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The first time Charlie comes over to Nick's house, they shut the door.
It’s something Nick does all the time. Even when he’s not really doing anything incriminating—playing Mario Kart on the edge of his bed is a completely innocent action, really—he just likes to keep his door closed. Whether he’s alone, or with a friend, or just with Nellie, Nick prefers to keep his bedroom door closed. And it doesn't really matter.
His mum knows he’s not doing anything bad. Half the time, he’s just laying in bed on his phone, or trying to get homework done without distraction, or something else of the sort. A tightly-shut door is no real concern, and she’ll knock before she comes in to tell him dinner is ready, and she’ll let him have his privacy.
So Nick keeps his bedroom door shut. He doesn’t actually have anything to hide until he and Charlie become a… well, a thing.
Now, Nick brings Charlie over so they can shut the door and make out in his room, disappearing up the stairs with the sorry excuse of homework. Sometimes, they actually do take their folders out of their bags, but nothing really gets done because of it. They kind of just sit on the floor, beyond being an afterthought, and Nick busies himself absolutely drowning in the perfection that is Charlie Spring.
He wouldn’t have it any other way, really.
And it’s not suspect, because they did this, anyway. Charlie came over to do homework a thousand times before he started coming over to do distinctly not homework, leaving Nick at peace with his closed bedroom door and perceived privacy.
It only takes a couple weeks before they have a terribly close call.
Charlie and Nick are on the floor, once again practicing the art of doing homework. A half-finished maths sheet Nick had needed help on sits somewhere on the carpet, but Nick has gotten a little more than just distracted with Charlie’s lips on his at the center of the carpet.
He’s so distracted, in fact, that he barely hears his mother’s knock on the door.
She knocks a full three times before he picks up on it, a muffled call of “Nick?” filtering through the wood and into their silence. Nick all but throws himself away from Charlie, falling flat on his back on the carpet with panicked eyes set for the door.
His mum pulls it open just as Charlie is pulling out his phone to feign distraction.
Nick blinks at his mum where she stands in the doorway. He thinks he looks completely incriminating, slick lips and messy hair, but she doesn’t really say anything about it. Nick wonders if she’s even considering the possibility of him doing anything particularly closed-door worthy with Charlie.
“Are you alright?” his mum questions, lingering briefly in the doorway. “I was even calling your name from downstairs, but I didn’t think you heard me.”
“Fine,” Nick breathes quickly, panicked, a newfound red to his cheeks. He sits up so quickly it knocks the wind from his breath. “Just focused,” he glances at Charlie, who is grinning beneath the cover of his hand, “very focused.”
“Well, it’s getting rather late,” his mother says slowly, looking between the two boys on the floor. “Charlie, do you think you’ll be heading out soon?”
Clearing his sticky throat, Charlie drops his phone unceremoniously into his lap. “Yeah, probably.”
Nick’s mum only smiles and nods, bidding a quiet farewell before she shuts the door back into place. Nick promptly groans, collapsing into the side of an excessively giggly Charlie, who seems to have no remorse for their apparent predicament.
“You need to pay better attention,” Charlie accuses, flicking the tip of Nick’s nose.
“Have some sympathy,” Nick whines, “it’s all your fault, after all.”
“Oh,” Charlie starts, leaning away from Nick, “is it really?”
Nick groans again, resigning himself to the curve of Charlie’s shoulder. “You’re very distracting,” he mumbles, muffled by his lips against Charlie’s skin. “You can’t blame me for wanting to kiss you all the time.”
Charlie just laughs. He probably can blame Nick, but he won’t.
There’s another instance a little while later, with Nick and his damn bedroom door.
He’s been a little antsy keeping Charlie in his room so long, mostly afraid of a repeat of his previous embarrassment. Even if his mum doesn’t really know anything, the idea that she could assume is still slightly humiliating, and Nick would rather not repeat history.
But it happens again. Because of course, it does.
There’s a movie playing on the TV, which neither of them are watching. Nick and Charlie are cuddled up in his bed, failing to pay attention to anything but each other, lazily making out to the background noise of a flashing film.
Nick had half the mind before they really started anything to realize that this position was far more incriminating and far more difficult to get out of than anything else—under the covers, attached at the hip, arms looped around each other’s backs—but he falls into it anyway.
Maybe he’s banking on the world being on his side enough that they’ll remain alone. Alone with the moonlight, and unwatched movies, and tangled-up bedsheets between reckless legs. Or maybe he’s just distracted. Probably the latter.
And, for the record, the world is not on his side.
There’s a soft knock on the door, one that Nick actually catches despite being halfway to gone. Sharply, he breaks away from Charlie, who just stares up at him with a lost look in his hazy eyes to follow Nick’s upright motion.
“What’s up?” Charlie mutters, but Nick doesn’t answer.
He flies out of bed, practically running across the room to pull the door open before his mum can beat him to it. She appears rather surprised once he gets it open, probably because of how quickly he did it, and Nick knows he looks completely flustered.
He can feel his cheeks burning, fringe messy against his forehead. He blinks at his over-startled mother, who is still yet to say anything to him at all, and Nick wonders absently if she can see Charlie sitting in his bed.
“Does Charlie need any spare blankets?” she asks slowly, to which Nick blinks at her.
Right. Charlie’s meant to be sleeping on the floor.
“No, we’ve got enough,” Nick says quickly, dismissive. “And he’ll borrow one of my pillows.”
“Okay,” his mum says, and Nick can see her glance over his shoulder. Nick has to bite his tongue to keep himself from turning to look at Charlie himself. “Well, don’t stay up too late.”
“Good night, mum,” Nick rushes. Really, he just wants to close the door.
She returns it, retreating back towards the stairs and leaving Nick to shut the door himself. He does, sighing loudly, head tipping forward until he knocks against the flat of the wood. He can faintly hear Charlie laughing at him, and he would probably be humiliated by it if Charlie weren’t so cute.
“You’re such a dork,” Charlie insults, still giggling beneath his words.
Nick finally turns around, glowering through his blush. Charlie is sitting upright in bed, grinning like he’s won something, a still-forgotten movie continuing to play in the background.
“Shut up,” Nick begrudges. “I look a mess,” he huffs, running a nervous hand through his hair.
Charlie just giggles. “You’re so flustered.”
“Forgive me for not wanting my mum to catch us making out.”
He hopes this will be the end of it.
It’s not the end of it.
Things go alright for a little while. Even after Nick comes out to his mum and tells her he’s with Charlie, she doesn’t make him open his door. Things carry on like normal, albeit with a little more comfort and hand-holding over breakfast, but normal.
It’s nice. Charlie keeps coming over, and sleeping over—which happens decently often, since Charlie’s parents banned Nick from sleepovers—and Nick keeps closing his door. Strangely, even, she sometimes assumes Charlie is sleeping on the floor, asking questions about spare blankets and pillows whenever he spends the night.
Maybe Nick was preemptive to assume that everything would change upon saying Charlie was his boyfriend.
But he still gets away with closing the bedroom door when they get home from school, sharing his bed and the floor and waning amounts of space in a lovesick chase for the other’s proximity. It feels too easy.
It is too easy.
They’re in a pretty precise mirror of the first incident, sitting on the floor with their backs pressed against Nick’s bed. They’re facing the door, which is only a sorry trick on Nick’s mind; he thinks he won’t be caught off guard, but the problem is, he’s certainly not attentive enough to the door to actually catch his mum if she were to walk through the door.
And he doesn’t.
He’s busy kissing Charlie, drowning in the red-tinted weight of kissing his boyfriend. It’s entirely too easy for Nick to lose himself like this, and he does, and he misses the knock on his door once, twice, thrice. Both he and Charlie remain so oblivious that his mum just walks in—perhaps concerned that her son is hurt or asleep, or something—the creak of the door and a startled gasp the only thing left to clue Nick in.
He breaks away from Charlie quickly, hastily wiping his lips with the back of his hand. He sees his mother hovering in the doorway, looking slightly shocked, and he doesn’t know what to do other than curl up in a ball and promptly disappear from the world completely.
“Mum…” he whines, tipping his head back against the side of his bed. Embarrassed, he buries his burning face in the palms of his hands, wishing fruitlessly that everything would just completely disappear.
It does not. There is still sunlight peeking in through the gaps between his fingers, and he can faintly hear Charlie giggling at his side. Because of course, he needs to rub salt in the wound, though he was also caught making out with a boy, just not by his mother.
“Well, Nicky,” his mum starts, alerting Nick just enough to peek at her through his parting fingers. She sighs quietly. “I think it might be time to to have a talk about rules around here.”
Nick groans again, slouching into his buckling shoulders. He finally looks at his mum properly, who seems to be glancing between the two boys on the floor, perhaps wondering exactly how long they’ve been doing this behind closed doors. Maybe she doesn’t want to know.
“Mum, please,” Nick pleads, “can’t we do this after Charlie leaves?”
As if he’s not already embarrassed enough. He actually can’t decide what’s worse: being caught by his mum, or having his boyfriend sit and watch him stumble over his words trying to have a conversation about it.
He wants to die.
“Alright,” his mum relents, sticking with a little too much ease.
Nick sighs in relief, some of the tension dissipating from his fragile joints. He knows this being the end would be too good to be true, but he can’t say he wasn’t hoping it would be.
But it’s not the end.
“But you have to keep your door open.”
Nick sputters. “Mum!”
“No arguing, Nicky,” she says quickly, already taking a step out the door. “From now on, your door will stay open when Charlie comes ‘round.”
Nick’s mouth opens and closes over the start of a thousand different sentences. He almost wants to insist they won’t even do anything, but that’s quite obviously not true, so there’s no point.
The only thing Nick gets out is a hopeless, “But—” before his mum disappears down the hallway. The door remains wide open in her wake.
Unsurprisingly, Charlie starts laughing. Proper, full-on, laughing. Nick can’t even pretend to be surprised, but he’s still flustered, pink cheeks burning carmine despite for desperate he is to ward it off.
Charlie gives him an accusatory look, sing-songing his tease, “Someone wasn’t being very careful.”
Nick frowns at him, still blushing. “This is just as much your fault as it is mine!”
And it’s true enough, but Charlie is still far too amused. Despite his own slick lips, and his own messy hair, and his own fragile dignity, he keeps laughing at Nick’s distress. It’s a shame he’s so relentlessly adorable, otherwise Nick could seriously argue with him about this. Maybe that’s not a shame, actually.
“It’s not my bedroom door,” Charlie mutters, though he looks pointedly at the bedroom door in question. Cautious, Nick follows his gaze.
He frowns. “Well,” he mumbles, “it’s still partially your fault.”
“What?” Charlie teases, leaning into Nick’s side with a grin. “Am I distracting?”
Nick huffs. “Extremely.”
Unsurprisingly, he kisses Charlie just as dramatically as he would if the door were still closed. He wonders if changing nothing will make his mum let go of the rule entirely, if he’ll get his freedom to close the door back. He might be a little too flustered to try.