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There have been times in life where Nick has made some questionable decisions that honestly, haven’t turned out so well for him.
There was that time when he punched out Harry Greene in the cinema for talking shit (they’ve since made up, but still), that time he locked David outside after a disastrous first meeting with Charlie and refused to let him back in, leaving him to sleep in his car till his Mum took pity on him and even that time when in his second year of uni, he ran outside of his and Charlie’s apartment in nothing but a towel because he thought there was a fire alarm when really, next door had just burnt their breakfast and he was left cold and handing off second-hand embarrassment to his still rather confused boyfriend.
All in all, Nick’s decision making streak has honestly been a little bit shit lately and before he knows it, he’s about to make one such choice so bad, he actually doesn’t know if he might survive it. Figuratively and literally.
Let’s just set the scene here, shall we?
It’s July. It’s semester break. Nick’s graduated since June and a fully-fledged teacher still trying to find work somewhere in Leeds, Charlie’s still got one more year before his music archivist dreams are finally going somewhere and life is good. Perfect even.
They have an apartment, they have Henry (their pug) and are just living it up as best as two early 20’s young adults can in the big, wide world - so when Tao, Charlie’s best friend since primary school and sudden hot shot indie movie producer, invites them down to London where he’s now living for a movie afterparty/congrad shindig for Nick, they can’t say no.
Charlie, however, has leftover university stuff he has to do to get ready for next semester’s shit ton of work and can’t come until literally the time of the party, so Nick decides in his (shaded) wisdom to leave Charlie some money to pay for an Uber and go on ahead to Tao’s apartment so he can have some peace and finish everything.
(He hadn’t wanted to at first, but it was Charlie’s idea and there was a lot of reassurance to both his and Nick’s parts before he took his overnight bag and left.)
So, here he is, in the middle of the chaos. Tao’s not one to spare any expense and despite it being just him, Elle, Issac, Darcy, Tara and a few of Tao’s newer university filmmaking friends and his manager, it’s like he’s stepped into an Elton John concert and can’t leave. He’s also not really in the best…/state/ to leave anyway, because as soon as he’s walked in the door, Tao’s bounding over to him and offering him a joint, which he takes and inhales readily, his lungs crackling as the high sweeps over him in time and he’s floating.
If you had told 16-year-old Nick in a year of meeting Charlie he’d be getting high on movie nights with his boyfriend’s best friend and his friends, he would have been horrified. But, Tao is Tao and apparently, he’s been experimenting with cannabis for a long, long time and decided he wanted to share with everyone on the one night a month they attempt to coddle together and seemingly, everyone was fine with it, so he just coasts with everyone else, sticking to rather small amounts as his Mum would most likely have a fit if she knew.
(He doesn’t know if she knows she’s used or not when he comes home from those nights given she just smiles and tells him dinner’s in the microwave before kissing his cheek and going up to bed. She never mentions it, but that’s cause’ his Mum’s a proper saint.)
He’ll be honest though, the high this time hits him a little harder, but it’s not surprising considering he only gets high when Tao’s around and Tao’s last film project has been keeping him cooped up for months, so Nick’s tolerance is a lot shorter than what it used to be.
Doesn’t matter right now thankfully, as that joint is all he intends to have given he’s got dinner plans with Charlie at a restaurant nearby when he shows up before they come back to hang out with the others and crash for a day or two before heading home.
He very badly wants to call Charlie now he’s thinking about him (story of his life) but knows that interrupting him now would be a terrible move on his part, so he silently resigns himself in his less than lacklustre outlook to enjoying (or really, attempting to enjoy) the atmosphere around him as he waits for Charlie to text him or something.
It doesn’t take long before he realises something else however, that generally takes his mind off Charlie for the foreseeable future. He’s hungry. No, not just hungry. /Starving/.
Ah, he’s got what Tao calls ‘weed munchies’ again. Great. He hoped they wouldn’t kick in till dinner at least or, if his prayers had been answered, not at all, but his stomach’s rumbling like mad and he knows Tao has a stash of food somewhere in this place, so thankfully, he needs not to look long to find something to consume.
Tao’s got a whole table of snacks laid out for everyone to take what they please. There’s pizza, crisps, cookies, brownies, fried rice and curries - all of which looks really good to Nick’s suddenly wide eyes, but it’s the sweets that grab his attention as he finds his hand reaching for the most unlikely of goods to eat. A long, very familiar rope-like candy that Nick barely remembers from childhood, but recognises the taste of immediately after putting it in his mouth, the artificial strawberry lingering as he inhales it at a fast pace.
Sure, it tastes a little weird in the beginning and it starts to make his breath smell a little grassy later on, but he’s already up there in terms of being decently off his rocker, so it’s most likely his taste buds crying out for some kind of mercy. He’s just about to consume a second one, when there is a shout and Tao comes /flying/ across the room and rips it out of his hand. “Nick, mate, don’t eat those! Those candies are edibles, the real candy’s over on the other side of the table.”
It takes Nick about half a second too long to realise what Tao’s just said and he can’t believe it - no, /won’t/ believe it, as it stands there and stares before talking. “Uh, sorry, mate-” Nick shook his head, the world spinning. “-I think I heard you wrong, um…did you just say these candies are edibles?”
“Uh, yeah.” Tao blinks, looking rather concerned at his friend as they stand there while the party continues around them. “Those rope candies are laced with cannabis.”
Something inside Nick suddenly breaks at those words and he’s paralyzed with fear. Tao must see it on his face as he’s quickly shaking him, eyes darting from Elle who's watching them and progressively getting more and more worried back to him again.
Nick coughs and splutters for a moment, before finally asking “Christ, how much was in it?”
“Uh….” Tao’s scrambling as Issac pops up just out of nowhere, book in hand to come and see what the commotion is about, Elle and Darcy following swiftly behind. He doesn’t know where Tara is, but he doesn’t really care right now as he’s more concerned that he’s possibly poisoned himself. “Tao, how much was in it?!”
“I think it was 60mg.” Issac mumbles at his side and Nick tries to process this while attempting to get his breath back. 60mg. Okay, that’s…a lot more than he’s used to, but surely he’ll be fine, right? It’s just a small oversight. He can still make dinner with Charlie, he can still be okay to leave the apartment in his state. It’ll be fine. No need to freak out.
He’s on the verge of calming down when he hears Darcy gasp and the look of fear on her face restarts his panic fest almost instantly as she’s holding the discarded packet that Nick’s left on the table from his greediness and she turns to him, swallowing. “It’s actually 400mg.”
Nick’s fucked. Nick’s fucked. Oh, Nick is so /fucked/.
He can feel his legs turn into jelly and is grateful both Tao and Issac are there to catch him as he stumbles and almost falls, a chair suddenly appearing out of nowhere as he struggles to comprehend not only what’s happened, but bloody hell, what is coming. The music shuts off after a moment or two and he can hear Tao ushering his friends out of the room, but it sounds like just noise at this point as he tries to grasp onto anything he can without losing his mind. He needs to do something, anything. He can’t go through with this.
He had dinner plans with Charlie (he obviously won’t be making them which hurts him more for Charlie than it does himself), he was meant to be going downstairs in like an hour to escort him from the Uber to put his overnight bag upstairs with his and see his friends he hadn’t seen in forever, but if he was correct with weed timing (something Tao had taught him long ago), he had 45 minutes before all hell broke loose and that wasn’t enough time at all.
He can hear Issac in the background on the phone (possibly with emergency services, most likely with the poison control hotline), but he’s mostly tuning it out right now to come up with some kind of solution to this before his brain effectively cooks itself and turns to complete mush, so it’s no surprise that five seconds later, he’s scrambling from the chair to Tao’s toilet in order induce himself to vomit.
Another 5 minutes after that (it could have been longer, he admits), he’s got Darcy on her phone googling just how the hell you make a person vomit without sticking their fingers down their throat before he’s chugging cups of rank tasting salt water and finally getting something up, even if it’s just pink sweet-smelling water from the depths of his empty stomach.
During this process he’s subjecting himself to, another pizza suddenly turns up and once he’s out of the bathroom about to go in for another cup of salty grossness, Tao’s paying the guy at the front door before shoving the entire pie into his face. “Eat.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.” Nick’s stomach and throat still felt raw from all the self induced throwing up he’s been doing the last 20 minutes, so he’s not exactly in the mood for eating, but Tao’s not budging. “If you are about to die right now Nelson, you die like a man. Eat.”
Nick knows he most likely won’t actually die, but the thought is lingering and he knows if he doesn’t eat now, he may never eat again so he taco bends to the pizza to the general horror of everyone around him and gets it down in only a few dozen bites or so before he’s spent and has to sit down in one of Tao’s bean bag like seats he keeps by the window, London’s bright lights and grey skyline a blur as he just waits before his mouth is suddenly dried out.
It’s starting and all he can do is strap in. Thankfully, everyone’s great about it for now.
Darcy keeps bringing him water, which he inhales like a dying man as the cottonmouth he’s experiencing never seems to abate for more than a minute at a time and Elle eventually brings him a dressing gown to put on as he won’t stop shivering after a while, his hands even shaking as they hold onto the water bottles passed to him like a carousel going round.
(“He’s got weed chills-” Tao whispers dangerously guilty to Elle later on. “-he’s going to be feeling it for /hours/, Charlie’s going to kill me-”)
He may have also said at one point that his entire body felt like rubber bands, which if he honestly knew what that meant, he’d say so, but God knows exactly what that means because he’s making no sense and hasn’t for a while now.
He’s just splayed out in a haze of nothing making any cognitive impact on his brain that he’ll remember after this and his entire body aching, like every piece of his skin had live bees on it and was buzzing with too much activity for his head to handle, feeling like it was spinning.
He doesn’t know how, but eventually, he’s lying on the floor. All the others (including Tara now who’s now appeared at the exact wrong time to see Nick half-dead) are staring down at him from like an overhead position. It’s creepy, but also makes him feel safe at the same time as he just lies there, unable to use his limbs functionally anymore as he does.
Soo enough, there’s a time where he closes his eyes, but then he’s rudely kicked and nudged awake as Issac suddenly leaves the room and he doesn’t know why, but for a lad who has never cussed in his life, he has some choice, very slurred words for Tao who just stands there in awe while Tara films it and Darcy’s dying with laughter in the background.
There’s a moment where his head swims and he blinks and oh fuck, Charlie’s standing there looking absolutely terrified over him (when did he get here?!), but before he can reach up or some something you know, reassuring and apologetic, like a living human being that didn’t suddenly fuck up his and his boyfriend’s plans, his stomach cramps and he’s up and running despite the oversensitivity to go throw up that pizza and the water he’s had churning away in his stomach for the last hour he’s been in this for, catching his face in the mirror as he does.
His eyes are bloodshot, broken blood vessels having not taken the strain of him both self-vomiting and now, vomiting on command that most likely won’t be going anywhere anytime soon. His skin is sweaty and pale as well, the freckles he used to hate as a kid before Charlie came around and appreciated them brown spots on an almost white surface.
His hair is greasy from the sweat and in every direction it can go in, while the dressing gown almost blends in with the sickly green colour of the bathroom just as much as his complexion does as he rests his head on the toilet seat to get a breather for a moment.
It seems like hours, but it was only possibly minutes before all of that gross feeling fades as Charlie appears like an angel sliding in from the heavens above with another bottle of water and a worried smile as he settles beside him, concerned. “Hi.”
“Hi.” Nick manages to crock out, smiling despite how awful he’s feeling as Charlie wordlessly hands him the water and helps him sit upright, the older curling into himself as he does and resting his still sweaty head on the curly-haired boy’s shoulder. “Ugh…”
“So, I’m guessing that we aren’t having dinner tonight?” Charlie’s voice isn’t mad, thank goddess, nor is it disappointed, but Nick still treats it the same as if it is, feeling horrible.
“Oh love, I’m so sorry. I’ve managed to get myself in a right proper pickle tonight.” He felt so emotional all of a sudden and hid his face from Charlie as he started to cry, feeling despite this not exactly being his fault, that he still had some part in hurting Charlie somehow.
Charlie’s arm curls around him as he does this, feeling Charlie’s head weight resting lightly on his as not to set off his oversensitiveness again. He’s never used to Charlie comforting him, as usually, Nick is the one doing the comforting. He tries to let that go for now however as he just lies there on the cold tile floor, drawing heat from Charlie as he sniffles away.
Later on, when Nick isn’t so far away mind wise (this takes a very long time), they talk and Charlie- safe, cuddly, warm, anchor point for him right now Charlie- swears up and down that it’s okay that they didn’t go to dinner that night and he’s already got a rather tense argument with Tao coming up in the future to worry about more, but Nicks till feels guilty as sin.
Thankfully, those feelings wear off by the time they got back home, as does the high as despite his concerted efforts the night before, the vomiting doesn’t get rid of all the toxic crap lacing his system and according to Issac, it’s about 26 consecutive hours before Nick Nelson is completely back to being Nick Nelson and not a cursed mannequin.
One thing is for very certain though and that fact is clearer than his life goals ever were.
Nick is never, /ever/ getting high again after this.