Work Text:
Charlie Spring liked yellow. Yellow was his happy colour, it reflected everything he liked about his life - as little as that was. He liked his friends, his sister, his parents, his art teacher, and most importantly, he loved his boyfriend. Nick Nelson was his first priority in life. Anything he did, it was for him. Nick was all he ever dreamed of and Charlie loved him. To Charlie, Nick was the sunniest yellow he'd ever met. The kind of yellow that reminded him of honey or flowers or the stripes on a bee. Yellow was the colour Nick wore on their very first official date, the sand of the beach they lay on, the photo booth, the carousel. Yellow was Charlie's favourite colour.
Charlie Spring hated purple. Purple was a bad colour, it was the colour that showed up in the most negative parts of his life. Purple was the colour of the the bowling alley bathroom, the lights at Harry's party, the colour he saw when he screwed his eyes shut that day in the music block. Purple was a scary colour. Almost like a bad omen, it managed to show up in the worst parts of his life. Purple was Charlie's least favourite colour.
It's no surprise that these colours are the polar opposite of each other. Yellow and purple make brown and brown described Charlie better than he could put into words. The brown like the almond milk coffee he drinks before going to school each day, the wood of his favourite park bench, like Nick's eyes. The brown that was the perfect balance of yellow and purple. Brown was also the colour of mud and dirt and when his eyes blur with tears and all the colours he can see blend together into one murky mess. It was the perfect balance of good things and bad things.
Charlie found that assigning colours to parts of his life made him feel safer, happier. He realised that purple days became less frequent when he stuck to his yellows. Memories of Ben and anorexia and Harry became just that, memories. Never to resurface.
So, when Nick finally went off to collage, Charlie was left behind, stuck inside a rapidly growing thunderstorm spewing amethyst onto anything he touched.