Work Text:
“Can I ask you something?” Nick said, his breathing more than a little ragged as he pulled back just far enough away from Charlie’s neck that there was space for his lips to move.
Charlie’s response was somewhere between a sigh and a whimper, but the uptick in tone at the end made it clear to Nick it was a ‘yes’. He was proudly fluent in the small noises Charlie came out with when they got time alone. Being quiet was often a necessity—usually there was a parent or a sibling elsewhere in the house and they didn’t want to be overheard—but they were alone for once, and Nick wanted to make the most of it.
“Do you think…” he tried, but being so close to Charlie shuttered his brain to everything but the way his boyfriend’s skin felt under his fingers. Shuffling back a few feet across the floor, bumping into the homework they’d abandoned long ago, he gave it another shot. “There’s no one else here.”
“That’s not a question,” Charlie complained, reaching out for Nick again in an attempt to resume making out. “Is that your way of asking to move to the bed?”
Nick just took Charlie’s hands in his own and squeezed tight.
“No. Well, I mean, yes, that sounds good, but no. I just…” Nick shut his eyes. He never liked asking for things from Charlie, not when it came to sex. It wasn’t like being intimate was easy for him, and Nick wanted to respect that by not pushing. But this seemed so small, so trivial, and Nick really wanted it. “I like hearing your voice,” he blurted out.
“Okay?” Charlie said, confused.
“I mean… I know we usually have to be quiet, but right now we’re the only ones here. No one is going to overhear. You can be louder, that’s okay. And maybe… Tell me what you want? I…” Nick’s hands were shaking and he had to let go of Charlie’s before it became obvious how nervous he was. “I really do like hearing you talk and I… Fuck, sometimes I imagine you asking for the things you want me to do to you and it drives me crazy,” he admitted, hanging his head. He still felt a little guilty for getting off to thoughts of Charlie when they couldn’t be together for a while, but Charlie had assured him he didn’t mind.
There was no suave way to ask your boyfriend to talk dirty to you, but Nick was hoping he hadn’t failed completely. Only Charlie’s face had fallen into a worried frown, bottom lip between his teeth, as he moved away to sit with his back against the side of his bed.
“Oh,” he said, far too quiet. Whatever had been heating up between them while they kissed had definitely been extinguished. “I… I don’t think I can. Sometimes it’s… It can still feel a little much, like I’m losing too much control, and I have to pretend I’m not me for a while? I can’t explain it and it’s probably stupid but I just need to imagine I’m anyone but myself and then I can relax again and I don’t think I can do that if I’m hearing my own voice.”
“You what?” Nick asked, devastated.
He knew Charlie had to psych himself up before taking off his top or focus on his breathing when Nick was touching his scars - which Nick did try not to do, but in the heat of the moment when it felt like the world ended at the perimeters of their bodies, he sometimes forgot where his hands were. But those were simple, tiny things that made complete sense. Charlie having to pretend to be another person entirely to get through sex seemed like a much bigger deal.
“It’s not like… It’s fine, I promise,” Charlie insisted, but his voice was small and uncertain. “It’s not something I do constantly. I do like doing this all with you. I love it. It’s just a coping thing. I’m working on it.”
At least he wasn’t apologising; Charlie was getting far better at not saying sorry for things he shouldn’t be asking forgiveness for. Nick knew physical intimacy was a much more complicated thing for Charlie, and that was fine. He was slightly curious whether ‘working on it’ meant talking it through with Geoff, but he’d long accepted that Charlie’s therapist probably knew more than Nick was strictly comfortable with about their sex life. For now Nick just had to worry about his now distraught boyfriend, curled up in front of him.
“Char, I wouldn’t have asked if I knew you felt like that,” he said, scooting closer across the carpet and sitting up on his knees.
Charlie looked up, still chewing on his lip as he thought something through with intense concentration. Eventually, he shook his head like he was trying to evict a wayward thought.
“If you want to, I can try-”
He didn’t get any further before Nick’s hand was across his mouth, barely touching him but startling him into silence.
“We’ve talked about this. If you’re not into something, I don’t want to do it,” Nick promised. He was never going to be able to enjoy anything that made Charlie even slightly uncomfortable. It just wasn’t even a possibility. Searching for a way to best explain it, he landed on an idea that might make sense to his maths genius boyfriend.
“Look, here.” He reached back behind him for a piece of paper long-abandoned in favour of pursuing the taste of diet lemonade on Charlie’s lips. He flipped it over and grabbed one of Charlie’s biros to draw a circle. “If this is what I’m into,” he said, before drawing another circle beside it, overlapping in the middle, “and this is what you’re into, then this is what I actually want to do with you, what we can try together.” He finished his explanation with a little arrow pointing to the section in the centre of the diagram.
It was supposed to make Charlie laugh, or at least crack a smile, but instead he focused on the diagram far too intently for Nick’s liking, clearly overthinking it.
“There’s a lot you’re into that I’m not,” Charlie mumbled, tugging absently at the sleeve of his jumper.
Nick rolled his eyes, scribbling out the diagram and redrawing it underneath. He made sure the two circles overlapped far more. It probably was a more accurate representation of his thoughts like that anyway. It wasn’t like he was into anything wild or kinky he was keeping from Charlie, but it was fine if their wants didn’t perfectly align. As long as they talked about things and found a mutual ground, it was always going to work between them.
“Better?” he asked, taking the risk to move a little closer so his leg was pressed against Charlie’s. “And it’s completely fine not to know where something sits yet, or for something to move from one place to another. We might both hate something or only one of us like it, and that’s okay. We have all the time in the world to figure it out.”
“We do?” Charlie asked, wide-eyed and overwhelmed.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Nick promised with a shrug and a smile.
It wasn’t like it was a proposal, but it was still something heavy and stable and real, and they both felt the comforting weight of the words settle around them. They reached out for each other almost simultaneously, Charlie climbing into Nick’s lap and the heat from earlier sparking back up almost immediately.
Nick loved kissing Charlie at the best of times, but Charlie’s lips were insistent and his hands were roving and it was all Nick could do to stay sane. It didn’t take long until they raced past where they’d left off before, losing their tops and forgetting the interruption. Or so Nick thought.
When Charlie crawled out of his lap and retrieved the diagram, Nick’s mind went from horny to cloudy to concerned in dizzyingly quick succession. Before he could think through exactly what was happening, Charlie grabbed a pen and neatly inked a word right in the intersection of the Venn diagram. The space for things they both enjoyed. He thrust the paper over clumsily, twisting his fingers together as Nick took in the addition: the word ‘handjobs’ in Charlie’s neat handwriting.
“Please?” Charlie asked shyly, and Nick was going to melt.
He’d asked for Charlie to tell him what he wanted, and that’s exactly what Charlie was doing. Maybe not quite the way Nick had envisioned, but it still worked. His heart still felt full to bursting with admiration and pride and want. Before he could say any of that, Charlie followed up with a deep breath and a quiet but assured whisper.
“I want to touch you,” he said.
Nick’s brain stopped working completely. It was a hundred times better than his imagination, even if it was downright innocent in comparison to some of the things his brain had conjured up in the past. But this was really Charlie, really sitting in front of him, openly sharing the things he wanted, and god, the things that did to Nick. He took a moment to look Charlie over, to check he wasn’t making himself uncomfortable just to make Nick happy, but he wasn’t panicking or shaking or pulling away. Instead he was smiling shyly, cheeks flushed and eyes round with hope.
Nick needed Charlie back in his lap, desperate to keep kissing him and more than happy to meet his request. As if he’d ever turn down that offer.
Throwing the Venn diagram aside, Nick was happy to forget it entirely, but as it fluttered to the ground, it turned in the air and he caught sight of what they’d been drawing on. His resulting laughter was completely involuntary but definitely didn’t help sustain the mood.
“We don’t have to,” Charlie mumbled, assuming that was Nick’s reaction to his request.
“Hey,” Nick said, tracing his jaw and kissing him quick to make sure he didn’t panic. “I love you and you’re amazing, but you just wrote the word ‘handjobs’ on a worksheet that’s due in tomorrow.”
“Oh my god!” Charlie’s cheeks went bright red as he covered his mouth with his hands in horror. “Sorry, I didn’t-”
“It’s fine,” Nick said with a laugh. “I’ll figure it out, don’t worry. Just come here.”
He was more than willing to take the fall and accept a detention if he couldn’t come up with a plan to salvage the homework. Maybe he could cross out the word thoroughly enough, or just hand in a sheet of lined paper with his answers on and claim Nellie chewed the original, or- His thought process was cut off by Charlie’s return to his lap, lips kissing along his jaw.
“Can I?” Charlie mumbled, the words pressed against Nick’s skin with each kiss as his fingers tugged at the waist of Nick’s jeans.
And, well, all of Nick’s problems seemed entirely inconsequential when he had that to focus on instead.