing someone he loves all over again, but it’ll be worse this time because Nick is actually nice to Charlie. As much as it was probably Charlie’s own fault that Ben treated him that way, Ben wasn’t actually ever very nice to Charlie—but Nick is. And there just aren’t a lot of people in Charlie’s life who are nice to him.

It doesn’t just feel like he’s losing the boy he wants to be with: it feels like he’s losing his best friend, too. Nick is Charlie’s best friend, and that scares the shit out of him because it’s like the loss that’s just happened is twice as big because of it. Charlie didn’t want Nick to be his best friend. Or, like, he did, but he also didn’t because this is what he was afraid of. God, Charlie’s never really liked the thought of falling in love with his best friend because if it ends—and it definitely just ended, there’s no denying that—it’s like losing two people. Being rejected by the person he wants to love forever is bad enough, but being rejected by the best friend he has in the world at the same time?

Nick doesn’t even know he’s Charlie’s best friend, unless Charlie just blurted that out in that ballroom, too. He’s not entirely sure what the fuck he just said. He’s already started to block it out, which is good: he has no desire to ever replay any of that back in his own head. But it doesn’t matter. Charlie’s probably not Nick’s best friend, but Nick is Charlie’s, and Charlie just lost that, too.

God, speaking of Charlie’s friends, he has absolutely no desire to explain what just happened to Tara and Darcy, who are right downstairs and expecting Charlie to hang out and be social the rest of the night—like, the rest of the entire night, as Charlie is supposed to sleep over at Darcy’s. There’s nothing Charlie hates more than making waves and drawing attention to himself for making a scene, but there’s no way he can see Tara and Darcy now. He’d have to find a way to act normal all night long, and that just isn’t happening.

That, or he’d have to tell them what just happened—but that’s not happening, either. Charlie has no desire to tell anybody what just happened ever. It’s humiliating enough that it happened without him having to talk about it, too. Like, okay, maybe he’ll tell Geoff—he’s definitely reached the point where he should loop in Geoff—but that’s going to be bad enough as it is, and Geoff gets paid to be nice to him and not judge him for his bad decisions. Like making friends with cute, sweet, kind, supportive, loyal, beautiful aro boys who are interested in girls and not him.

Charlie is fucked. Charlie is fucked.

He sort of wishes he could ring Dad and get him to pick Charlie up without him saying anything to Tara or Darcy, but that’s way too rude: he’s going to have to tell them something before he goes. Honestly, though, he doesn’t really want to see Dad right now, either. It’d be great if he could get himself home by himself right now, but unfortunately, that’s not an option. Charlie still doesn’t have his driver’s license, so he couldn’t have driven himself here even if he’d wanted to. Tara gave him a ride instead.

What else can Charlie do? He could catch an Uber, probably, and cry his heart out for the rest of the night up in his room. That doesn’t solve the problem of what to tell Mum and Dad to explain why he’s not at Darcy’s house, but at least it would get him out of this hotel without having to sit in a car dodging questions from whoever drove while trying to act like a person.

Charlie doesn’t feel like a real person. Not anymore.

Of course, priority number one is to get away from this ballroom before Nick comes out through the door and starts looking for him, so Charlie hurries blindly back downstairs and parks himself on the sofa in a deserted little corner away from the dance floor. A couple of people are hanging around drinking punch and talking, but none of them pays any attention to him, and that’s good: Charlie likes it that way. If anybody looked too closely at him right now, they’d probably realize how close he is to crying, so best that nobody look.

Unfortunately, the longer Charlie sits there, the more and more (and more) he feels like he’s going to fall apart very publicly any second now. There’s no way around it: he’s going to have to go find Tara and Darcy to tell them he’s leaving. It’s not like he doesn’t want to leave—he wants nothing more right now than to be alone in his bedroom—but getting there and facing Tara’s and Darcy’s and Mum’s and Dad’s and Tori’s and Oliver’s questions feels like more than he can handle. Then again, keeping a straight face in public feels like more than he can handle, too.

So he requests an Uber, then drags himself upright and sets off in search of Tara and Darcy. It takes him maybe five minutes to wade through the throng of people and find them—no longer making out, but still happily dancing. “Charlie!” exclaims Darcy, sounding giddier than usual. “My man! So you didn’t forget all about us just because Nick Nelson is here.”

“Sorry,” Charlie says awkwardly. “Um, sorry to disappoint, but I actually need to go.”

The smile slips right off of Darcy’s face. “Go? We haven’t even been here twenty minutes.”

Tara, though, seems to have detected a little more than Darcy has that Something Is Wrong. “Are you all right, Charlie? Did something happen between you and Nick?”

“No. He’s good. I’m fine. I’m just not feeling up to being around this many people tonight, I guess. You can stay here and everything—I already called an Uber.”

To Charlie’s disappointment, Darcy seems to be cottoning on a little now that Charlie’s said that. “Wait. You’re not coming round my house tonight anymore? But you were supposed to sleep over with Tara. We were going to play board games and braid Tara’s hair. Gran is making hasselback potatoes.”

Shit. This is exactly the conversation Charlie wanted to avoid. “I know. I’m sorry. Everything’s fine. I just—I just—I can’t. I’m sorry. I…”

Even just from saying that much, he’s starting to get choked up—which is dangerous. Why can’t Charlie just get himself to privacy—to safety? Why did he have to confess his fucking love for Nick at a party surrounded by people? Why did he have to confess his fucking love for Nick at all?

By this point, Tara is frowning hard. “Well… we won’t force you to hang out tonight if you don’t feel up to it.”

Darcy interjects, “Uh, actually—”

But Tara glares at them and insists, “Darcy! We won’t make you, Charlie. I get it. You basically just got out of the hospital. You’re going to still have bad days sometimes.”

Oh. That’s what Tara thinks this is about? Well, at least she doesn’t think it’s about Nick.

“But at least let me give you a ride home,” she continues. “Cancel your Uber. Please? We don’t have to talk about it on the drive back if you don’t want to. I’ll just make sure you get home safely, or maybe I can text Tori for you to give her a heads up to keep your parents distracted when we get to your house. Okay?”

Charlie considers it. On the one hand, he doesn’t know if he can stomach fifteen minutes in a car with Tara, who will obviously be wondering what the hell is going on. But on the other, she just explicitly said that they don’t have to talk about what’s wrong. And it is a good idea to text Tori—and Charlie’s not sure if she would be as hands-off as Tara is being right now if Charlie were the one to send the message.

So he bites the bullet. “Okay. Yeah. Um, thanks.”

“Anytime.” Turning to Darcy, Tara adds, “I’ll be back in, like, half an hour. Stay here and hang out, okay? I think Sahar was planning to show up with Imogen at some point if you want to look for them.”

Darcy wrinkles their nose. “Imogen? Really?”

“I know, but Sahar vouches for her, and we like Sahar. You can survive half an hour in the same building as Imogen without me. Love you.”

Rolling their eyes, Darcy mutters, “Love you too.” Then they peck Tara on the lips and look uncertainly back at Charlie. “Um, I’ll see you soon?”

“Yeah. I’ll DM you.”

Darcy doesn’t seem satisfied, but they don’t have any more time to lodge a complaint: Tara takes the opportunity to usher Charlie out of there across the dance floor and through the doors to the outside. This is good, Charlie reminds himself. This is progress. He just has to make it into Tara’s car and hold it together until he gets home. Tori will fend off Mum and Dad (and Oliver), and then—then Charlie can let it out. Step one complete.

Unfortunately, though, even this is apparently too much to ask for because Charlie’s barely made it into the passenger seat of Tara’s car before he starts to cry. Great. Fucking great.

Next to him, Tara’s got her phone in her hand—texting Tori, presumably—but she looks up and over at Charlie when she hears him starting to whimper all pathetically. “Hey. Charlie, it’s going to be okay. I don’t know what you’re going through right now, but whatever it is, you’re going to be fine.”

“I’m sorry.” Charlie’s not sure if he’s apologizing to Tara, Nick, Ben, or all three right now. “I’m so, so, so sorry.”

“I know you are. Hey.”

He’s got his face buried in his hands, so it startles him to feel Tara gently put a hand on Charlie’s knee and start to rub circles into it. For a while, they just sit like that, Charlie crying and mourning Nick and hating himself and wishing he knew how to tell Tara to stop. He doesn’t deserve to be comforted. He’s a monster. He ruins everything, and now, he’s ruined his friendship with Nick, too. Nick is the only good thing that’s happened to Charlie since getting out of the hospital, and now, he’s lost that, and it’s his own damn fault.

Eventually, when the tears have slowed and they’re sitting there mostly in silence punctuated by the occasional sniffle, Tara hedges, “I know I said you don’t have to talk about it, and I mean that, but just so you know, if you change your mind, I’m here. It doesn’t have to be right now. You can talk to me about anything anytime. Okay? I love you, Charlie.”

And here Charlie is, crying about losing his best friend, Nick, when Tara has been here loving him with no complications all along. How ungrateful is Charlie, anyway, not to be able to feel that or appreciate that or recognize her as one of his best friends? Why can’t he just be fucking happy for what he has? Why does he always have to feel so empty all the time when, really, so many people love him?

Even if he wanted to explain any of this, which he doesn’t, he can’t tell Tara. He can’t be that selfish. Maybe he is that selfish, but he has to at least try not to be.

“I love you, too,” he sniffles. “Can you please just—just take me home?”