Work Text:
RSE had been Nick’s least favourite class even before he’d realised he was bi. Everything they were told was things they’d already learnt from awkward conversations with parents, curious googling, or dragging together enough scraps of courage to raise the topic with friends. It was an entire lesson of rehashing old news, but in the most uncomfortable, embarrassing setting possible. And now everyone knew he was dating Charlie, it was even worse.
Nick probably couldn’t blame Mr Lange for quite how heteronormative the class was. Most people were straight - it made sense that the syllabus focused on that. Besides, it wasn’t really that long ago that talking about gay people in schools in any way wasn’t allowed. Nick knew all of that. He’d been reading. Still, he felt so out of place when he heard the phrase ‘a man and a woman’ repeated for the fifteenth time. Sometimes there wasn’t a woman, or there wasn’t a man, and that didn’t make it any less real, any less right.
Just trying to survive what was left of the hour, Nick slumped further down in his chair and doodled across the front of his planner. Sai nudged him from the next chair, giving him a look of inquisitive concern. All he got back was a shrug. It would be too much effort for Nick to explain how othering it was to have his relationship with Charlie minutely but repeatedly belittled and erased. They hadn’t even gone all the way yet but they’d been exploring things together and Nick loved it all but, listening to Mr Lange talk, he had to fight back the niggling voice that told him it wasn’t normal, that he should feel ashamed. But he couldn’t say that. Sai wouldn’t get it.
Keeping his head down worked for most of the lesson, until they moved on to the inevitable and frankly ridiculous putting-a-condom-on-a-cucumber practise. The class erupted into snorts of laughter and childish giggles as soon Mr Lange requested one person from each table head to the front and collect a cucumber and a little foil square. Sai was on his feet before Nick even had to ask.
One comment cut through the general chatter, racing down Nick’s spine like ice.
“Not like he needs the practise. He’s hardly going to get that nerd boyfriend of his pregnant,” came Harry’s mocking voice from the table behind, calculated to be just loud enough for Nick to hear.
The words themselves weren’t exactly incorrect—no, obviously Charlie couldn’t get pregnant—but the sniggers and the taunting still got to him. The assumption felt framed like an insult. Nick wanted to spin around and tell Harry there was nothing to mock about bottoming, that Charlie letting him inside his body was the hottest thing he could possibly imagine, and that you couldn’t and shouldn’t judge someone’s preferences in bed based on stupid stereotypes, because he loved the idea of Charlie being inside him just as much. And, while he was at it, that they’d still use condoms because they protected against more than pregnancy and it was just common sense to be safe. But it was none of Harry’s business and Nick knew how much Charlie would hate it if he shouted details of their hypothetical sex life out to his whole class.
Rather than saying anything, Nick hunched his shoulders and tried to pretend he couldn’t hear anything that was going on behind him. When Sai returned, Nick didn’t touch the condom or the cucumber, not wanting to face the comments he’d get for being either adept or fumbling at putting it on. He couldn’t win. When Sai took pity on him, rolling his eyes and ripping open the condom wrapper, Nick managed a thin, grateful smile.
But Harry wasn’t done. He was speaking at just the right volume that Mr Lange wouldn’t be able to hear, but all the boys around them could, revelling in the audience.
“Although I guess queers probably need them more than anyone. I mean think about it, it’s got to be unsanitary,” Harry said with a laugh, prompting sniggers from half the class.
Nick closed his eyes, feeling his ears heat up even as he tried not to react. He hated that Harry still had the power to make him feel inadequate. There was nothing wrong with his relationship with Charlie, Nick knew that on every logical level. But when Harry had most of the room on his side for his homophobic quips, Nick couldn’t help but feel a pit of shame reopen in his chest.
He wanted to yell. He wanted to turn around and stare Harry down and call him out, loud enough for everyone to hear. Why are you so obsessed with what Charlie and I do in bed? What’s got you so fascinated with the details of gay sex? It was a nice fantasy, but in reality Nick was focussing all of his energy on not going completely red in the face. He felt the pressure of tears in his eyes, the concoction of anger and humiliation overwhelming, but fought them back.
“That’s enough, mate,” Sai said over his shoulder.
Nick had never been more grateful for his friend.
“Whose side are you on?” Harry shot back, probably scowling. Nick wasn’t going to turn around to check.
“Nick’s.” Sai shrugged, as if he wasn’t bestowing a huge gift on Nick in his support. “Because he’s not being a git.”
Harry didn’t seem to have much of a response, finally going quiet. Nick tapped his foot against Sai’s to express his gratitude. It was so much easier knowing his real friends didn’t think differently of him because he was with Charlie. Perhaps his self-esteem shouldn’t be that fickle, but he couldn’t help it when Harry’s homophobic quips still summoned laughter from half the class.
Once a dozen cucumbers had been successfully condom-ed, they were allowed to, blessedly, move on. The safe sex lecture covered, Mr Lange dove into the consent portion of the lesson. Like clockwork, it was the same every time.
“Consent isn’t something you can assume. It has to be constant and mutual. It also needs to be given knowingly - if a girl is under the influence of alcohol or drugs, she can’t consent,” he said.
That was the moment Nick made the mistake of making eye contact. He’d been focused on the light switch on the wall beside the door but his vision was going blurry from staring at one spot and he shifted his gaze across the room, accidentally catching Mr Lange’s eye as he did. The teacher seemed to realise, once he properly registered Nick was in the class, that his words weren’t particularly inclusive.
“Neither can a boy,” he added quickly, prompting a ripple of muffled laughter from the class.
Nick wanted the ground to swallow him up. It sucked when everything was heteronormative, sure, but it was definitely worse to feel singled out for being queer.
Spurred on by Mr Lange’s comment, Harry piped up again.
“Not even sure it’s ever actually consensual with two guys. What guy would actually want that? It’s got to hurt - it’s not like that’s exactly natural.”
That was what caused Nick to snap. He could take the insults and the background radiation of homophobia that threaded its way through everything Harry said, but he couldn’t sit there through accusations that anything he and Charlie did wasn’t completely and entirely consensual. Harry was suggesting he was taking something from Charlie that Charlie didn’t actually want to give, and the very idea made Nick feel ill.
Nothing was more appealing in that moment than the picture of his fist connecting with Harry’s face. It would be so easy. But Charlie hated it when he got into fights. His mum would be disappointed. He’d get suspended and wouldn’t be able to see Charlie at school for days and he wasn’t, or at least didn’t want to be, a violent person. But he also knew he couldn’t spend another second in the same room as Harry without doing something he was going to regret.
Nick stood up, his chair scraping across the floor behind him and tipping over from the overkill of force he put into the motion. Sai tried to grab his arm, but Nick shook him off and headed for the door. He heard Mr Lange calling his name after him, and mumbles from the other students, but he didn’t turn around. His hatred for Harry was seething under his skin and he needed distance or Harry was going to end up with a broken nose.
What Nick wanted most was to see Charlie. Whenever anyone or anything managed to cause doubts to stick to him like tiny barbs, one look at his boyfriend reminded him his heart was exactly ticking exactly right. No one in the world made him feel like Charlie could. But Charlie had double classics and Nick doubted ‘can Charlie Spring please be excused because his boyfriend needs a hug?’ was going to go down well with his teacher. Instead, he stalked the corridors, stamping out his frustration into the lino beneath his feet.
It wasn’t a plan he could stick to. Eventually he was going to bump into a teacher and he’d be made to go back to class, which he wasn’t prepared to do. Usually his escape would be the rugby pitches, but they reminded him too much of Harry, so he headed for somewhere he’d started to feel just as comfortable.
Nick had clearly earned a little luck, because the art classroom was empty except for Mr Ajayi, clearing up clay dried into a tabletop. Not knowing what to say, Nick stormed in and stopped several feet into the room. Mr Ajayi waited expectantly for a few moments, one eyebrow raised. When Nick didn’t speak, he broke the silence.
“Charlie isn’t here,” he said gently.
“I know, I just…” Nick started pacing, arms folded tightly.
“Should you be here? Don’t you have a lesson?”
“I walked out,” Nick admitted. He should’ve realised he wouldn’t be allowed to hide in the corner of the room like Charlie did at lunch, not in the middle of the morning. “Sorry, I’ll go.” He turned for the door.
“Sit down,” Mr Ajayi ordered with a sigh. “If I let you leave this room I’m going to feel personally responsible for the fight you cause.”
He kicked out a chair as he wiped the clay off his hands with a mostly clean rag. Considering his options, Nick instead walked across the room and sat himself in Charlie’s spot, hidden right at the back. He got why his boyfriend liked it there so much. It felt cut off from everything.
“I’m not going to hit anyone,” Nick mumbled. The urge wasn’t exactly gone, but it’d faded enough that he wasn’t worried he’d lose it like he had all that time ago at the cinema.
“And I really wish I could believe that. Harry Greene’s face last year says otherwise,” Mr Ajayi said, a little more humour in his voice than there probably should’ve been. Nick had never actually been punished for the fight with Harry, since it happened out of school hours, but the truth had still eventually spread. “Was it a repeat of that? Did he say something about Charlie?”
Nick pulled his knees up to his chest. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Then how about you tell me what lesson you stormed out of, so I can at least email your teacher and let them know you’re still on the school premises?”
“RSE,” Nick admitted, ducking his head.
“Ah. Right,” Mr Ajayi said, his voice softening as he understood far more than Nick had meant for him too.
For a few minutes, Nick was given space to breathe. Mr Ajayi was at the computer, sending an email to explain Nick’s whereabouts and call off any potential search, and Nick stayed huddled up in the corner, regulating his breathing until he felt the anger cool off.
“I hate that they can still make me feel bad about loving Charlie,” he said abruptly, needing to get the words out. He didn’t even really care if anyone was listening. “I know who I am now and I love that I get to be with him and I’m not ashamed about any of it, but they still make me feel so…” Nick hunched his shoulders over, wanting to make himself so small he could disappear. “Like it’s wrong.”
“Do you want to tell me what happened?” Mr Ajayi suggested softly, taking a seat on the edge of one of the tables where he could look down at Nick.
“Some of the other guys just… They were saying some stuff. Trying to make me feel uncomfortable,” Nick said, not wanting to get specific.
“I see. Do you want to tell me their names?” Mr Ajayi asked, but Nick only shook his head. It didn’t feel worth it. “I’m sorry that happened. I used to sit though the little sex ed we got at school and think none of it was relevant to me. I felt pretty alone. Like I was… defective in some way. They didn’t talk about queer students at all.”
“I know I should be grateful they even mention it, but-” Nick tried, but he wasn’t allowed to get far.
“That’s not what I meant,” Mr Ajayi interrupted him. “I know how alienating that class is, and I sat through it before I came out. I can only imagine it’s worse if…”
“When everybody knows? Yeah,” Nick said, digging his fingernails into his arms to help him resist the sudden resurgence of the urge to cry.
Sai sticking up for him earlier had been reassuring, but this gave Nick the same kind of confidence he felt on a rugby pitch with all his teammates behind him. Someone else got it. Someone else had felt it too. He wasn’t alone. Latching on to the spark of connection in his chest, Nick couldn’t help but pour out everything he was thinking.
“He assumed all this stuff about me and Charlie, and he said it wouldn’t ever be properly consensual between two guys because who could really want that, and I just…”
He dropped his head into his hands. Whether Harry had intended it or not, his words had hit all of Nick’s insecurities when it came to sex with Charlie. What if it hurt? He didn’t care so much about himself but if it hurt Charlie, Nick would never forgive himself.
“Harry Greene doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Mr Ajayi said, daring Nick to correct his assumption of which other pupil they were talking about. “I’m not exactly qualified to deliver RSE classes, and this is a highly inappropriate conversation for us to be having outside of that situation, but there is nothing wrong with you, or with how you choose to be intimate with someone else.”
The words weren’t new or novel, but they still helped. Nick let his head fall back against the cupboards behind him, closing his eyes and picturing the soft, content way Charlie smiled at him when they lay in bed together. Nothing was wrong about that. Nothing ever could be. He felt calmer than he had since he’d kissed Charlie goodbye after Form.
“A lot of what is said in those lessons is relevant to you too. I know the pronouns get in the way and make it seem like it’s not going to apply—at least to your current relationship—but you do still need to know about protection and consent and whatever else they’ve added in nowadays. There are probably lots of questions you have that won’t get answered, but what you do get isn’t all useless information,” Mr Ajayi added.
Nick opened one eye, sceptical of ulterior motives. “So you’re saying I should go back to the lesson?”
“No,” Mr Ajayi allowed. “I think Harry probably needs a lecture on consent a lot more than you do. Not because of who’s straight and who isn’t, but because I’ve never overheard you referring to a girl—or a boy—as an object rather than a person.”
Nick allowed himself one huff of laughter. The closest he’d ever come to that was when he caught himself thinking of Charlie as his, but he had a sneaky suspicion his boyfriend wouldn’t protest. And anyway, he was Charlie’s, so it wasn’t like it wasn’t an equivalent trade. Even if Nick knew he was getting the far better deal.
Mr Ajayi let him stay, refusing his offer to help set up for the next class. Nick just got to sit and decompress and listen to the teacher humming 80s pop songs under his breath as he laid out the tools for lino printing. They both missed the bell and didn’t register the rising noise of boys in the hallway as they were all released for lunch. It took Charlie walking into the room for Nick to realise how much time had passed.
The sight of Charlie, all long limbs and soft curls and home, was exactly what Nick needed. He felt his throat constrict, an overwhelming wave of affection hitting him right in the chest. No one was quite as perfect as Charlie Spring, and there he was. From the concern in his eyes to the way he was holding Nick’s bag under his arm, Nick immediately felt loved just from one look.
“Hi,” Charlie said, crossing the room in long strides.
“Hi,” Nick replied, because he always would.
The second Charlie was close enough, Nick reached up to take his hand. The contact grounded him, chasing away the last of his spiralling self-doubts.
“Sai told me what happened,” Charlie said quietly, rubbing this thumb over Nick’s knuckles.
“He knew I was here?”
“No, I tracked you down. You weren’t at the rugby pitch or in the changing rooms, and this was my next guess.”
Charlie sat himself down next to Nick, handing over his bag. Nick couldn’t care less about a bag of textbooks and old pens. He took it gratefully, because Charlie had gone to the effort to bring it to him when he’d abandoned it in class, but he set it down immediately and reached for a far more important prize.
Wrapping Charlie up in his arms wasn’t ordinarily something he’d do in front of a teacher, but Nick was pretty certain Mr Ajayi wouldn’t care. Besides, he was trying very hard to be busy over the other side of the room to give them some space. So Nick took the opportunity to hug his boyfriend tight, hiding his face against his neck in that spot perfect for shutting out the rest of the world if it got too much.
“Are you okay?” Charlie asked, hugging Nick back just as tightly.
“Now I am,” Nick promised. When he felt Charlie laugh, he couldn’t help but smile.
“Dork,” Charlie sighed, relieved and happy and, Nick liked to think, just a little besotted.
All Nick could do was nod. No matter what Harry said, how many people laughed, how many RSE lessons he had to sit through, he was always going to be fine if he got this afterwards. And there was completely and absolutely not a single thing wrong with it.