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To be completely honest, Charlie Spring could not care less about ‘stan’ culture- or at least that’s what he would say if anyone asked, but the truth is that he does in fact own a twitter fan account for Twitch legend Nick Nelson. He didn’t think it counted as a proper stan account due to the fact that he only had it to defend his boyfriend online (and also to freak out about how gorgeous he looked) but never in a million years would he tell Nick that he has it.
It was a Friday night and Charlie had gone home from Nick’s early to let him stream. Both boys agreed that it would be better not to publicise their relationship, Nick because he didn’t want to see or hear anyone shit on Charlie and Charlie because he didn’t think he could handle the amount of attention from strangers that Nick gets on a daily basis.
Charlie lay drowning in the many blankets on his bed as he scrolled through twitter on his phone. Unlike normal, he had missed Nick’s stream due to Olly insisting that it had been “forever” since they had played mario kart and so he decided that if anything particularly interesting happened on the stream, people would tweet about it. And they did, all normal things like talking about how this and that made them laugh and declaring that Nick was the greatest streamer on all of Twitch (which Charlie agreed with) but there was one tweet that caught his eye. A video of Nick with the caption “I love Nick but what he did in this stream was queerbaiting and he should be held accountable”.
Naturally Charlie was absolutely bewildered. How on Earth could his very queer boyfriend be “queerbaiting”? Of course, the person that said this didn’t know that but still Charlie couldn't think of anything Nick could do or say that would lead to a reaction like that. It didn’t take a genius to know that he would be writing a response in the comments but Charlie thought since he’s a fair person he would at least watch the video to see if it was as dumb as he origionally thought.
It was.
In the clip, someone had donated to him asking if he plays any instruments, his response had been a chuckle and a “God no, my partner is absolutely brilliant at drums and tried to teach me and we both found out that I have absolutely no musical talent.”
It took Charlie a good few watches to even understand what this person was getting at, but then he realised that Nick had referred to him as his “partner” and not his “boyfriend” (or “girlfriend” as the mass amounts of viewers were probably expecting). Charlie furrowed his eyebrows and began to type out a response.
@N1CKSNELS0NS
I don’t see how this is queerbaiting??? He literally just said he had a partner, it's not that big of a deal.
As per usual in the cycle of twitter anger, the person responded almost instantly.
@NICKSGF
yeah but he could have just said girlfriend instead of trying to get people to like him as an inspiration to lgbt kids
@N1CKNELS0NS
Have you ever considered that maybe it wasn’t a girl? Not that it’s any of your business, of course.
@NICKSGF
why do u care so much, thats kinda parasocial lol. also weird that you’re silencing an actual lgbt person
After a quick google search of the word ‘parasocial’ Charlie had officially had enough. He sent a goodnight text to Nick and went to sleep.
*
Charlie had come to the conclusion that whoever invented twitter deserved a bullet through their head… well that was a bit dramatic, but still he was pissed off!
When he made the absolutely abysmal decision to open that godforsaken app this morning, he did not expect to see ‘Nick Nelson’ trending with the word ‘Homophobic’ but honestly he shouldn’t have been surprised.
Turns out it was just people blowing the fact that Nick had said ‘partner’ completely out of proportion. Charlie sighed and texted the aforementioned.
Charlie
Niiiiickkk
Your viewers are total idiots
Nick
I’m aware
Ive seen twitter
Charlie
What are you going to do?
Nick
Idk to be honest
I’ve seen people saying that it wouldn’t be genuine if I apologised on twitter
So I was thinking tiktok?
Im sorry that I keep hiding us but Im just not ready for EVERYONE to know
Charlie
Nick!! It’s okay <3
Don’t apologise
Besides I’d rather stay out of the whole influencer thing haha
Nick
Oh so you think Im an influencer?
Charlie
Well you are influencing me to want to punch you in the face
Nick
You wouldnt, my face is too cute to punch
Charlie
You may be right but you’re really pushing my limits here
Go make your silly little apology tiktok so that your army can go back to making Nick Nelson hot edits.
Nick
Oh my god Char please dont tell me you watch those
Charlie
;)
Nick
WHYYYYYYYYYYYY
There was a smile on Charlie’s face as he turned his phone off and got out of bed, usually he would be curled up in bed until noon on Saturdays but he had promised Tao that he would go out shopping with him. That didn’t change the fact that he was still tired though, so he groggily threw on one of Nick’s adidas jumpers and a pair of ripped black jeans.
*
Charlie was still desperately trying to flatten out the poofy mess that was his hair as he and Tao walked through the overcrowded streets. Tao was complaining about some Marvel movie that had just been released in cinemas but Charlie wasn’t paying much attention, besides he had seen that movie with Nick and actually thought that it was pretty good.
“...It just doesn’t make any sense! How the hell does Marvel intend to- Charlie? Are you even listening?”
Charlie laughed, “I’m sorry! It’s just-”
“Oh no no no, you can’t make up excuses for not listening to the words of the world’s greatest film critic.” He sighed melodramatically, “Quite frankly, I can’t believe you’d do this to me, Charles.” Charlie grinned and whacked his shoulder, “Don’t call me Charles, idiot.”
“Why not? Does it offend you? Make you feel disrespected?”
Charlie replied with an affirmative “Yes.”
“Now you know how I feel.”
“Oh my god, shut up!”
*
After approximately an hour and a half of the two boys bantering and messing about in shops, Charlie began to notice something.
The people around him started whispering.
Maybe he was just paranoid after all the bullying he faced at Truham, but he was incredibly convinced that for once something wasn’t just all in his head. He turned to Tao and whispered. “Tao… those people,” he subtly nodded towards a trio of teenage girls who were giggling amongst themselves with their leader’s phone pointed towards the two boys, “are they filming us?”
Tao raised an eyebrow and glanced at them for a second to assess the situation. Before Charlie even had the chance to stop him, Tao was marching towards the girls in that way that meant he was about to start something. Once the girls noticed this, they slid the phone into a shopping bag. At least they attempted to be discreet.
“Excuse me” He began confidently, Charlie awkwardly behind him, shifting his weight from leg to leg, rarely diverting his gaze from the ground and playing with the sleeves of Nick’s jumper. “Why were you recording us?” The girls looked round at each other, sniggering under their breath before one of them looked up with a taunting smile, finger reached out in Charlie’s direction.
“‘Cause he’s Nick Nelson’s boyfriend, innit?”
Charlie’s whole world froze.
He hadn’t watched Nick’s apology (although he knew it had been posted), did Nick reveal their relationship? But how would they know what he looked like? Did Nick post a picture? He hadn’t agreed to that! Was it because he was wearing Nick’s jumper? But how would they know it wasn’t Charlie’s? It’s because it smells like Nick, isn’t it? But how would they know what Nick smells like? And how on Earth would they even be able to smell his jumper?
All of this otherthinking culminated in a taken aback, wide eyed “W-what?”
Tao instantly stepped in and snorted, he had always been a good actor (probably because of the amount of movies he watched) “Nick Nelson? The Twitch streamer? Oh piss off. Just because you’re deluded doesn’t mean that you have the right to start recording two random people.”
“I’m hardly ‘deluded’ when there’s literally pictures of them snogging.”
That was it, Charlie was going to faint.
Tao scoffed and grabbed Charlie by the wrist before walking off. He obviously had more to say to these girls but he’d rather make sure that Charlie was okay.
Charlie was not. Charlie was in fact hyperventilating.
“Shit, shit, shit, shit, Tao, did Nick post pictures? Please tell me that Nick did not post pictures…”
Tao quickly brought his phone out and scrolled through twitter for a moment. Nick hadn’t posted anything, but his entire timeline was absurdly low quality screenshots of the corner of Nick’s room with the photo booth pictures of Nick and Charlie on the wall. Tao always knew Nick was a tad idiotic but accidentally revealing your relationship by choosing to record something in a different corner of your room really takes the cake for Nick’s dumbassery.
“It was an accident, Charlie. There were pictures in the background he forgot to take down.”
“Has he deleted them? What pictures are they?”
“I don’t know and they look like they were taken in a photobooth,” Tao wrapped an arm around Charlie, “Breathe, it’ll be okay.”
It took a few more minutes before Charlie was mostly calmed although he very obviously wanted the ground to swallow him whole. Tao checked his phone, “It’s not deleted. It was the background of a tiktok… do you want me to leave and you can call him?” He chose not to mention the fact that every single one of the thirty thousand tiktok comments was about Charlie.
Charlie sniffed and nodded, Tao giving him a supportive thumbs up before he walked into a nearby shop to provide privacy.
Charlie phoned Nick. It only rang once.
“Hello?”
It was once his boyfriend started speaking that Charlie realised he didn’t know what to say.
“Charlie, are you okay?”
Silence.
Nick’s voice grew more concerned. “Charlie? Do you need me to come over?”
Charlie could hear Nick stand up and move to put his shoes on. Only then did he choose to speak.
“Nick,” his voice was quiet and broken, “I-”
“Char, it’s okay, just please tell me what’s wrong.” Nick closed his front door. Charlie wasn’t even home.
“Your tiktok-” Charlie began, “there was a picture of us… in the background.”
The sound of Nick moving stopped for a few moments before a small “Oh shit.”
He deleted it.
“Oh god, I’m so so sorry. Are you okay? Has anyone said anything to you?”
“Girls were filming me and Tao… he scared them off though.”
“Fuck.” Nick took a deep breath. “Do you want me to say anything?”
“I don’t know. Just…come to mine and I’ll tell Tao I’m going home.”
*
Nick stayed at Charlie’s that night and was asleep in Charlie’s arms while he scrolled through twitter. There were a lot of very mixed reactions, some people were upset that they didn’t have a chance with Nick while others were annoyed that he didn’t announce his relationship publicly but a surprising amount were complimenting Charlie’s appearance, he liked those tweets. He also came across the video of him and Tao in town today with the caption ‘literally ran off crying when we brought up nick idek know what to say lol’. He quickly reported and blocked them. The worst thing he saw was a thread entitled ‘all you need to know about nick nelson’s bf!’ His face paled as he clicked.
@NELSONLVRS
so as we’ve all seen, nick appears to have a boyfriend. this is rlly upsetting to both us and other nick fans and so we went on a bit of a dig and managed to find out some stuff abt him.
name: charlie spring
age: 19
job: works part time at starbucks used to go to truman grammar (played rugby w nick)
family: brother olly sister tori and a mum + dad
He stopped reading once he found pictures of him and his siblings that had only been posted on his mum’s facebook. Completely freaked out, he shook Nick. “What is it, love?” In any other scenario, Charlie would have melted at the use of the word ‘love’ but now he was just too stressed, he put his phone out in front of Nick’s face. This startled him awake. “What the fuck!?”
Nick took Charlie’s phone and reported the person that made the thread before grabbing his own and quickly (but still angrily) tweeting:
@nicknelson
yes, i am bi and yes i have a boyfriend but under absolutely no circumstances is it okay for any of you to go about digging into my personal life to try to find things out about him or any of my friends. its really fucking weird and i dont like it at all. thanks.
Charlie rubbed his back and responded to the tweet.
@N1CKSNELS0NS
Love you x
Charlie grinned and kissed the back of Nick’s head, “I replied to your tweet” he said softly. Nick smiled and scrolled through the replies “Are you sure that’s what you- wait, no you didn’t.” Charlie’s eyes narrowed in confusion before going wide with shock. “Oh my god, I used the wrong account!” “But the only replies are from… oh my god, Charlie Spring do you have a stan account for me?”