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It’s been two weeks since he was outed and Charlie Spring still can’t get out of bed.
It’s not like he can’t, he can use his legs perfectly fine. Plus, if he feels like it, he’ll play some board games with Dad or Oliver and eat dinner with everyone. It’s just he’s so low he doesn't feel like getting out of bed usually. Thankfully, almost everyone understands and leaves it be.
He still gets calls here and there, from Tao and Elle mostly to update him on the state of Truham just before the Christmas holidays and the other’s new upcoming life at Higgs. It’s pleasant, considering he won’t be back at school for several weeks maybe even more if his Mum has her way, knowing he’ll still have some of the people he knows and doesn't hate him to hang out with when he goes back. It’s just a lot to think about doing really.
Every time he thinks about even stepping foot onto school grounds or even leaving the house given how small Herne Bay is, the flashbacks all reach his brain again and he just spirals from there. Anxiety, agoraphobia, depression, he’s been through each stage his psychologist has named since he started seeing her earlier that month after the incident happened and is still constantly in flux between the three on a daily, if not hourly basis.
Which explains, obviously, why he’s not downstairs until he gets sort of hungry and given his Mum isn’t making lunch having taken off to drop Oliver and Tori off (usually Tori catches the bus with him to Higgs, but since she’s on holidays now as well, she’s basically MIA) somewhere doing her own thing as well as His Dad at work, he has to feed himself, so the blanket cape he’s made himself just well worn as he comes downstairs and rounds the corner when he stops dead.
There’s a dog. On the couch. A dog. A DOG.
His parents hate animals? They don’t own a dog!?
The brown and white Shepard mix is staring at him as he stares back quite confused, bushy tail wagging and completely happy to see someone it seemed, given how it suddenly padded down to meet him in the middle of the archway that led to the living room.
Charlie’s blanket shield is deactivated as soon as it reaches him and he bends down to its level, chuckling as its cold nose and warm tongue touched his skin as his hands scrunched its fur, scratching behind its ears. “Well, hello. Haven’t seen you before…um-” He quickly checks the dog’s collar and is relieved seeing a name and also, a phone number as he reads. “- Nellie. Hi Nellie. You are so cute. Where did you come from?”
Nellie tilts her head as he talks and he swears she (Nellie is a girl’s name, right?) is trying to understand before he eases back to his feet and gets an answer. The back door to the house through the kitchen is open. His mother must have opened it this morning and forgot to close it in her and his father’s haste to leave the house. Nellie must have come in through the hedge and broken fence at the back of the lot, given all the other fences are almost 5 feet tall.
Snorting, Charlie quickly corrected the issue, closing the door off as Nellie trotted behind him and sat down as he locked it back up before he too, sat next to her. “Looks like your family left you with a number on your collar, Nellie. I’d better call it and see if someone answers. They are probably worried about you.”
Grabbing the home phone, Charlie keeps an eye on the lovely dog as she snuffles around, frowning when the phone goes straight to message bank, not just once, but several times. Looked like he might have change his tactic.
Unconventionally, he decided that maybe texting the number would work and pulled out his phone from his pyjama pocket.
Well, at least they’d answered. Charlie in a moment of fancy, showed Nellie the conversation with a grin. “Look Nellie, your owner is worried about you. We’re going to take you home now, you silly naughty dog. Running away is not the best thing to do, you know.”
He had to chuckle at Nellie’s almost embarrassed expression as he pocketed the device and sighed before trudging to the laundry and changing his pants into jeans and slipping on his trainers while he clumsily searched for a lead replacement to take Nellie back to her family.
The finding of one of his mother’s very expensive scarves later (hopefully she wouldn’t remember that she owned this particular one) and the tentative tying of a knot in the dog’s collar as she excitedly trembles, he and Nellie were walking under the grey clouds and on the even greyer shaded pavement towards the park, trees lining the path as they did, covered in all manner of snow or slush or frost given the December weather was always something.
Nellie’s pulling him forward and his arm and shoulder are actually aching as they stroll the short path towards Herne Bay Memorial, Charlie somehow feeling rather nervous as they entered the wide looking field still sprinkled with sleet. Was this a good idea? Meeting some person in the open all alone just to return their dog? Well, he could have met them at home, but then again, that might actually be worse. Talk about potential break-in material.
The train in his head, however, suddenly slams into some barrier as he looks up, seeing a rather gorgeous boy standing in the middle of the park out of the corner of his eye, wearing a blue hoodie and carrying a lead that’s got no dog attached.
So this is Nellie’s owner, then.
Before he can call out, Nellie starts to wiggle with more excitement than Charlie’s ever seen come from a dog and her barking’s incessant, grabbing the boy’s attention almost straight away and making joy blossom all over his face, giving away under the panic that had been schooling his features earlier as he runs towards them. “Nellie! Oh, Nellie, there you are!”
The dog’s all over him as soon as Charlie limply lets go of the scarf and it’s almost adorable how the boy’s letting her slobber all over him before he finally takes his attention to skinny, lanky old him, confusion making itself apparent as the boy’s face shows a little bit of awe and honestly, surprise, before he holds out a hand. “Hi.”
“Hi.” Charlie's never been this stunned before. He expected some creepy old guy, or some old lady, not this. Fumbling, he grabs the hand with his sweaty palms before letting go, shoving them both in his pockets again. “Nellie’s uh…quite happy to see you.”
“She’d better bloody be. I’m so sorry she stumbled into wherever you found her.” The boy is just so embarrassed and it makes Charlie laugh a little before he’s nodding. “It’s fine, seriously, she was a nice surprise to find in my living room. Our fence has been broken for weeks and my mother leaves the back door open for the air, so…”
“Nellie! First dodging trucks, then running into cute boys' houses! Scandalous!” The boy bemoans and Charlie freezes on the spot. Cute boys’ houses? If he wasn’t taken (sorta, he wasn’t exactly sure what Ben thought of them) he might have blushed. Fuck it, he was still blushing anyway. “Seriously, it’s totally okay. She’s a great dog.”
The guy chuckles and nods, pausable silence falling towards them before the wind starts to howl around them indicative of a snowstorm incoming. That’s when the boy unties the scarf and palms it back off to Charlie readily. “Better get back home before it blows down on us, my parents are most likely wondering where I am anyways.”
“Oh, yeah, same.” Charlie responds lamely and the boy hitches Nellie up to the leash he’d been carrying and looks at him with sad eyes. “I’ll see you around, yeah?”
“Yeah, hopefully. Nice to meet you. Bye Nellie.” It’s only about halfway home when Charlie realizes he never got the boy’s name and he kicks a nearby brick wall in frustration. He doesn’t really remember the whole thing as the weeks go by, but that next year, when he’s assigned to a new form and meets a familiar pair of blue eyes, it comes back like the rush of a wave on the sand of Herne Bay beach.
His name is Nick Nelson and he doesn’t forget that.