Chapter Text
If someone ever asked Charlie Spring if he thought he would end up in a career devoted almost solely to insects as a wee lad, he would most certainly have baulked. To him, insects were creepy, crawly, and had a sorry tendency to swarm in horrific ways, particularly the very tiniest critters. And to be fair, he still doesn’t exactly have the most affection towards gnats and mosquitos, but Charlie fell completely in love with certain genera of beetles and butterflies during a tour at the National History Museum in his early teens. His very favourite is the large blue butterfly, Phengaris arion, and he is always willing to share interesting factoids about them to anyone who wants to listen.
Which is a steadily declining list of people. His parents had been the first to tell him to stop rambling, even before he properly got into university. His younger brother, Ollie, had shortly followed suit, though they reached a truce where Charlie would get to talk about butterflies if Ollie got to talk about tractors and trains. This, of course, only lasted until Ollie’s grew older, then he followed the same path as their parents. Tori and Michael still allow him to share his enthusiasm, though the former only responds with nasally hums and the latter spreads misinformation to the point where Charlie just gets frustrated by the sheer nonsense. I mean, everybody knows that butterflies aren’t just moths that are dressed fancy.
But in truth, maybe he doesn’t really need to share with laypeople anymore. Not when his beloved large blue has been his subject of research since his PhD, and still is central in his work at the National History Museum. Getting to work here with the entomology collection had been the full circle moment Charlie didn’t know he craved; after all, the NHM had been what inspired him to study it in the first place.
Some days he still feels like pinching his arm to remind himself that this is very much real.
And other days, Darcy would just do that for him. She works in touring exhibitions, and despite how chaotic she can be, she has an excellent eye for developing intuitive designs and the management of spaces. Even if they work in completely different departments, they had gravitated towards each other in the way only queer people can, and she swiftly adopted him when she saw him eating lunch by himself while wearing a rainbow pin on his shirt.
She introduced him to what she called ‘a little gay lunch crew’, which consists of her fiancée Tara, who works with palaeobotany, Aled, who is in charge of audio design at the exhibits, and Isaac, a librarian. Charlie really does appreciate them and has felt substantially less lonely since he started seeing them on the daily. It also helps that they don’t see each other too much during the day-to-day (aside from Darcy and Tara, obviously), so Charlie doesn’t get sick of them—and more importantly, they don’t get sick of Charlie.
But that doesn’t stop Darcy in particular from trying to get them to meet outside work hours.
“We should go to a quiz night at a pub sometime!” she suggests during one of their mid-week lunches.
Everybody looks up from their meals, and Aled even unplugs his headphones.
“What made you come up with that idea?” Tara says.
Her fiancée shrugs. “Iunno! Seems like a laugh. And we got a good shot at winning!”
“I guess we gotta go to one of those posh pubs, though,” Isaac says. “We’re doomed in the sports section of any normal pub.”
“Shit, you’re right,” Darcy replies. She turns towards Charlie. “Dr Spring! We need you to bring a fine date with you, so we got all bases covered.”
Charlie grimaces. Dating has always been a touchy subject for him. He’s never had much luck in that department, and with how he was mistreated by a boy who shall not be named during secondary, Charlie hasn’t been particularly keen on putting himself out there again.
Of course, he’s tried, but he’s the very definition of gay nerd, which has not gotten better since his eyesight took a nosedive from working in conditions of dim light and he had to get prescription glasses. Creeping closer to 30 made his slight frame less appealing to his peers as well, it seems, or maybe he just isn’t looking in the right places.
Not that he even knows where to look anymore. Most of the time, his eyes are firmly glued to the specimen collections in the backrooms, and when he’s off work, he’s usually just at home, watching something like GBBO, visiting his best friends Elle and Tao, or reading up on cutting edge entomology research. Or feeding the detritivores in his office. Speaking of, I should check up on that later.
“I don’t know, Darcy,” he says. “Can’t someone else bring someone sporty?”
“Lesbians—” she points between herself and Tara. “—has a boyfriend who is even less of a jock than you—” she points at Aled, who doesn’t even protest. “—and aroace.” She points at Isaac.
“Don’t any of you have any friends who got their sports ducks in a row?”
“Not unless we’re thinking lesbian athletes,” Tara says with a smile.
The rest just shake their heads.
“And I can’t say it’s tempting to ask if any of the posh, straight wankers who work here if they want to join,” Isaac says with a shudder.
He really has a point there.
“Want me to set you up with some of the gays I hang with on boardgame night?” Darcy asks. “I’ll vouch for them! And if they’re knobs, I’ll gladly end the friendship with them—no questions asked.”
Charlie sticks the fork into his salad and looks away from the rest as his face starts to burn. The rim of his spectacles suddenly feels much cooler where they rest against his cheeks.
“I-I don’t know about that.”
Darcy leans closer, and he can feel her eyes bearing down on him.
“What’s your type, good doctor?”
“You never call me doctor,” Tara says beneath her breath as she goes back to eating her wrap.
Darcy shushes her before returning her attention towards Charlie.
“Uh, I don’t know?” Charlie says and shreds the lettuce into tinier and tinier pieces. “I think I’d really like someone who’s nice to me. Who I can share a laugh with. Who doesn’t make fun of my passions… And it would be nice if he also were tall.”
“So no preference for physical appearance?”
Charlie shrugs. “I would like it if he could pick me up. And if he has a nice smile, but otherwise, not really.”
“You’re making this difficult for me, Dr Spring.”
Darcy rubs her chin thoughtfully.
“Maybe I just don’t trust lesbians’ taste in men,” Charlie replies cheekily.
Tara snorts at that and Isaac grins.
“Would you rather Aled try and set you up with someone then?” Darcy asks.
“Trust me, you don’t want that,” Aled interjects quickly. “I tried once already.”
“Really?” Tara asks disbelievingly.
The memory of not even hearing what Aled’s friend James said while they were at a concert floods into Charlie’s head. He remembers the complete lack of chemistry, and the mutual agreement at that.
“He was nice enough, but we were about as romantically compatible as Isaac and Dippy.”
Isaac flips him the bird, and a sporadic chorus of laughter erupts around the table.
And that is that as far as the dating conversation goes.
Charlie returns to his workstation for the day and does his duty of examining various specimen currently not on display for damages or decay. By the time closing hours approach, and his supervisor has long gone, he finally remembers that he was supposed to see how his detritivores are getting on.
He knows most of them aren’t technically even insects, so they are strictly not in his field of interest. But it doesn’t stop him from marvelling at the processes they facilitate, and he has a certain fondness for how they help keep the circle of life going. He grabs what remains of his lunch, the core of an apple, out his rucksack and heads on over towards his office.
Right as Charlie’s hand hovers over the handle of the door after unlocking it, there’s a loud crashing noise that erupts from within.
He freezes.
Has someone broken into his office? He doesn’t really keep anything of value in there, so he’s not sure what they might be looking after. Maybe they’re just opportunists.
Or… Or. Shit, what if the tank fell?!
Panic sets in as he drags the door open, praying that the worst-case scenario hasn’t come to fruition.
But no matter what Charlie imagined in the corridor, nothing could have prepared him for the vision that greets him inside.
There’s glass and dirt everywhere. The floor is also littered with arthropods in various states of movements: some are completely still, some are wriggling around, others look squashed. The table that that tank stood on has also bowed and bent to pieces, with two legs broken clean off and fragments of wood are splintered around the office.
None of this is particularly remarkable compared to the biggest change in the room, which is the presence of another person.
A man, to be precise. A very naked man, to be even more precise.
He sits in the mound of dirt that used to be contained by the tank, with most of the compost covering his lower body, which prevents him from being indecent. He has blond hair swept to one side, large, warm brown eyes, a distinct slope on the bridge of his nose, a wide jaw, and a large frame. A soft roll of pudge sits on his stomach; Charlie finds it matches the rest of his brawny build, including his large thighs and muscular arms. He blinks and looks around the room as if disoriented, until he settles his gaze on Charlie.
Then he breaks into the biggest smile Charlie has ever seen.
“Hi!” he says.
Charlie looks from the strange, naked man to the ceiling. He had sort of expected there to be a hole in the roof that he fell through, but there’s nothing of the sort. How on earth did he get in here?!
“Hi?” Charlie responds cautiously. He takes a step back, nearly out the room and back into the corridor. He keeps observing the man, who wiggles his toes and looks with great fascination at his hands as he flexes his fingers.
Then anger sets in.
“How did you trespass into my office? Do I have to call security?”
He also wants to ask if this interloper is on drugs, but he feels that is a given with how odd this entire situation is. But how had he managed to get into his office? The window is closed, and the door was locked after I left.
The man looks back at Charlie again, and grins even wider than before.
“I’m a worm!”
Charlie doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry as he tries to process that sentence. Then a twinge of fear coils around his neck and settles him into a chokehold. What if he’s so zonked out his mind that he is dangerous?
“Sir, just because you destroyed my detritivore tank and you’re sitting in what remains of it, doesn’t mean you’re a worm.”
The man has the audacity to giggle as he says that, then pulls up his knees clumsily.
“I was inside when it went boom. I think I got too big.”
He then looks over at Charlie, squints, and then cocks his head to the side.
“Are you the one above who gave us food? You’re prettier than I thought.”
Charlie knows he shouldn’t be flattered. He knows that blushing at that assessment isn’t the response he should have to some odd stranger who broke his office equipment giving him a compliment. But he’s pretty sure that he’s doing that anyway.
“S-sir, I must insist! Please vacate my office this instant, or I will call security!”
The man hums happily before he starts getting up in a rather uncoordinated manner. Charlie can’t help but yelp as the soil falls around him and he’s all but stark naked. He makes sure to look between the man’s face and the ceiling. Charlie is pretty sure that his limbs quiver beyond control when the man approaches and walks around him. Whether he should attribute it to fear or embarrassment is not so certain. He feels the man’s nose draw close to his neck and then inhale.
Charlie shudders and lets out some strangled noise and wants to beg him to ‘please leave me alone, you can have my wallet or even my glasses, just don’t hurt me’. Yet his throat has closed, restricting all but the most basic airflow.
“It is you!” the man exclaims excitedly. “You smell like those mean beetles, but also lettuce… And coffee! I wish you gave us blueberries more often. Those are my favourite.”
Huh?
Charlie swivels his head and looks over his shoulder at the man’s face. He looks dead earnest, with not a hint of irony.
How would he know about the blueberries?
“W-what else—what else do I feed you?”
Charlie doesn’t want to admit it, but he’s afraid of the answer—because this situation is rapidly turning supremely illogical. He wants to look for rational answers, but before his brain gets the chance to flip through the rolodex of sensibility, the man speaks.
“Last time you opened, what did you call it, the tank? You threw in assorted greens. Before that was cardboard and eggshells, which was kind of boring, but some of my friends really liked that stuff. You put in coffee grounds all the time too. And every seven times, you bring us blueberries. Those are delicious.”
Is this man taking the piss? How would he know all these little details about the compost? This is mad.
“Sir, have you been spying on me? That is highly illegal!” Charlie tries his best to sound irritated, but he finds that his voice comes out astonished instead.
The man laughs again and starts running his palms up and down Charlie’s arms, which makes him flinch.
“Hard to spy when you didn’t really have eyes before. You big worms are so funny.”
What the fuck is happening? Nothing is making any bloody sense anymore.
“Oh hey!” the man says giddily. He grabs the apple core Charlie had been holding onto and examines it. “I know that smell! These are also good.”
Then he shoves it into his mouth and sucks on it. It rocks back and forth between his lips like a dummy before it plunges down towards his throat and he makes a loud gagging noise before spitting it out on the floor.
He coughs a bunch. “That wasn’t nice.”
It looked like he didn’t realise he has to chew it.
“Mister, I think you should go,” Charlie suggests carefully.
To his surprise, the man nods and waves at him. “Okay!”
Then he turns around and walks straight into the door and his head slams into it. While being startled, Charlie’s eyes stray from the back of his fair head, down his expansive back, and onto his bum, before once again meeting the unassuming concrete of the ceiling.
“Ow,” the man exclaims as he rubs his head.
He can talk just fine but doesn’t seem like he knows how to do basic things with his limbs. He’s definitely zooted out his mind.
Then a horrific thought takes hold. What would people think if they saw this strange man in his birthday suit exit his office? By god, they’d make horrid inferences about the nature of this streaking. And he might get fired if any other members of staff think he had a hook-up in here. That is a risk he absolutely cannot take.
“Uh, sir? Maybe you should sit down so I can get you some trousers and a shirt before you leave?”
The man nods and moves to sit on the small leather bench in the corner of his office, which has mostly been left unharmed by the incident with the tank. Charlie tosses a pillow into his lap to give him some modesty.
“Stay here, okay? And don’t let anyone else come in.”
“You got it!”
Charlie sneaks past the door, even if the corridor is empty, as he locks the door behind him, then lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.
“Y’alright, Charlie?”
He jumps at the sound of a voice calling his name but eases a bit once he sees the curly head of one Tara Jones, who is carrying a large case with what he can only assume to be samples wrapped in white cloth. Her eyes are filled with apprehension and amusement.
“Yeah, just peachy, thanks!” he responds and starts walking off.
“I heard a noise coming from your office earlier, then you yelped. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
Charlie hurriedly shakes his head. “Oh, just a little accident when I was feeding the worms.”
He laughs in a manner he knows is quite stilted.
“I just need to fetch some cleaning equipment to remove some spilled compost, very wet and gross, you don’t need to know the details!”
He is about to push his way past her, when there’s another loud thump from within his office, and yet another groan of pain. His heart stutters before it jumps into his throat, and he looks between Tara and the door.
“Is there someone in there?” she asks and mimics his eye movement.
“W-what?! No!”
She gasps and covers her mouth.
“Charlie Spring, PhD, are you having a secret tryst at work?!” she whispers at him.
“N-no!” he protests. “Nothing like that!”
Tara giggles, nudges his arm, then winks at him with a sly look in her eye.
“So that’s why you resisted Darcy’s setup earlier at lunch. Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me.”
And then she walks off, in the direction opposite of where he’s heading.
Charlie doesn’t know if he should be relieved or more anxious but errs towards the latter. Fuck.
He hustles to the staff lockers in a separate alcove. The man is far bigger than Charlie, so he can’t really pick out any of his own clothes to give him. Instead, he rummages through the lost and found bin for a pair of stretchy joggers and a button-up shirt. Then he rushes back to his office and prays that the man hasn’t ruined it further.
To Charlie’s relief, he is still seated on the bench, but has picked up a plastic plant from the table next to where he is sitting, and looks deeply lost in concentration as he traces the leaves.
He throws the clothes into the man’s lap. “Here. Please get dressed.”
Charlie turns around to give him some privacy. There’s some shuffling of fabric before the man declares that he is done.
When Charlie looks on over again, the man has put the trousers on his head, with the legs draping down across his shoulder like floppy ears.
Charlie facepalms and sighs. “Those are bottoms. You use them to cover your legs. I swear, it’s like you’ve never worn clothes before.”
He yanks the joggers off the man’s head, which leaves his hair tousled. His face looks puzzled, but then he grins at Charlie. “I haven’t! Could you teach me?”
Begrudgingly, Charlie instructs him how to put on trousers, with only minimal looking, and he looks so triumphant once he’s clothed from the waist down (thank gods, Charlie thinks). He struggles a bit with the shirt and makes a soft whining noise when he doesn’t manage to work the buttons.
“Help me?” he asks softly and gesticulates towards the shirt.
You’re going to be the death of me, Charlie thinks as his face steams. He nonetheless leans down and starts buttoning the shirt, one by one, not daring to look up at the embarrassingly handsome man’s face.
“What’s your name?” Charlie asks in an effort to make this even slightly less awkward.
“Worms don’t have names. We’re just worms.”
Charlie decides to humour him. If he can’t escape this strange, but clumsy and mostly harmless man’s presence yet, he can at least play along.
“So not even a nickname or anything?”
“Nope! We can’t really talk.” He pops the p loudly. “Though I like that.”
“Like what?”
“Nickname. Maybe that can be my name.”
“Nick is an actual name, so why not,” Charlie responds with a shrug.
“Hi, I’m Nick!”
Nick grins down at him as Charlie struggles to latch the second-to-last button of the shirt. Clearly, this is several sizes too small for this ox of a man, but it was the only fabric he found.
“What’s your name?” Nick asks.
“It’s not important.”
“Nice to meet you, it’s not important!”
Charlie groans.
“That’s not my name! My name is Charlie.”
“Ooooh, I like that! Charlie is a nice name.”
Nick repeats the syllables of his name slowly, mouthing and drawing them out. It makes Charlie feel like he’s dying on the inside, and he swears that he’s so warm in the face that he’s astral projecting into the fucking sun. He gives up on buttoning the two top buttons, which isn’t a bad look, he thinks, but it is certainly a bit too risqué for a work environment.
“I like these,” Nick says and points at his trousers. “They’re nice and soft. But this is so tight.”
He whines as he tugs at the cuffs of his shirt, which rest on his forearms instead of his wrists.
“Well, it’s the best we got!” Charlie says with a huff.
That is when he realises he didn’t bring any footwear for Nick and chews himself out in his head before he remembers the pair of oversized olive crocs he keeps in the office. Handy for when floors are sticky and slippery if there’s been a mishap. He sticks them on Nick’s feet, who wiggles them back and forth as he giggles to himself. They’re a tight fit, but unlike the shirt, not hopelessly so.
“There. All decent.” Charlie points towards the door. “And that is your cue to leave, sir. Have a good day.”
The man waves at him with a smile and wobbles towards the door by dragging his legs. Does he even know how to walk?
“Bye Charlie!”
“Bye, Nick.”
Before the door even properly closes behind the strange, blond man, and Charlie can think of cleaning up the mess he has left behind in his office, he hears Nick’s voice again.
“Hi! Are you also Charlie?”
He swings the door back open, only to see Nick standing in the corridor, bouncing on his toes, while talking to Tara, now carrying an empty container.
“No?” she says and looks between the two men.
Charlie panics. And does the stupidest thing he possibly could, but it is also the only feasible option in his mind then and there. He wraps his arm around Nick’s waist and smiles disarmingly at Tara.
“He’s just being silly, right, love? This is Nick! He’s, uh—he’s my boyfriend.”
Nick doesn’t seem even slightly phased by this and just waves at Tara again. “Hi! I’m a worm.”
Tara’s face steadily scrunches more and more with confusion. “Hi? I didn’t know you were seeing someone Charlie?”
“Nick, this is Tara. She’s a colleague and good friend of mine.”
Charlie pauses, doing his best to think on the fly. “Uh, it’s pretty new! I can’t say I was ready to introduce him to everyone yet, but hay ho, shit happens! He got a concussion earlier today, so I have to look after him.”
The speed at which he rambles would no doubt qualify him for some sort of Guinness World record somewhere.
“I see…” Tara says sceptically. “Is he going to be okay?”
Nick starts poking at Charlie’s curls, playing with them with his fingers, which makes it exceedingly difficult for Charlie to focus on the barrage of lies oozing out his mouth.
“Y-yes! Nothing major. He’s my silly worm, and I’m his little butterfly, we look after each other.”
Nick giggles. “Butterfly. I like that. You’re so pretty.”
Why does god hate me, Charlie thinks as another piece of him tumbles into the abyss of humiliation below.
“Okay then,” Tara says and starts pulling away. “I’ll leave you two lovebirds to it then! It was nice to meet you, Nick!”
“You too, Tara!”
Once she’s out of earshot, Nick places his chin atop Charlie’s curls and quietly asks: “When did I become your boyfriend, my little butterfly?”
A tremor runs all the way from Charlie’s calves up his thighs as if his legs were actual melting butter. When did his life turn into this unpredictable mess? When did his workplace become like school again, where buff lads tried to pull the wool over his eyes and snicker behind his back?
“Sh-shut up,” Charlie says as he adjusts his glasses. He looks at the floor and nudges his toes against the linoleum. “Where do you live, Nick? You need to go home.”
Nick grabs Charlie by the hand and guides him back to the office. He makes a sweeping gesticulation towards the broken tank. “I sort of broke my house. Guess I’m homeless now!”
Even as Nick smiles so earnestly at him, Charlie can’t help but think that this isn’t funny anymore. It wasn’t really fun in the first place, but he was too confused and running on sheer adrenaline to notice how he was feeling:
Mocked.
Mocked in a way that wasn’t dissimilar to people in secondary latching onto him being a gay bug nerd.
Despite his best efforts to contain them, tears start running out the ducts in his eyes. His hands ball into fists that tremble.
“It’s not nice,” he chokes out as his lip joins his hands in vibrating. “It’s not nice to pull my leg like that.”
He runs a sleeve under the frames of his glasses as he sniffles and wipes away a tear.
“The tank cost a lot of money. And it’s totally ruined now. Why are you picking on me?”
Charlie hunches over as he doesn’t manage to contain the sob that wants out.
Instead of a hollow jeer or laughing while pointing, Nick tips Charlie’s chin up and looks into his mist-stricken eyes. There’s nothing indicating schadenfreude in those warm eyes of his, only concern and empathy.
“Hey. I’m sorry I broke your tank.”
Somehow, it doesn’t help that Nick is so kind; in fact, it just makes Charlie curse his existence inwards even more. He wants to scream and yell but settles for sobbing even more as Nick brings him in for a hug as he presses him against his chest. He indulges in the warmth of his body as he cries for just a little bit longer.
Until he feels more embarrassed crying on the arm of a stranger than he needs comfort.
“Sorry,” Charlie says as his breath steadies.
Nick runs his hands beneath Charlie’s smudged glasses and wipes the last of his tears with his thumbs.
“You have nothing to be sorry for. How can I help fix the tank?”
Charlie lets out a watery laugh. “You can pay for a new one. But I don’t think worms have any money.”
“You’d be right about that. But what if I could get money?”
“H-how?!”
Nick shrugs. “I’ll figure something out. Open to suggestions! After I find a place to stay.”
“If that really was your home,” Charlie says with a sniff. “Where are you going to live now?”
“I don’t know! I’m sure I can dig into a comfortable patch of dirt and make a new home.”
Again, Charlie laughs, but more heartily now. “You really are a silly worm. Big worms, as you call us, don’t live in the dirt.”
“You don’t?” Nick regards him inquisitively. “But the dirt is everywhere.”
“Maybe when you’re small!”
Charlie thinks for a second, and against better judgment, he decides that it would be better to show Nick than to tell him.
“Come with me to my place. You’ll see.”
After they clean out most of the mess left from the broken tank, they head home from the museum through the tube. But not before Nick addresses a broom to ask if it is also Tara. It takes a bit of explaining from Charlie before he seems to get that there are lots of names out there, that Charlie, Nick, and Tara are just some of many. When public transport seems to scare him, Charlie grabs Nick’s hand and rubs soothing circles against the back to get him to calm down.
“Before we go inside, there’s something you need to know,” Charlie says as they stand outside the door to his apartment.
Nick looks at him attentively.
“I have a dog. Her name is Nellie, and she’s going to be very enthusiastic about meeting you. I don’t want you to be scared.”
“Is she bigger than us?” Nick asks quietly. He looks somewhat scared. “I remember dogs being so big.”
Charlie laughs and shakes his head. “Not at all. Much smaller, actually. She’s just rambunctious.”
With Nick’s approval, he finally twists the key and opens the door, where they’re both greeted by the excitable Border Collie. She spins around Charlie’s legs before she trots on over to Nick and gives him a good sniff. After Charlie gives him some instructions on how to behave, he gives her a few good scritches and lowers himself to her level as he presses his face against her.
“She’s so soft,” he says against her fur, muffled.
“I think she likes you!”
In fact, Nellie seems so smitten with Nick that she sits between his legs when they relocate to the sofa, and he keeps giving her pets, despite Charlie saying that he’s spoiling her rotten with all the attention. His hand absentmindedly threads through her fur as he looks around the apartment.
“Wow. This is much cooler than dirt,” he says.
“I would hope so,” Charlie says. “Dirt is plenty useful, but flats can be pretty great. Not to mention not nearly as cramped, I imagine.”
“It had its upsides. Was plenty cosy.”
“So are pillows and blankets.”
“Show me?”
Charlie spreads a fleece blanket across both Nick and Nellie, which causes the latter to sneeze before she pokes her head out of it. He folds the blanket around Nick’s larger frame, tucking him in.
“You were right. This is much better than dirt.”
“Told you so! Are you hungry?”
Nick nods rapidly. “Do you have blueberries?”
“Lemme check. I can order takeout too.”
While waiting for pizza to arrive, Nick makes his way through a small cup of blueberries, remarking how tiny they seem to be now, and Nellie snatches the berries he drops and happily chews on those.
“This isn’t fair!” Nick remarks after the first bite of pizza. “How come you lot get to eat this?! It’s so much better than what you feed us!”
“It wouldn’t be good for the compost! Maybe the tomatoes and mushrooms would be fine, but the cheese most certainly wouldn’t!”
In place of complaining further, Nick stuffs his face with more slices, until most of the pizza is gone. Charlie only managed to have two slices himself, but that is fortunately enough to make him feel full. Both lean back against the sofa cushions, Nick nearly out of breath from eating so fast.
“I think this has been the best day in my life so far, my little butterfly,” Nick says once he has calmed down. He looks over to Charlie, seated to his left, resting his head against the back of the sofa. “Thank you.”
In the background, some tv series Charlie put on drones about through the laptop speakers on the table. Nellie contentedly snoozes at their feet, letting out soft snuffles every now and then.
“And it only took you destroying the several hundred-pound tank where I keep my detritivores to make that happen. Thanks, Nick,” Charlie says playfully. He slides off his glasses and places them on the table.
Nick responds by pouting. “I didn’t mean to! It was my home too. I don’t really know what happened.”
Charlie shoves at Nick in jest, grinning coyly. “You’re really committed to this worm bit, huh? I’m not daft.”
Nick shoves Charlie back. “I’m telling the truth! Honest!”
A full-on playfight breaks out between them, which startles Nellie awake. She hops along the sofa, keen to join in, but the two men only have eyes for each other. The pizza box is shuffled onto the floor, and Nellie gets more preoccupied grabbing leftover slices of pepperoni than bothering them. They giggle and laugh until Charlie winds up atop Nick, with his chest pressed against Nick’s face as he pins his arms down.
“I can hear your heart,” he says quietly and tilts his ear towards Charlie’s chest. Arms lock around Charlie’s back, keeping him in place. Charlie’s face briefly feels frozen as his arms go rigid, joints locking. Then a heat blossoms throughout his entire torso, with roses blooming along his ears.
“How many hearts do you have?” Nick then asks.
“Humans have one heart usually.”
“Worms have five.”
“I know.”
Nick pulls away and looks up at Charlie with those big brown eyes of his.
“Do you want to listen to mine?”
He hesitates for just a moment, but the sheer intimacy of the situation makes Charlie think that this is right. So he nods and lowers himself against Nick’s chest. The arms that previously kept Charlie in place now tenderly embrace him. It’s unreasonable how safe he feels resting against a virtual stranger like this. But once he gets a good listen, Charlie jumps and sits above Nick, staring down at him in disbelief.
Then he presses his ear against Nick’s left pectoral again to confirm.
Rapid palpitations, far too numerous for a single heart. They sing desperately to Charlie, even if he can’t make out the exact amount.
But he would guess five if he were a betting man.
He sits up again. Nick hadn’t been joking. Either that, or something is very wrong with his circulatory system despite looking otherwise fine and functioning without problems.
“You’re a worm,” Charlie blurts out.
Nick smiles and looks from Charlie’s face to his own hand, which he flexes and examines as he moves his digits. “I was a worm. I guess I’m human now.”
Spurred on by his scientific mind, Charlie peruses as many theories as his brain can process while he looks down at this stupidly attractive man he has got straddled beneath him. But no matter the hypotheses he comes up with, his silly, creative mind goes back to fairy tales and romance. About animals becoming people and people being cursed to become animals. It’s completely irrational, against everything he should believe as a scientist.
But the little boy inside him who yearned for a prince charming to come to him, and for them to rescue each other, refuses to budge and slashes all the theories with a wooden sword and a pen. Fanciful fantasies win out.
“Nick?”
“Yeah?”
Charlie’s eyes dart between Nick’s eyes and lips, with traces of tomato sauce in the corners of his mouth.
“Do you want to stay human?”
“I think so, yeah.”
Charlie bites his lip as he tries to think of what to say next.
“I think I have an idea here. A hypothesis if you will. How to do that.”
Nick shifts beneath him and smiles fondly.
“Do share.”
“I—” Charlie trails off. His face suddenly feels way too hot. Static runs through his fingers and make them feel jittery and cold. His breathing goes shallow.
“I think we have to kiss to make that happen.”
“Is that so?”
Nick’s pupils have shifted, and his lids look droopier. His eyes also move up and down, similar to Charlie’s moments ago.
“Y-yeah.”
Another inhale.
“Is that something you want to do?” Exhale. “With me?”
Nick doesn’t hesitate. “Yeah.”
Charlie’s arms slide down next to Nick’s face, elbows settling into the crooks of his arms. Hands cup his face, brushing along faint stubble around his chin. Nick’s arms curl around the small of Charlie’s back, bringing him in closer. Once their faces are on collision course, Charlie closes his eyes and surrenders his lips entirely to the whims of his heart.
Nick tastes of tomato sauce and faint garlic, with maybe a dash of herb dressing. It is brief, chaste, a mere peck of the lips, with the barest invitation inside.
It is enough to make Charlie insatiably hungry again.
Even if he’s not sure he has ever felt anything as right as this before, Charlie nonetheless pulls back and opens his eyes. He is greeted by the sight of Nick’s face, eyes closed, expression still blissed out. When he finally parts his lids and looks up at Charlie, he grins widely and nudges him back down with his arms.
“Again,” Nick says.
And Charlie obliges.
This one is protracted, with lips gliding, tongues sliding, smiles begotten. Hands roam into hair, brush necks, and cup faces. By the time they drift apart, they’re both panting and grinning at each other. Charlie slumps over and leans his head against Nick’s chest while Nick plays with his curls.
What greets him now is a steady thrum, what he’d expect from a man of Nick’s fitness level. He giggles to himself and looks up at Nick, whose fondness bears down on him.
“I think it worked.”
And that is how Charlie Spring found the love of his life in a worm.