Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It was a slow day at the café. Writing had come flowing to Charlie for a few hours now and his back could feel it right at its base. He trusted this to be a quiet break alarm and so made a mental note to finish up the current idea and stop right after. He typed in a few notes reminding post-break Charlie to pick up on a certain idea and allowed his eyes to finally close, letting his head roll along with his eyes towards the window behind him and shifting his weight into the cushion now pressed against his aching back.

His breathing was all he could hear; slow and deep. Sometimes, when he heard the tone of his voice in this same echoing breathing, he was surprised as to how low it seemed. He wondered whether this was how it sounded all the time, and thought of talking to hear it himself, to freshen up the all too slippery memory of his voice, but the man stayed silent…brewing the bravery to talk to himself aloud in that moment. 

While Charlie’s head and feelings tossed and turned inside himself, someone couldn't help but notice the tiny controlled mess happening in front of them, next to the shop’s entrance.

Nick, who had been waiting by the counter for his order, looked at the resting man across from him. The beautiful hexagon-like glass window’s seat was occupied by an even more beautiful person, as Nick’s thoughts had decided, the softest-looking curls fell over his resting eyes, which, despite being closed since before Nick could look at them, felt like the most inviting thing to him. He now considered them to be the key to understanding the moment in front of him, which he suddenly and desperately wanted to do, as the movement of gears in Charlie’s head and chest traveled through his entire being and into Nick’s senses.

As Charlie opened his eyes, having failed to allow himself to speak aloud for only his ears to hear, the ceiling greeted him with a familiar small chandelier that hung reassuringly from it. He smiled to himself, glad to have a place that made him feel so safe and that matched his needs to work comfortably on what he loved the most. 

He straightened his back and stretched his arms in front of his laptop’s screen, almost touching it with the palms of his hands. He finally let his eyes wander around the room and found a set of hazel eyes looking directly into his. His eyebrows furrowed and lips curled up the tiniest bit after taking account of the man’s expression: head tilted to the side, mouth slightly open and heat growing up his cheeks. 

As Nick registered Charlie’s questioning gaze, he looked away in embarrassment, but couldn't keep his head from facing the blue eyes once again, accompanied with the silliest smile he had ever felt on his face. To Nick’s surprise, he was met with a warm smile and the cutest, most perfect dimples he had ever seen. 

He could have stayed that way forever, he thought; just staring at Charlie’s face and letting himself feel a million things a second about him, but a hand on his shoulder startled him awake. Looking to his right, Nick was met with a woman’s polite smile from behind the counter. 

“Sir, your tea’s ready... your name is Nick, right?”, she asked, expectantly. 

Nick answered, polite and embarrassed, “Yeah…oh!, yeah, sorry. Thank you so much.”

He stumbled through his words but managed to locate and walk towards the area where the delivery was meant to be done. He took his cup, left a quick tip and thanked the worker once more, still wearing a fading red tint either side and over the bridge of his nose. 

He went to turn towards the door but stopped immediately. He couldn't just walk out right next to the guy and say nothing, he didn't want to do that… but what would he say?, would he just introduce himself and ask to sit with him?... there wasn't even another chair at his table, it was a seat for a single person. A single…person. Was he even single? Oh god, oh god, what?! 

‘I am going to stand here forever.’, he thought, before hearing his name being called almost right next to his ear, startling him awake for the second time in the last two minutes. Nick turned and swore he would have cried right there had he seen him say his name clearly just now.

“Hey” Charlie said and seemed to realize something right after. “Sorry! I heard your name before and, erm, you didn't seem to hear me at first, so…” Charlie’s voice was low and kind, it made Nick’s chest ache a little. He mumbled a bit trying to find the words but felt weird to acknowledge the fact that he’d heard and used Nick’s name again…he decided to get to the point. 

“Anyway, are you okay?”

Chapter Text

“Anyway, are you okay?”

Nick looked puzzled all of a sudden. As if the guy who had so recently and so quickly become the headline of every paper at every corner in his mind decided to test him and try and prove that he - the man who was, in fact, staring at Charlie for God knows how long before being caught - was actually some creep before calling him out on it.

He tensed at the new possibility for a moment. But this just lasted a second, before Nick realised his slight panic was only projecting into his thoughts and - aware of his natural inability to stop it - onto his face as well.

“I’m- I-...hey…” he landed on a safe start, for his own sanity. 

He visibly relaxed, as he took in the blue eyes now facing him, not a single thing Nick would ever think to want to avoid in sight.

“I’m alright, and it’s okay…” he started, making an effort to collect himself; he did not want to screw this up. 

“You don’t have to apologise over that, you can totally say my name however much you’d like,” a small smile had already crept on his face as he softly gasped in a single breath once he finished the sentence, giving away how little control he had over his breathing, then.

He began to chuckle slightly but visibly cringed as his mind digested what he’d just said. 

“Shit, sorry, that came out so weird,” Nick started stumbling over words to explain himself, but stopped, almost physically incapable of continuing and not melt into a puddle right then, at the burst of the sweetest - and a tad amused, but also sort of self-aware - giggle from the slimmer man’s chest. 

“Okay, okay. We could both stop apologising over nothing, maybe.” With a smile now settled on his face, Charlie continued, “Erm, I was just about to order a new cup of coffee and thought I’d ask you to join me, that is if you weren’t heading somewhere now, of course,” he gestured vaguely to the door for the last part. 

Charlie’s confession was met with an almost blank expression, Nick’s unspoken thoughts and the trace of a response making its way to and only to Charlie through the glint in his eyes. A glint that pushed through a place of momentary surprise and hope, each waging a tiny battle that clouded Nick’s senses, but reached Charlie as a greeting, as a hug on its way inside before settling, earnest, in the left side of himself.

An admittedly staggering nervous thrill followed the new warmth within, spreading from his chest over to his limbs. Charlie had done enough self-taming, (if that could ever be a kind enough thing to say about yourself after learning to live with an eating disorder from a young age) to know how to regulate his own impulses. So, he tried not to focus too hard on the thought of this man’s eyes giving away how he truly and inexplicably belonged to him and rummaged for any scrap of patience he could manage and awaited his response.

The hurricane that swept away any notion or memory off Nick’s head on how to portray any casual decorum was growling and packed with possibilities, sneaky, flashing daydreams about that blue facing him, eager ways to say yes, and ‘ohmygodthatwasthecutestthingI’veeverseen’-based thoughts, but also mostly just internal screaming.

Soon enough, after some more gaping at each other that both men allowed no matter how lengthy it may or may not have gotten, the jumbles of Nick’s and Charlie’s insides were under control and Nick could redirect the energy into making something fruitful out of the response.

“I would fucking love to” 

In the end, - he willed the thought - was there a point in ever trying to water himself down? He kind of wanted to show everything to this guy, anyway. He steadied himself.

Charlie let out a surprised chuckle, smile not faltering yet. 

“Okay,” a sort of sigh left his lips as he said it; Nick’s earlier telltale gasp-for-air-mid-sentence moment mirrored.

“Here, let me just…” he moved and pulled a chair from the table beside him and started to pull it towards the window. He figured no one would be needing it soon.

Nick took a hesitant step towards him, looking around. Reading the stranger without a second thought and from the corner of his eye, Charlie eased his worries.

“It’s fine, people don’t usually come in this early.” A curious smile that seemed to only cling to one corner of Nick’s mouth began spreading, hesitance forgotten.

“Oh, so you’re a regular here?,” Nick’s tone let Charlie know of the soft smile behind him as he cleared the round little table.

His hand hovered, then fell and rested over one of the quick-note-infested post-its sticking to the surface as he looked up at Nick for a second. 

“I guess I am,” he concluded after a micro-assessment. “I mean...” he started and transferred the post-it to the blank part of a trim-looking notebook page that sported the same scribbles as the now adjacent blue square. 

“I do come here during long breaks from uni. I’m in Leeds, so, just across the street.” Charlie finally stuffed his laptop and notebook into his backpack and went to sit down on his rightful cushion adjacent to the wide window. The new guest joined the all-too-small table.

“Oh, that’s so cool,” Nick said the littlest bit too eagerly. 

“I’m actually here to find my friend, Sahar, she goes to Leeds as well,” Nick said and smiled, thinking of the dear group of people who’d led him there that morning.

Sahar had left behind an important binder at his place over the weekend, when Nick’s monthly sleepover took place. It managed to get stuck in between the cluster of mattresses and furniture that the lot pushed together clumsily in his living room. After Darcy demanded Sahar fill them all in on her final project. So she’d taken the binder out and performed an impromptu presentation on her work, rewarded, of course, with a roaring round of applause, cheering and congratulations.

“It wasn't even finished yet, and it’s not like we understood a single thing,” Nick laughed as he told Charlie the story, offering bits and quirks on his friends along the way. “But we’re all on being supportive, especially Darcy, she’s always trying to, like, remind us that what we do is important, you know?.” He took a sip of honey-sweetened tea, unsure of there being any logical reason for the easy flow of somewhat personal stories that he’d just spilled to Charlie. It felt like the most natural thing in the world. 

“I... yeah, wow,” Charlie beamed at the sight of the unabashed love in Nick’s eyes that talking about his friends arose. “That’s- I’m so glad you get to have that.” His left dimple got squished between the palm that held his head and his smile.

“I’m guessing you’ve known them long enough? They sound lovely”

“Yeah,” Nick chuckled to himself.

“I met them in year eight, might have been ninth… Anyway, they were at my school with the band, ‘cause they- well Tara and Darcy, they were part of the school band-” he elaborated in a playful matter-of-fact manner, “-you see, they’re massive lesbians so, of course, they were the ones in band.” The side smirk that followed verged on a doting one. “The other guys I know from the rugby team a few years back,” he finished the thought. Charlie laughed once. Loudly and fucking stoked, because, just how did Nick come to be this guy who stumbles through sentences and blushes as easily as he does but also talks about the people in his life like this, like they’re his own flesh and blood and without hesitation.

Charlie decided he should probably find out.