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charlie often wonders why nick stays. why he stays through fainting spells and days of skipped meals and twisting drumsticks between his fingers for what feels like hours because they just don’t feel right and an obsessive need for control and bloodshed. relapse after relapse after relapse, fine raised scars littering pale white skin. maybe worst of all is charlie’s downright crippling fear of being a burden— causing any sort of annoyance upon anyone else he loves. it’s a sort of numbing, paralysing fear. as bad as his things may be, if you ask him, he’s okay. he’s always okay. he will never not be just fine . there’s never anything wrong, even when the bags under his eyes seem to weigh much more than usual and when he rolls his grapes about on the plate instead of even pondering the concept of eating one. he never wants to clue anyone in on what’s wrong, he just bites it all down and pushes them just far enough away to hide from their prying eyes. he’ll force you so far away from him before he even considers letting you know what’s going on, because he tends to believe that his mere existence is causing everyone else around him grief. a sort of sick, sad contagion, he thinks. he’ll spread his unease and anxiety and pain onto those he loves so much, so he resigns himself to a sort of distant numbness instead. if he’s numb, he can’t bring himself to care about all of the things he loses. too far gone to mind missing out on the people, the parts of himself, the normal teenage experiences like parties and secret kisses and sneaking out.
and yet, nick sticks around. he’ll wrap a strong arm around charlie’s waist when his legs seem unsteady, he’ll bandage new wounds, he’ll drop everything to come over when charlie’s having an off night, he’ll make one sandwich and split it between the two of them and even agree to let charlie pick the toppings out of the bread and just eat them because any amount of food is enough. he stays through spells of distance, through numbness and unanswered texts and calls gone to voicemail. he’ll show up unannounced and knock on a locked bedroom door just so charlie knows he’s still around, even when the only thing he’ll hear in response is “nick? is that you?”. he comes back every time. charlie, once, during a particularly bad bout of it, asks him why. tells him that there must be something masochistic about it, some sort of pleasure he gains from constantly being put through pain. from charlie causing him repeated pain. he doesn’t understand why nick, all soft edges and warm smiles, comes back for more of exactly the same thing every single time. nick just shrugs, and says that he cares.
charlie has crippled nick’s heart a hundred times or more by now, he knows it. broken and shattered and stomped on the thing, always shutting him down and pushing him away when the going gets tough. carving new chunks of skin away, he knows it keeps nick afraid. he even spends time in a hospital, force fed and kept away from shoestrings and razor blades, and he comes home still sick. he just can’t shake the disease, the unending wobble between pain and relief and pain again. they— the psychiatrists and his therapist and everyone else— tell him it’s incurable. it might get easier, with medication and therapy and time, but it’ll never go away. it’s illness and it’s as real as anything you can see, blackening skin and numbing limbs and losing hair, but it lives within him and he can’t find a way to make it real, gain some sort of control over the thing that is consuming his mind, without continuing to ruin everything good. he’ll cut off his foot to spite his leg, just so that he can say he did it. he was in control, he did the bad thing himself. he’s ill. he’s so very ill. but he’s not dead, and he’s not sure which way he prefers. maybe putting an end to it all would be simpler for the lives of those around him. but yet, he’s still alive, just unwell. and he may never be well but at least he’s still got a pulse. and charlie knows he’d never really end it all, but when he says that he might it’s not a joke.
and nick comes back for even more still. he never stops coming back for exactly the same. he knows charlie won’t change overnight, and that the tough days will always come, but that recovery will eventually happen. not linearly. there will be highest highs and lowest lows. but with time and proper care, there will be some degree of getting better . and besides, he loves charlie! he will never stop coming back. he can’t imagine a version of himself without charlie, and he believes that they’d find a way to be together in every universe.
nick comes especially quickly when charlie tries to break up with him to “make nick’s life easier”, effectively slicing off the only limb that keeps him held up. nick knows that’s what he’s doing, and he refuses to go away. he sits outside of the locked bedroom door and says nothing as charlie lays face down in the carpet crying, because nick wouldn’t dare push charlie beyond what he’s willing to give, but he hopes that maybe charlie can feel him through the wall or something. charlie always can, of course. because nick is all warm sunshine and soft edges and a face full of freckles and eyes that glow golden when the light hits, and it’s impossible not to tell when nick is around. not just for charlie, either. even tori will crack open her door to acknowledge nick in the hallway, and they’ll exchange hushed words about how much he’s eaten or if he’s come out of his room or if, god forbid, any new wounds have been properly cleaned and dressed. charlie would never tell either of them that he knows about their quiet talks, these little moments that prove how much they both care in spite of his fucked up mind, but they provide him with some sense of comfort every time. as much as he disagrees with how much nick wants to stay with him (not because he doesn’t love nick— he does, more than anything! he just wants to make nick’s life easier, and he knows that if he just gets out of the way-) he can’t deny that both nick and tori seem to conspire in his favour.
eventually charlie stops asking why nick comes back for more. he just affirms that that must be the case, that nick will always keep coming back for more. he never stops suggesting— and sometimes downright asking if— nick’s a masochist, though. he’s sure that must be the case. because nick loves him through the worst of it and the best of it. nick loves him unconditionally, even when he’s on his last leg. nick isn’t sick, and charlie isn’t dead. and that’s all that matters, in the end. they’re a perfect pair. one well, the other simply alive, but good for each other all the same. charlie slides himself to press his back to the locked bedroom door, just as nick is doing on the other side, and sighs loudly.
they sit together, separated by the door, and charlie asks quietly if they can start over again. it’s a question he always asks, once the worst of it blows over and he wishes he could apologise but nick has affirmed that the s-word is still off limits. nick always says “of course”, and that is that. they start over. the door is unlocked, but it isn’t opened. charlie’s been wearing the same jumper for days and he smells of dried blood and sweat and tears, so he isn’t ready to be seen, but the unlocking of the door serves a symbolic purpose. he’s inviting nick back for another day, another chance at good times that outweigh the bad. and nick always accepts the invitation, pushing himself further against the door.
charlie asks him about mundane things, rugby practice and maths homework and the weather, and nick tells him all about the days that have passed since they last really spoke. all of the stupid fights at school and how many memes darcy has sent him and exactly what he did every single day, right down to what he ate for lunch and what shorts he wore to practice and what streets he and nellie walked down after school. nick might be a masochist, but he’ll never stop coming back for more of charlie. more of the boy he loves.