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This is what Charlie's nightmares are made of. He wakes up and he can't decide if it’s a dream in a dream or the next chapter of reality. He squints at the small neon numbers of the clock on his bedside table. 02:14, it blinks back. On his right, Nick's side is cold and empty. Their home is quiet and darker around him than his rising fear. Fractures crackle in his heart.
"Nick?"
His thoughts run screaming down a well-known road. The house is going to remain silent, they tell him. He'll call out a little louder and no one will be there to answer, and the sheets will stop smelling like Nick, never to be warm again. The night will remind him that all he has left is the memory of dust sprinkled into the wind.
"Nick?" He says anyway, throwing the blanket off his legs to chase the echo of his voice through the house until the nightmare is over.
But then -
- then he hears it.
It's coming from the bathroom. A horrible sound, one that makes his stomach lurch in sympathy even as his breathing settles back to normal because this is real. Not a bad dream. He's fully awake now, and he can tell why the bed is empty - not because Nick is gone, but because he's throwing up.
It makes him feel guilty, but he needs a moment to put himself back together before he leaves the bedroom. When did waking up alone become so scary? Is the worry ever going to go away? Somehow, he doubts it. He sighs and rubs the last remnants of sleep out of his eyes.
"Shit." Nick croaks when Charlie opens the door, then he sicks up into the toilet again. He's sitting on the cool tiles, shaking as the wave ripples through him.
Charlie wets a towel and lowers himself down next to him. As gently as he can, he wipes the cold sweat on Nick's forehead and the back of his neck. He ignores the stench that mixes with the lingering smell of chlorine from the last time he disinfected the room.
Nick gives him a forlorn look. There are bluish circles under his eyes and his skin looks sallow in the white light. "I tried not to wake you up."
"Idiot." Charlie replies quietly and keeps rubbing Nick's back until there's nothing more to come out.
When it seems like Nick's stomach has settled again, he helps Nick up and they move to the sink together. Perhaps it's unnecessary, but he keeps holding on to Nick's waist with both hands while Nick refreshes his mouth. This is a habit they developed when Nick started regaining his strength and doing things on his own again after the darkest days. Whenever he went to brush his teeth, Charlie steadied him and did a surreptitious check of his weight by pressing his palms to his ribs.
Out of habit, he does it tonight too, and sighs from the relief of finding muscle where only skin and bone lay a few months ago. He misses the soft layer of fat Nick used to have on his middle, but he doesn’t bring it up anymore because he hates the way Nick jokes about it. No, he doesn't think being lean will make Nick look nicer in their wedding photos. He doesn't find it sexier. They both have their ways of coping, and this is one of those times when they clash. He would rather just not talk about it at all.
He presses his cheek to Nick's shoulder and takes a deep breath. Nick doesn’t comment on it, he just splashes water on his face and gives Charlie a hollow look in the mirror. Charlie squeezes his side. "Let's go back to bed."
When they settle down under the blankets, Charlie scoots over to Nick's side so that Nick could be closer to the door. After placing a wash basin on the floor just in case, Nick grumbles something about Charlie using too many pillows and changes into a new set of pyjamas. He looks good in the soft light of the bedside lamp, but Charlie hates how the clothes hang off his shoulders and hips - shirts and pants they used to argue over because they were too small but Nick refused to stop wearing them. They have plenty of extra space now.
"You’re staring." Nick points out, sliding tiredly on the mattress.
Charlie reaches for the light switch. "I'm allowed, aren't I?"
The room plunges into darkness, but there's comfort in it this time. It doesn’t feel empty anymore, with both of them here.
"Only if it doesn’t make you sad." Nick’s quiet voice breaks the silence and Charlie's heart.
"It doesn’t." It's only a half-lie. Charlie opens his arms, scratching lightly at Nick's shoulder. "Come here."
"I smell sick."
"You smell like toothpaste."
He really does.
It's a scent that reminds Charlie of their second kiss every now and then and invites the kind of sweet nostalgia that warms him like a drop of honey. He hears the rustle of fabric as Nick moves, then feels the brush of Nick’s hair under his chin, the weight of Nick’s head on his chest. He curls his arm around Nick's back and lets the gentle pull of sleep swirl around him again.
But Nick's breathing doesn’t even out. He had sleep problems all through his sickness, but particularly during the second treatment, when he slept too much but tried to resist it with all his might. He used to grip Charlie's hand with all the strength he had whenever the drugs began to knock him out. It's hard to say which one of them was more worried that it would be the last time.
It's strange, Charlie thinks, that he's terrified of waking up alone while Nick is scared of going to sleep.
He presses a kiss to Nick’s forehead.
"What if this is a relapse?" Nick’s voice barely rises above a whisper.
It's not. Charlie knows this in his heart - it can't be. Nick is still more vulnerable to viruses and infections than he will be once he regains his full strength. "Vomiting isn't one of your symptoms. It must be a stomach bug."
Nick’s exhale sounds shaky and wet. "I don't want it to come back."
They both know what it means. Something in Charlie’s chest aches from the knowledge that Nick dares share these thoughts with him. That he trusts Charlie enough to put his deepest fears in his hands, hoping that Charlie will chase them away. Charlie lays his palm on the back of Nick’s head. "Shh."
Nick cries a little, and he lets him. Over the past two years, he learnt that sometimes he has to let it happen without comments or clumsy attempts to cheer him up. His presence is all Nick needs. So he stays silent as Nick's breathing grows ragged and wetness seeps into a spot on his shirt. He just combs Nick's hair, and when Nick calms down, he doesn't mention how Nick's tears feel like glass shards in his heart.
"Go to sleep."
Nick wraps his arm all the way around Charlie’s torso. "Talk to me, please?"
"What do you want me to talk about?"
"Something nice."
"Like a fairy tale?" Charlie teases, tickling Nick's forearm.
"Oi." Nick swats his hand away. He chuckles, and that small sound alone is triumph enough for Charlie. "My mum used to make up our own fairy tales."
"Yeah?"
"Hm. Adventures of the little funnels."
"Funnels? Why?" Charlie laughs. It's not a conversation he thought he'd have at the crack of dawn, but he doesn’t regret the loss of sleep one bit.
"I don't know. I was the blue funnel and David was the green one. But he didn't want to listen to Mum's stories anymore after Dad moved back to France."
They lapse into a moment of silence. Charlie picks Nick's hand up and lines up their palms, then lets Nick's fingers slip between his own. "Which funnel would I be?"
There's no hesitation whatsoever. "The yellow one, because you make me happy." Nick says, then nuzzles Charlie's neck, snickering. "And because that's the smallest."
Charlie laughs. "Shut up."
He's going to put 'you make me happy' in their new journal first thing in the morning.
Nick curls up tighter, shuddering. "I feel so sick."
"Do you need the basin?"
Nick makes a noise that Charlie takes as a no. He thumbs at the ring on Charlie’s finger. "Tell me about that time we went hiking in Snowdonia."
"You were there, you know this story." Charlie smiles.
"I like the way you tell it."
Just before Charlie started uni and they moved in together, they went on a camping trip with their friends. None of them had any experience with tents and setting up campfires, and this resulted in a week of fighting, tears and hysterical laughter.
He and Nick had sex one night and then fought about the fact that they hadn’t thought of a way to clean up before jumping each other's bones. Having to tiptoe half-naked to the rickety campsite shower then washing themselves in ice cold water was all worth it though. If not for the story, then for the laugh they had afterwards, seeing each other's miserable face in the moonlight. Then Tao woke up, and in the middle of his rant about Nick and Charlie being too loud, he tripped over a guyline and made his entire tent collapse on Isaac. It was one of the funniest nights of their summer.
"He's really looking forward to the wedding, by the way. He claims he's only coming for the food, obviously." Charlie adds, smiling with his eyes closed. "But I think he's happy for us. I guess two years was enough time for him to deal with this change."
He expects Nick to chuckle or say something sappy about joining their lives together, but he doesn’t reply at all - he's fast asleep, comforted by the sound of Charlie's voice long enough to let go of his fear. Gingerly, so as not to wake him up, Charlie untangles their fingers and strokes Nick's forearm. Now that he's allowed to do some exercise again, Nick has taken to swimming, and his muscles are building up, turning thin planes into familiar dips and hills again.
"Rugby arms." Charlie murmurs, grinning to himself, then his joy fades away to give place to a bluntly hurting sorrow that he can't bring himself to reveal to Nick. "I'm sorry for being so clingy lately."
It's something that would surely prompt a response out of Nick, were he awake, but he doesn’t hear it this time, drifting through his dreams. It makes Charlie’s tightly contained emotions spill out like water pouring from a broken vase, and he heaves a deep breath to stay afloat.
"But with the wedding and everything." He swallows, still reluctant to say anything about Nick's illness out loud. "I've been thinking about life a lot. Our life, I mean."
He runs his palm over Nick's arm again, blind in the darkness but still seeing the constellations of freckles he touches with all the reverence reserved for the night sky. "And I know that one of us will have to be the first to go, but I don't think I could bear it if it was you."
There. He said it - all the pain he could not pile on Nick when he was already going through the fight of his life, it's now out there. He imagines it floating away from him like the mist of an exhale in the cold. He doesn't want to be the one left behind.
"I read a book about grief when you thought I was studying in the library last week. I knew it would just upset you." He rubs the pad of his thumb softly over Nick's knuckles. Nick's back radiates warmth under his arm. "There was a chapter in it that stuck with me. It said grief is just unexpressed love. Love that has no place to go."
He stops for a moment, but his voice still cracks on the next sentence. "And I've been trying to express it better, to… to show you more before it's too late, but I'm scared that one day, I'll wake up alone and I won't ever find a way to tell you just how much I love you, Nick. It's my biggest fear."
He shouldn't have said the name perhaps or he shouldn't have let his voice rise with the feelings bubbling out of him, but Nick stirs. "Char?" He mumbles, most of his mind probably foggy with his dreams.
Charlie swallows his tears. He squeezes his eyes shut to keep his reply steady. "I'm here." He holds Nick's hand.
"Love you." Nick hums and drifts right off again.
Charlie listens to his breathing for long minutes before he lets himself succumb to sleep too.