Chapter Text
Nick brushes his hands down his neatly pressed trousers for the third or fourth time.
“Are you sure it's okay that we're not wearing proper shirt-shirts?” he asks.
“Nick, they literally asked us to wear these,” Charlie reminds him.
“Okay,” Nick says, sounding unconvinced. “And the jacket?”
“Nick, you look like a movie star doing press interviews,” Charlie reassures him.
“No, you look like a movie star,” Nick says, his eyes lighting up with a heat that Charlie has come to recognise as shortly likely to end them up in a supply closet, knocking over brooms, if he doesn't put a stop to this.
“Come on, let's go inside,” he says. “We're getting started shortly.”
…
The weeks after the earthquake had been a chaotic blur. In many ways, they had been objectively horrible. Food and water had been in short supply. Aftershocks had been frequent, and the torrential rain and snow had set back the rescue efforts badly. There had been that awful day when the authorities had switched from searching for survivors to recovering bodies. The evacuation centres had struggled for supplies, the portaloos had gotten filthy. Many people were dealing with injuries or tragic losses of family and friends. The morning market – the town's heart – was a pile of crispy rubble, with folks wandering through the ruins in a futile effort to save something. Wajima was a town on its knees.
But in many other ways, those weeks were some of the sweetest of Charlie’s life.
Nick had absolutely blossomed in charge of forty kids. He’d slowly – with quite a bit of help from his mum and his shiny new psychologist – managed to get more than five feet from Charlie without panicking, and the kids had helped enormously. It was impossible to feel alone when surrounded by a small ocean of variously-sized children.
Many of the kids were picking up English with alarming speed. Nick and Charlie were learning Japanese words quickly themselves – Charlie faster than Nick, although Nick had developed a Pavlovian flight response to the word ‘kancho’ almost by the end of day two.
Charlie had eventually ended up teaching – in the loosest sense – a whole rotation of older kids, and even a few curious adults. He didn’t have Nick’s limitless enthusiasm or intuitive knack, but with Isaac’s help, he landed on a simple technique: distributing pirated young adult ebooks, having his students read a chapter, then going through the harder words together and talking about the story. As the days passed, his ‘class’ had swelled; it seemed with the schools closed for the foreseeable future, he’d hit the exact sweet spot between formal education and letting the kids do nothing. And honestly, it was great to have something to do – an umbrella of purpose to shelter under from the emotional fallout.
It quickly became apparent that they’d landed in the lap of luxury, accommodations-wise. While the fresh food had run out quickly, the Fukadas, it seemed, had serious apocalypse prepping tendencies. There was a healthy supply of rice, a rainwater tank (fed by a beautiful chain of overflowing water cups) and a seemingly never-ending supply of packets of dried, pickled, canned and instant this, that and the other. Charlie had tried to give them his last packet of Creme Eggs, but after theatrically eating one each, the Fukadas had insisted Sarah take the rest to the hospital.
The house had been packed, with Sarah, Makiko and eventually Jun's grandmother, reunited with Ponpon, her small fluffy dog, but old Mrs Fukada hadn't batted an eye. She’d put Jun to work at the service station until they ran out of petrol, then once his leg recovered, she’d sent him off to help at the evacuation centre.
More futons had been secured, but mysteriously, Nick and Charlie never got a second one, and equally mysteriously, they never needed to share their tiny room, allowing for a large number of very muffled firsts within its thin walls. Charlie, while his Japanese skills had improved daily, had never quite managed to learn the correct wording for ‘Mrs Fukada, once we’re gone, you should probably burn that futon’.
And then there was the media.
On the second day after the rescue, after another very delicate enquiry from Isaac, Charlie and Nick had discussed, chatting in bed that night, whether they should maybe share their story if it could help raise money for Noto.
“I don’t really want to be famous,” Charlie had said. “Especially not for doing something so bloody questionable.”
“I didn’t even do anything at all,” Nick had said. “And plenty of people here were trapped longer than I was. But I feel like… if our story can make a difference, then we should definitely consider it?”
“Let’s talk to your mum,” Charlie had suggested. “And maybe Geoff and Julia? Not my mum, though. She’d have a pink fit.”
Charlie had made a big pros and cons list and they’d all discussed them at length, but in the end, it felt silly; if there was something either of them could do to help, they were bloody well going to do it.
Tori had swung into terrifyingly competent action, setting up a crowdfunding page after discovering there was no English-language donations page. Between her, Isaac and the Yomiuri journalist, it had all happened very, very quickly: photos of Nick and Charlie and Sarah and Jun and his grandmother, interviews, photos of the collapsed house, of Nick teaching kids, of Charlie with his scooter, the handful of photos Charlie had snapped on his mad dash into Wajima. The journalist had quickly tracked down the rescue crew team leader and a prefectural somebody-or-other, and the general official tone had been, ‘Well, we don’t encourage people doing things like this, but under the circumstances, given three lives were saved, we’re very happy.’
Needless to say, Jane Spring had not been happy when she'd read it. She’d made Tori call Charlie on the ‘newfangled app thing’ for her and he’d had to hold the phone a foot from his ear as she worked through her feelings as a parent in real time.
The UK media had been on it like a shot. Nick and Charlie had had to do a bunch more interviews, which had gotten really surreal by the time they’d dialled in to the One Show at 4am. Someone had even contacted them about a book deal. They’d raised over three hundred thousand pounds. It had been utterly bonkers. It turns out being trapped under a house for over thirty hours is something that people desperately want to know the details of, and if you throw in a race across the planet driven by love and sheer stupidity, followed by a dramatic rescue (caught, it had turned out, on camera by a nearby dashcam) they’re unable to look away.
“It doesn’t hurt that you two make a very photogenic couple,” Elle had said. “The whole ‘rugby lad and gay nerd’ odd couple thing makes for lovely pictures.”
The Guardian think-piece had (very reasonably) savaged Charlie thoroughly for his irresponsibility, before shamelessly and eloquently rolling around in the dramatic queer joy of it all. The Daily Mail had been a tiny bit micro-homophobic, but mostly saccharine. Charlie had been pretty worried about Nick, especially given how invasive some of the questions were – the Great British Public did not need to know if he’d wet himself, thank you very much – but with a bit of coaching, his shiny new boyfriend had deployed some beautiful I’m-not-ready-to-talk-about-that-yets on pushy interviewers.
Tao had reported that Paul Merton had gotten a question about them on Have I Got News For You. For a hot second, they had been at the top of the British headlines. Olly had been the coolest kid at Truham for about a week and a half. But it had all died down almost as quickly as it had blown up, the news cycle moving on.
Four weeks after the earthquake, Sarah had regretfully announced she needed to go home.
“They’ve got me a spot on a helicopter on Tuesday,” she’d said. “There’s room for two more?”
Nick and Charlie had looked at each other.
“We’ll need to check with the Fukadas – and I can’t lie to you, Mum, I’d kill for a proper bath – but I think we might stay a bit longer,” Nick had said. “We might need to get some folks back home to pack up the flat for us.”
“Nonsense,” Sarah had said. “Your dad can cover that, Nick. For both of you. Put all that property development money where his mouth is.”
And so they’d stayed until their tourist visas ran out.
Now, months later, they’re in Wajima again, standing outside the City Hall. Nick and Jun are going to present an award to Makoto-san, the rescue team leader, on behalf of all the people rescued in Wajima after the earthquake. Sarah’s receiving a certificate of international friendship for Truham General Hospital, and announcing the start of a Sister City relationship between Wajima and Truham. Charlie doesn’t have the first clue what any of that actually means in real terms; he suspects the answer may well be ‘absolutely nothing’. But anything that gets Noto back in the news.
He reaches up to smooth the shoulders of Nick’s sharp jacket, straightens an imaginary crease in his ‘Noto: Not Alone’ T-shirt, then goes up on his tippy toes for a kiss.
“Okay, gorgeous,” he says. “Let’s go shake some hands and smile for some cameras.”
…
The next morning, they wake up in their little spare room at the Fukadas’ house.
Sarah had waved everyone goodbye yesterday – she’d only had a week off work, and they’d already spent half of it in Tokyo with Isaac, who Nick adores every bit as much as Charlie hoped he would – but Nick and Charlie are staying as long as they can.
Mrs Fukada and Jun’s grandmother – now up and about and walking – make them breakfast, and Ponpon begs for scraps under the table.
“We have some news,” Charlie says. “Nyuuzu wa arimasu. We both applied to the JET programme. Jetto programmu ni application shimashita.”
“Waaaah! Sugoi! Great news!” Jun cheers. “Will you come to Wajima?”
“We hope so,” Nick says. “They don’t let you choose, but Wajima City Hall is going to try their best. We’re hoping at least somewhere in Ishikawa. We still have to go home after this visit, but we’ll be back.”
Jun translates that, and the two old ladies clap excitedly. Ponpon barks. But then, Charlie’s learned, Ponpon will bark at pretty much anything.
That April, as the cherry blossom trees are in full blossom, the two of them wave farewell to the Fukadas again.
“You ready?” Charlie asks.
“So ready,” Nick says. He climbs aboard his own little 49cc scooter, the twin to Charlie’s Yamaha, and secures his helmet’s chin strap.
Isaac’s going to be waiting for them when they get to Kanazawa, ready to join them exploring the ancient city, but until then, it’s just going to be the two of them, side by side, riding through the leafy green forests, winding mountain roads and traditional villages of Noto.
Charlie reaches out to tangle his gloved fingers in Nick’s.
“Come on,” he says. “Let me show you around.”