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For all the verbal abuse he’s endured at Truham, Charlie Spring has never landed himself in a physical fight. He supposes no one has ever thought him worth the trouble. It would only take a glance at his gangly frame to know that a fistfight would be over in seconds, before a worthwhile crowd could even form. A well-placed comment about how gay his voice sounds, on the other hand, could easily get half the corridor laughing. It also carried a significantly lower risk of suspension.
Usually, Charlie is grateful. He makes it through his school days without so much as a bruise, and all it costs is him having to listen to a handful of uncreative jabs. He knows, in the grand scheme of things, how lucky he is.
And anyway, he’s used to it by now. This is what he tells Nick in the dark car park of the cinema, one closed door away from Harry Greene and the rest of Nick’s mates.
The captain of the rugby team stares at Charlie with wide eyes, the rest of his cut-off apology lost to the cold night air. If he weren’t in such a hurry to escape, Charlie would stay and try to decipher his expression. If he were better than this, if he didn’t insist on letting the same idiotic comments get under his skin every single time, Charlie would stay and let Nick finish his apology. He would stay, and Nick would wrap his arms around him tight enough to drive away the burn of shame and embarrassment.
As it happens, Charlie does not stay. He marches away from the cinema, throwing a half-hearted “see you at school” in Nick’s direction, and lets his mind warp and distort the fresh memory.
A silent, wide-eyed expression. Pity, maybe. A pathetic realization of just how much of a doormat his not-boyfriend is. Or disbelief, like the look on his mum’s face when she asks him, “Oh, Charlie, you aren’t listening to what some stupid boys at school think, are you?” No, it was probably judgment, a well-deserved criticism of how easily Charlie lets simple jokes ruin an entire evening. Before Charlie interrupted, maybe Nick had been getting ready to explain how this just wasn’t going to work out, since Charlie couldn’t even seem to get along with－
His phone vibrates. A text from his dad. Be there in 15!, finished off with a smiley face emoji. The default one, which he only uses because Charlie told him it looks cursed.
The distraction pulls Charlie from his spiral. With a new flash of guilt, the logical side of his brain decides he is being rather unfair to Nick, who’s track record points entirely towards him being the sweetest, most caring guy in the universe.
Worried. He was probably worried. Or sad. Charlie should really let him know it’s alright, that he doesn’t mind what Nick’s friends say. He doesn’t want Nick to be worried about him.
He pulls up his and Nick’s text thread, fingers twitching as he tries to decide on phrasing. Before he’s spent even thirty seconds mulling it over, a sharp voice shatters his concentration.
“Charlie!”
It’s not loud enough to be a yell. Of course it isn’t. The owner of that voice wouldn’t be caught dead saying Charlie’s name.
His first instinct is to run. He’s fast, and regardless, Ben Hope would never chase him. Not with his mates this close by.
Charlie then considers the humiliation of having to call his dad and explain why he's no longer in front of the cinema. Begrudgingly, he glues his feet to the ground and turns to face the boy from his past. Every muscle in his body tenses, like they haven't quite caught up to the fact that Charlie is still standing still.
Ben’s jaw is hard-set. His eyes bore holes into Charlie's own, never looking away, like some sort of twisted recompense for all the eye contact Ben used to refuse him in the hallways.
"I saw you holding hands with him. In the cinema," Ben accuses, never one for small talk. His voice lands on a tone between anger and mockery, and he asks, "Are you going out with him, then?"
Ben is an arm's length away and has his hands buried in his coat pockets. He and Charlie are both completely visible, should anyone walk out of the cinema.
And none of that even matters, Charlie reminds himself, because Charlie has no reason to be afraid of Ben. He proved as much to himself when he stood up to him at Harry's birthday party. Ben, like every other bully at school, is all talk. That thing in the music block－Charlie had just been caught off guard, is all. He could have pushed him off. And anyway, it wouldn’t have gone on long. Ben would’ve stopped.
Charlie is not scared of Ben Hope, so instead of running, he answers his question.
“No.”
“But you are getting with him?”
Charlie’s skin crawls. “No,” he insists.
Ben scoffs, the way he used to when Charlie would have to leave the library early, for group projects or band practice. “Don’t lie,” he counters, exasperated, like Charlie has just wasted his time once again.
Charlie glances at the cinema door, then promptly feels like an idiot for wishing that Nick Nelson would come save him again. He’s not in danger. Ben is a dick, but he’s not going to actually hurt him.
Ben takes a step forward, and Charlie shrinks back on instinct. Beneath his sleeves, the hairs on his arms stand on end.
“Well, I believe that you’re not going out with him. As if anyone would ever want to go out with someone as desperate as you,” Ben sneers.
The irony is so thick that it has to be bait. Charlie should walk away, or run, or stand there silently until his not-ex runs out of steam.
Instead, Charlie attempts to unearth the false confidence he'd flaunted at Harry's party. It's buried somewhere in the pit of his stomach.
“You did,” he retorts. He means for it to land like a Tao-level comeback, but his throat catches, and the words tumble out soft and pitiful. Less checkmate, more hopeless plea. Charlie desperately wishes he could swallow the comment back down.
Ben seizes the opportunity with teeth and claws. “Are you joking?” he jeers, stepping further into Charlie’s personal space. “You actually thought I liked you?”
Here comes the part where Charlie is not supposed to let other people’s words get to him, per his mother’s instructions.
Ben starts by proclaiming Charlie as a “tragic loser with barely any friends.” Charlie determines that “tragic” is a bit dramatic, considering no one has ever stuffed his head in a toilet or anything. He does have barely any friends, but the ones he does have are the best in the world, so he doesn’t really feel that he needs any more.
Ben reminds Charlie how pathetic it is that he lets bullies walk all over him. Charlie already knows this. But maybe that makes Ben equally pathetic, considering he is the only bully that Charlie has ever stood up to.
Before he can speak the thought, Ben delivers the final blow. “I never liked you,” he insists, taking another step forward, looking Charlie up and down like his mere presence is nauseating. “I’m not even gay, I just felt really sorry for you.” The words slice like an arrow, tipped in condescension and disgust.
Fuck.
Charlie’s throat tightens up. He forgoes a response to focus on keeping tears out of his eyes. It’s stupid, it’s so fucking stupid, why does he give a single shit what Ben Hope says to him? Why can’t he be better than this?
“I’ll bet Nick feels sorry for you, too.” Knife, twist.
“I mean, even if he was gay, why on Earth would he want to mess around with you?” Twist. Twist. Twist. Charlie stares up into a street light and blinks.
"Look at yourself, Charlie!" Ben says his name like it tastes of bleach.
A traitorous tear spills over Charlie's eyelid. He swipes at it with frustration.
Another escapes, and then there’s a hand on his jaw. Oppressively warm, with fingertips that press just a little too hard. His face is turned back towards Ben’s, who’s now all of six inches away. “Are you crying?” he whispers, the beginning of a cruel laugh forming on his face. The fingertips dig in deeper.
Charlie shoves at his shoulder, hard enough to make Ben stumble back a step. “Don’t touch me,” he mumbles, the skin on his face still burning.
It isn’t like the badass move from Harry’s party. Ben doesn’t even look surprised, this time, and Charlie’s voice is choked up and crackly.
A pair of hands slam his chest, then yank the front of his shirt back before he can fall to the asphalt. “Or what?” Ben challenges, cool as steel. Then, with a familiar flash of anger: “You aren’t better than me, Charlie!”
Charlie’s heart is hammering his ribcage. His legs, lungs, brain all scream run, run, run.
He jerks backwards, trying to rip his shirt from Ben’s grip. “Do you hear me?” Ben continues, undeterred. His knuckles are bone white. “You are not fucking better than me. You think you can just leave me because you suddenly think you’re fit enough to land Nick Nelson? I mean, have you actually gone mad?”
There’s enough adrenaline now that Charlie is barely hearing words anymore. Ben is close enough that he can feel his spit when he talks. He’s moved one hand from Charlie’s shirt down to his wrist, which he’s gripping hard enough to leave marks.
“Get off me,” Charlie breathes, through clenched teeth. Ben pays the demand no mind, and instead maneuvers Charlie towards a parked car a few feet away.
A door handle pushes into his spine. Devastatingly, the jostling does nothing to trigger the car alarm. The only sound is Ben’s breathing and the mass panic inside Charlie’s skull.
Charlie Spring is right back in the Truham music block, exactly eight minutes after rugby practice, fingernails in his wrist and his back against a wall.
More than likely, Ben just wants to intimidate him. He wants to prove that he can still get in Charlie’s head, and then he’ll piss off back to Harry and the gang. He won’t－he won’t really do anything.
Charlie doesn't want Ben to have the chance to prove him wrong.
“What the fuck, Charlie?” Ben yells, jumping back to double over in pain. It's Charlie's understanding that kneeing someone in the groin during a fight is a cheap shot. He supposes it really isn't the time to be worrying about fight etiquette, though.
Now that he’s not trapped in place, his muscles slowly unfreeze, and his breathing comes steadier. When Ben regains his composure and stomps back towards him, eyes cold with rage, Charlie sends his right fist flying directly into the other boy’s nose.
Charlie Spring has never thrown a punch in his life. Frankly, it’s a miracle he lands somewhere within his general target of “face.” It hurts his hand much more than he expected, and the blood dripping out of Ben’s nose is quickly making him feel sick.
Before Ben can do anything more than curse in pain, the door to the cinema swings open, and the unmistakable whine of Harry Greene rings out across the car park.
“He started it! Why should I have to be the one to leave?”
A tired-looking man in a cinema uniform ushers out the group of boys. “You all need to leave. If you want to get away with loitering, don’t start fights.”
“I didn’t start it, he did!” Harry protests, even as the door is pulled shut behind the lot of them. “Great work, Nick, way to get us all on the shit list of the one cinema in town.”
A fight? With Nick?
“You tell anyone about this, you’re dead,” Ben hisses, cradling his battered nose. He hurries off towards the bus stop without so much as a nod of acknowledgement from Charlie.
🍂🍂🍂
That night, after drafting and discarding roughly twelve different texts, Charlie calls Nick. It’s late, especially for a Sunday night, but the call connects on the first ring.
“Charlie? You alright?” Nick asks, in lieu of a hello.
The whole thing feels ridiculous, suddenly. Who rings someone without warning in the middle of the night? Desperate, Ben had called him.
“Sorry,” Charlie apologizes. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”
“You didn’t,” Nick answers quickly. “And I wouldn’t mind even if you did, so don’t be sorry.”
Charlie nods pointlessly into the phone.
“What’s the matter?” Nick asks. His voice, soft and caring, has a similar effect to the blanket Charlie’s currently wrapped in.
What is the matter? Nothing. Everything? Not everything, but definitely something. Maybe. Or maybe it’s nothing, and Charlie’s being overdramatic again.
Finally, he decides on, “I heard you got into a fight with Harry.”
There’s a stunned silence over the phone. “Um, yeah,” Nick acknowledges, in a quiet breath. “Yeah, I, uh, I was going to tell you at school tomorrow.”
Charlie’s heart sinks. Truthfully, he’d been hoping it had been a misunderstanding, maybe an argument that had just gotten too heated for a cinema lobby. “Oh my god,” Charlie breathes, guilt washing over him. “Are you alright?”
“Yeah,” Nick assures him. “Just a black eye.”
“A black eye?” Charlie repeats, incredulous. “Oh my god, Nick.”
“It isn’t as bad as it sounds,” Nick placates. “I’ve had ice on it all evening, it’s barely even swollen.”
“Nick,” Charlie sighs, unsure of what else to say.
“I know, I know,” he answers, like a child anticipating a lecture. “But Charlie, he was－he just kept saying all these things about you. Really mean, hurtful things. And all I could think about was how the rest of the lads just stood there and let him. Even the ones who weren’t laughing, they didn’t say anything. Didn’t do anything. And that’s－” There’s a pause, and a sharp inhale from Nick’s side of the line. “That’s what I’ve been doing, too. Since I started playing rugby and hanging out with that lot, that is exactly what I’ve been doing.”
“Nick－” Charlie starts.
“So I punched him in the face,” Nick continues, his voice tight. “Because he has no right to say anything about you. You don’t deserve that, Charlie. No one does, but especially not you. You’ve never said or done anything to them.”
A beat of silence over the phone. Nick’s breathing is heavy.
“I’m done hanging out with them,” he declares.
A tiny smile breaks out on Charlie’s face. Regardless, he says, “Nick, I would never ask you to dump your friends for me.”
“I know,” Nick sighs. “But I’m tired of them. I hate the person I am around them.”
“Hey,” Charlie soothes. “I happen to think you’re a lovely person.”
A half-hearted laugh crackles through the phone. “You’re biased.”
They chat like that for a while, flirting and laughing until Charlie’s entire torso is filled with butterflies.
Charlie is about to declare that it’s late, that the Rugby King better get some sleep if he wants to be of any use at practice tomorrow, when Nick asks, “Who told you about the fight with Harry and I, anyway?”
“Oh,” Charlie says, surprised. “I, uh, overheard. When you all left the cinema.”
“What? I thought you said your dad was there. I would have waited with you outside,” Nick replies.
Charlie’s fingers curl into his duvet. His nerves light up again, always eager to be reignited.
He should tell Nick. Nick would want to know. Nick would want to help. Nick wouldn’t make fun of him for being this shaken up from an encounter where nothing even happened.
Ben should be the one that’s scared. Ben’s the one that went home with a bloody nose. Charlie doesn’t have a scratch on him. The crescent moons on his wrist faded before the car ride home was even over.
Charlie wants to tell Nick. He wants to hear Nick tell him that all those things Ben said were nonsense, that he has nothing to worry about, that Nick isn’t just sticking around out of some insane sense of goodwill towards the pathetic gay loser.
But what if that’s exactly what’s happening?
“Charlie?”
“Something, er, something happened, actually. I’m sorry. I was going to tell you,” Charlie stammers.
Charlie can practically hear Nick’s eyebrows crease. “What happened?” he asks, voice tinged with worry.
“I just needed some air, and some space, so I was just going to wait for my dad in the car park. After you went back inside, though, I, um, sort of ran into someone.”
“Okay. Who?” Nick prompts gently.
Charlie refuses to let himself get stuck on the name. It still comes out quieter than he intends.
“Ben.”
“Ben?” Nick parrots. “Ben Hope?”
“Yeah.”
Nick sucks in a breath. “Are you okay?” he asks. The question comes out a bit frantic.
“Yeah.” Charlie cringes at the one-word answer. He takes a breath and tries again. “Yeah, no, I’m fine. He just－he was just saying mean things to get a rise out of me.” Charlie pauses, suddenly remembering what had spurred the whole interaction. “He saw us holding hands. During the film. I’m really sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking, but I promise he won’t tell anyone. I would never out him but he probably thinks that I would, and he was always so afraid of getting caught that I really don’t think he’d be willing to risk it, so－”
“Charlie,” Nick interrupts.
“Yeah?”
“You have nothing to be sorry for. Nothing, okay?”
Charlie swallows. “Okay.”
“Did he－” Nick starts, pausing to pick his words. Charlie knows where he’s going, but lets the silence linger anyway.
After a beat, the question crackles through the phone. “Did he do anything else?”
He didn’t. Nothing happened. Charlie’s eyes fill with tears anyway.
“It wasn’t like in the music block,” Charlie insists, in a choked-up whisper. “He just. He just sort of grabbed me. And like, shoved me up against a car. He was just trying to scare me.”
Nick is silent on the other end of the line.
“I was okay, though, really,” Charlie continues. He channels Tao, and all his untouchable attitude. He wipes away tears that Nick can’t even see. “I punched him in the face, and he left me alone.”
“Jesus, Charlie.”
Charlie’s stomach drops. “I mean, it wasn’t hard enough to break anything. I’m pretty weak, after all. It made his nose bleed, but honestly, I think it looked worse than it was.”
“What? No, that’s－I don’t care that you punched Ben," Nick assures him. "I mean, I am really, really happy you punched Ben, he deserves so much worse than a bloody nose."
He didn’t actually do anything, Charlie thinks. But he’s not in the business of defending Ben Hope, so he doesn’t say it out loud.
“Fuck,” Nick seethes. “He is the worst person, the actual worst person. I don't think I've ever hated someone this much.”
Normally, Charlie hates when people are angry. It puts him on edge, makes him want to diffuse the situation before it can inevitably blow up. That, or run away and hide until it all cools down.
Right now, though, there’s warmth blossoming in his chest.
“Yeah,” Charlie agrees.
“Like, who the hell does he think he is? I swear, I'm going to kick his ass,” Nick continues. He’s so completely serious that Charlie almost feels bad for laughing.
“You will not,” he counters lightly, blinking away a few residual tears. “You’ll get suspended, and then I’ll have to sit in form all by myself for three to five days.”
Nick considers this. “Fine. But if he ever comes near you again－”
“－I’ll give him another bloody nose,” Charlie finishes. He’s mildly surprised to find that he means it.
"Break it next time," Nick urges, but the tension in his voice is already dissipating. “Have I ever told you how amazing you are?”
Charlie wishes he could kiss him. “Can’t remember,” he teases. “Tell me again?”
“You’re amazing,” Nick says earnestly. “Fucking amazing, Charlie. You deserve everything good in the world.”
Charlie smiles so wide his cheeks hurt. “Are you flirting with me?”
Nick laughs through the phone, a sound cheery and contagious. “I’m trying to be serious, here.”
“Sorry, sorry,” Charlie relents, laughing through the words. “Thank you. For real. Talking to you always makes me feel better.”
“I’m glad,” Nick says, his smile audible. “Hey, do you want to come ‘round mine tomorrow? After rugby practice?”
“So I can spread out all my maths homework on your bedroom floor and get exactly none of it done?”
Nick snorts. “Yes.”
Charlie, in many aspects of his life, is lucky. Nicholas Nelson, without argument, is the luckiest thing to ever happen to him.