Chapter Text
One night before they went to bed, he kneeled on both knees, and this is what he said.
“Well, I’ll be finished soon and we’ll both officially be uni grads, which is still kinda scary, and I still don’t really have any idea what I actually want to do.”
“I’m not sure anyone really knows what they want to do when they graduate.” Nick lay on his bed, looking at his boyfriend through the screen on his phone. Their nightly facetime call had become a tradition since Nick had started Uni and continued every night while Charlie was studying. It didn’t even matter if Charlie was home and they’d spent time together in the day, their bedtime call was always still included in both of their evening routines. “Some do, I guess but it’s not a done deal that because you’ve been to uni you should come out of it knowing exactly what you’re doing to do for the rest of your life.”
“Yeah, but you did.” Charlie sighed, mirroring Nick, but laying on his own bed in a room that would be his for only another couple of months until he could go back to his childhood bedroom and spend as much time with Nick as he possibly could. “You knew you were going to teach. Doesn’t matter whether sports or otherwise, you still knew that was what you wanted to do.”
“I’m an anomaly,” Nick huffed out a laugh, “And hey, you could probably just go on learning forever and never get bored.” This caused Charlie to roll his eyes and Nick could see a smirk growing on the other boy’s lips.
“Shut up.” He was trying to fight with the smirk and failing, Charlie didn’t want to give Nick the satisfaction of using his nerd status against him, “Anyway, back to the original point. In a couple of months I’ll be done and yeah, maybe we can think about it?”
This time it was Nick’s turn to beam into his phone, “Really? You want to?”
The thought of moving out of his mums had been something Nick had been thinking about since he’d been living in Leeds. Not to say that he doesn’t love his home comforts, and of course he loves his mum and Nellie. Once upon a time he wasn’t sure how he’d be able to go more than a couple of days without seeing them, but time away made him realise that was just what he needed. So when he returned, after almost a year he’d been thinking long and hard about maybe, when it was affordable, moving out. Only he was sure he wasn’t going to be able to do it on his own, so in his mind the only logically option was to ask Charlie if he wanted to get somewhere to live. Together.
The reassuring nod from Charlie was all Nick needed to carry on, “I really want to, Charlie. I’ve been thinking about this for a while now and, god, I miss you so much when you’re not here. And I know things haven’t been easy for us these last few years, but I really want to be able to come home to you in the evenings.” There was a short pause and Nick could almost see Charlie’s brain working to try and keep up with the ideas that he was filling it with, “You remember what I said to you five years ago, when things were still pretty new for us?” Another pause, “That one day when we’re grey and old and we’re sitting just as we are right now in our own house, with two dogs and a little Nick and Charlie running around.” Charlie nodded, “Maybe we can start that now with starting to save to move in together?”
Another nod from Charlie was all Nick needed for his mind to go into overdrive thinking about their new life together, where they would live, that they would need to get somewhere that would allow pets, how far would it be from both of their parents. Did Charlie mind if they had to travel to get back to see his family? He knew he wasn’t getting any sleep tonight, “Okay. Yes.” Charlie agreed, his words followed almost immediately by a yawn, “Ugh.” He groaned as he checked the time, “I should probably sleep now, a long day of revision tomorrow for my exam on Thursday, but at least I can come home and see you next weekend and we can talk about it some more?”
“Sure.” He agreed, “I can’t wait to see you.”
“You’re seeing me now.”
“You know what I mean. It’s been too long, Char. I’m sad.” Nick pouted,
“You look adorable when you do that.” Charlie noted, wanting nothing more than to kiss the pout off his lips, “And to quote something that my favourite person once said to me ‘it’s okay to be sad. You’re sad because you miss me and that’s okay, if you were feeling nothing maybe it would feel more like something was wrong?’”
“Okay, stop quoting me and at me and go to sleep. I love you. I’ll see you, albeit virtually, tomorrow.”
—
Despite doing this for the last four years, a couple of weeks without seeing each other felt like forever, so when Charlie had a break from exams and was able to go home to see Nick two weeks after they had their initial conversation about moving in together, they found themselves in their own bubble for the entire weekend.
“You remember when we used to come here all the time?” Nick asked as they lay on a blanket on the grass, turning his head to be able to look at Charlie, laying next to him.
He hummed in response, “Hmm, when we had our first date. Which was not really a date, but I really wanted it to be. So I don’t know if it actually counts as a first date, thinking about it.”
“I did too, you know.” Nick told him, reaching for his hand, pulling himself up a little, resting on his arm, “From memory, I made it only a few hours before you were wearing my jacket. I think that if we both wanted it to be no matter how much maybe we told ourselves it wasn’t, then yeah, it counts.”
“Can you believe that was half a decade ago!?” Charlie, now looking up at Nick who was hovering over him slight, pushed himself up on to his forearms and leaned up to kiss him. He remembered a time when kissing his boyfriend in public felt like an impossibility but now that felt like a dream, like they’d been doing this the whole time.
“The best half a decade of my life. And so so many more of the best years to come with my perfect boyfriend.” Nick pressed another gentle kiss to Charlie’s lips, before pulling back and looking into his eyes, “And maybe one day, husband?”
Charlie would have been lying if he hadn’t thought about spending the rest of his life with Nick. How many people get to say that they met their soulmate at 14, but he couldn’t picture it any other way, only he didn’t know if Nick was being serious so let out a small chuckle, “Is that a proposal, Nicholas?”
“Yeah.” This time there was no way Charlie could have thought Nick was joking. He was being serious. Did he really want to marry him? “Charlie, these five years have been the best of my life, and I know it’s not always been easy, but there is literally no one else that I would have wanted to go through those things with. I love you, more than anything else in this entire world and I want to spend every day of my life loving you if you’ll let me.”
As he spoke he pulled a small box from his pocket, and Charlie felt his breath leave his body and his heart felt as though it was leaving him as well. Nick, his Nick, was asking him to spend the rest of his life with him. He’d been planning this all along and Charlie had no idea.
Nick knelt on one knee in front of the love of his life, opened the box and asked the question Charlie never thought he would hear,
“Charlie Francis Spring, will you marry me?”
The only pause was for Charlie to catch his breath and make sure he wasn’t dreaming, “You’re everything to me, Nick. I never thought this would happen to me. I love you, I can’t imagine my life without you. Yes. Yes, Nick Nelson, I will marry you.
I'm not going anywhere. I love you more and more each day