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Ever since Nick Nelson revealed that he had a boyfriend, he had been getting quite a few donations asking about him. These weren’t entirely unwelcome, of course. Nick could spend hours upon hours rambling on about Charlie. What was however unwelcome were the donations that called him by name. Obviously weird people on the internet were going to find out every little thing about Charlie the second they knew about him, but that didn’t mean he wanted Charlie’s name or face to be public knowledge. It got to the point where the word ’Charlie’ had to be banned from his donations. Although if someone just asked about his ‘partner’ or ‘boyfriend’ he would happily answer the question (given it was not anything overly personal) then move on. Both him and Charlie were perfectly content with Nick’s fans having this level of knowledge but of course they wanted more.
They always want more.
It had been a good week and a half since Nick’s last stream and he honestly felt kind of bad about it. Of course in the grand scheme of things a week and a half is a relatively short amount of time but Nick just had this overwhelming feeling of dread. He supposed it came with the job, really. His YouTube had practically been a lost cause since he started it, the subscriber count was still in the millions but due to his non-existent upload schedule it had been steadily dropping since his last video five months ago so Twitch was pretty much all that was keeping him afloat and if he took too long a break from streaming he would fade into irrelevance and his career would be over. In his defence though, Nick had been genuinely really busy.
For the past few months the couple had been looking into moving in together. A majority of people (including Charlie’s mother) would probably disapprove of this plan on the basis of them being too young but it was clear to anyone that looked at them that they were both madly in love and very serious about each other. Besides, Nick thought that nineteen and twenty were pretty reasonable ages to move out at.
Eventually, they found a nice single bedroom apartment in Brighton. They had chosen Brighton on the basis of the LGBT community there, thinking of it as being somewhere where they could live their lives as they want to and without the worry of some homophobic asshole beating them up. The apartment was small but cosy and the two loved it. Most of it was bare apart from the moving boxes that were present in every single room. One thing that was unpacked though, was Nick’s streaming set up.
Nick had brought up the idea of him having his own streaming office to Charlie before, but the younger found it rather needles. After all, Charlie would only be in the room over watching the stream anyway, so why not see it in person? Due to that reasoning, Nick’s set up was in the corner of their bedroom so that the only thing in his facecam’s background was their poster-covered wardrobe. Charlie’s side had radiohead and the strokes (and so many converse that it was almost unbelievable that they all managed to fit in the bottom of it) while Nick’s had video games and marvel movies.
It was the third night in their new home and to his own surprise Nick was scripting a YouTube video. He was sat in his black and red gaming chair with a matching headset on, typing away at a word document. His desk was neater than it had ever been, the only clutter being pink cat ear headphones that Charlie bought him. He’d only ever worn them a few times when on call with Charlie before they had moved in together. He was always under the impression that he looked utterly ridiculous, but Charlie seemed to think he looked cute in them. Never in a million years would he wear them on stream though. He looked down at them and realised that he could probably get a lot of subs for wearing them. ‘Maybe for a subgoal then…’ he thought to himself ‘nothing screams success quite like public embarrassment.’
He glanced over at Charlie who had gone to bed. Last time he checked, his boyfriend had been reading a book with some earphones in but now he was snuggled up under the fluffy covers, book discarded on the bedside table. Nick smiled, he felt so domestic. His heart burst at the notion that this would be his new normal. That was when it hit him, he needed to stream.
His microphone was good, it would pick him up even if he was being relatively quiet as to not wake Charlie and his viewers had told him many times that they liked the super chilled out just chatting streams just as much as they liked the super high energy gaming ones. He closed the tab, revealing his PC background as being an adorable picture of Charlie sticking up the middle finger at him with Nellie by his side and opened StreamLabs. He made sure that both the audio and video were okay before hitting the ‘go live button’.
“Hey chat!” He gave his usual lopsided smile and waved at his camera. The chat was instantly flooded with messages saying hi and claiming to have missed him. “So you’ve probably noticed that I’ve got a different background,” he gestured behind him “and you’ve definitely noticed that I took like two weeks off so now’s the time to reveal that I moved house!” His voice was enthusiastic but still somewhat quiet. He grinned as he read the chat messages. “I’m living with my boyfriend now in Brighton and I’ve got to say it’s been pretty nice so far,” He let out a small chuckle, “I miss my dog, though.” He paused for a second, seemingly having just remembered something. “Oh, also if I’m a little bit more like quiet and chilled tonight it’s because my boyfriend is sleeping right there,” he pointed, “and will ot be one bit happy if I wake him up.”
He fell into his usual back and forth banter with his chat, telling stories about the moving process and just general anecdotes from his time off. He played comically depressing music when talking about how he had to leave his dog and danced to joyful kazoo music while speaking on how he wouldn’t have to see his brother for a while. Honestly, David moving back into the Nelson family household was the thing that made Nick one hundred percent sure he wanted out.
The stream was calming down and Nick was about fifteen minutes from ending when he heard a soft “Nick, come here.” from the bed beside him.
Charlie’s hair was all messed up from sleep and it was clear he wasn’t fully awake at all. Nick looked at him, eyes lighting up as they did when he looked at Charlie. He was the most beautiful thing in the world, after all. “Give me a second, love.” he said before turning back to the camera and summarising the end of whatever tale he had been telling. Charlie, however, was determined not to give him a second. Made clear whenever he got out of bed in nothing but his boxers and one of Nick’s t-shirts and just sat himself down on Nick’s lap, arms wrapping around him and his face nuzzling his neck, placing a light chaste kiss onto it.
Nick’s face turned bright red as he looked down at him, still having that lovestruck face even though Charlie was fully curled up cuddling him on camera. He was almost absolutely certain that Charlie had no idea he was live, this was something Charlie often did when Nick was editing or scripting or doing anything that wasn’t being broadcast to thousands of people. He didn’t think Charlie’s face would have been overly visible given it was currently tucked between Nick’s head and shoulders but he could never be too sure.
The chat was in a complete frenzy, spams of ‘OH MY GOD THEY’RE SO CUTE’ and ‘HIS BOYFRIEND! :D” filled the screen alongside instantly deleted messages that presumably had Charlie’s name in them. Nick put an arm around Charlie and pulled him closer (if that was even possible) before addressing the camera. Twitter was going to go wild with this one. “Right guys, sorry but I’m going to have to end now as my presence has been demanded elsewhere.” He waved towards the camera with his other hand “Bye!”
Right before he ended a small but suddenly alert voice could be heard saying “Nick, are you strea-”
“-ming?” Nick nodded, swiftly deleting the VOD from his channel before shutting off his computer. “It’s okay Char, they couldn’t see your face thanks to you being so adorably clingy.” He tried to make a joke out of the last part of the sentence but Charlie just frowned. “I was in my boxers, they might not have seen my face but they sure have seen how disgusting my legs are-” He was cut off by a kiss, once they parted Nick kept his face so close to Charlie’s that their noses were almost touching. “Don’t talk about yourself like that, it’s deleted now and no one was looking at your legs because my face went like a tomato and I’m sure they’re going to find that far more amusing than my beautiful boyfriend’s lovely legs.” Charlie chuckled and Nick picked him up, moving him over to their bed. While Charlie was getting comfortable, Nick took off his joggers and jumper so that he was only in his boxers and slid in beside Charlie. The latter instantly throwing both a leg and an arm over him.
“I love you.” Nick said after a while of them cuddling in silence. Charlie hummed, the sleepiness he felt before the brief moment of excitement returning. “Love you too,” he mumbled, “even though you get all of twitter talking about me.” Nick gasped in feigned offence. “Excuse you, Mr Spring! I’ll have you know that it was your fault this time.” Charlie chuckled, “I should be able to cuddle you whenever I want, you’re basically just my super cute and handsome glorified teddy bear.”