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Charlie feels fidgety. Flighty. It would be easy to imagine himself drifting away, apart, into specks of dust and bone and nothing much else, if he wasn’t so firmly overwhelmed by his surroundings. It’s harder to escape the feeling when it doesn’t seem to have an obvious root; it sprouts through Charlie’s chest without a sensible source, spreading and growing jagged edges that scrape at his nerves.
There’s no easy way of plucking it out or cutting it down. The best Charlie can do is attempt to blunt the thorns and stop any further growth. The easiest way to do that is to seek out the quiet, melty fire Nick lights in him without fail.
Charlie picks his head up from where he’s staring, unseeing, at his textbook, to where Nick is laying on the floor across from him, stomach down, brows furrowed at his laptop screen. Charlie slides his textbook off his crossed legs, tips his head back against his bed, and swallows in an attempt to even his breath.
“Do you want to take a break?” Charlie asks, tentative and hopeful.
Nick hums absently.
Charlie’s fingers tremble and twitch. He twists them into knots. “Come sit with me for a bit?”
Nick’s eyes flicker to him and then back to his laptop, and the furrow between his brow deepens. He tucks the lid of his laptop down and pushes onto his knees, and a bit of tension slips out of Charlie in the wake of something more joyfully expectant.
“Actually, good idea. Do you want some tea? I mean, is it weird—do you mind if I go make some?”
Charlie’s hopes dip slightly, but a mild warmth eases his shoulders. Enough for him to offer Nick a tinily amused, fully fond smile. “If you want.”
Nick flashes him a hint of his lopsided grin, and that expectant thing in Charlie flutters, but rather than dipping towards Charlie for a kiss of any kind—or any affection whatsoever—Nick pushes to his feet and is straight out the door.
For the length of Nick’s absence, Charlie floats further away, until he’s holding himself here by pure force of will and still trembling like a leaf. He’s sure that now, like this, Nick will notice instantly.
But Nick returns, hands Charlie a cup of tea, and settles back down at his laptop with barely a glance.
Charlie’s teeth grind. He sucks in breaths until his jaw loosens, swallows until he can force more words up his throat. “Is that so important you can’t take a five minute break?”
He tries to make it light; he’s relieved there are no cracks; he’s sure he sounds flat—curious at the very best.
Nick stiffens. “Sort of.”
It’s not the response Charlie was expecting. “Really?”
“Well, the tea took a few minutes.”
The words seem light; Nick’s expression is blank, if still slightly furrowed; he sounds defensive—flat at best.
Charlie curls his hands around the cup of tea he can’t bring himself to drink. All he manages to say is, “Nick.”
“Everyone’s telling me I’m behind on these applications,” Nick spits out, all in a rush, “and even though it shouldn’t matter and it’s unfair if it’s true you’re supposed to have a better chance if you apply by the early deadlines. So. Yes, it’s important.”
It takes a moment for Charlie to understand. His fingers spasm around his mug. The jagged burrs in his chest sprout into a dozen sharp-edged thorns. This time, ‘flat’ is generous. “So, you’ve come to spend some time time with me to get your applications to leave me all ready. We should’ve made it a proper date.”
Nick stills entirely, and his gaze finally settles on Charlie. Instead of melty warmth, Charlie feels the burn of clenching an ice cube. “What?”
Charlie looks down into his tea. His fingers curl until his nails scrape over the ceramic.
“Charlie, don’t. Are you being serious? We talked about it. I thought—you told me to do this. It’s not like I want to be away from you. You were the whole reason I barely considered this to begin with!”
It’s not anger, in Nick’s tone, not yet. But the barbed tips of frustration are there, prodded by confusion, incredulity. Charlie wonders how easy it will be to make them equally sharp. He doesn’t want to know and he can’t resist the urge to find out. “Were being the operative word?”
Nick pushes onto his knees. His lips are pressed into a thin line. “Right. Is this what you really think, then? So what, you just said you supported me and I was supposed to know you didn’t actually mean it?”
That cuts a slit in the curtain of Charlie’s anger, and his fingers flatten around his mug again as he meets Nick’s gaze. “Of course not! I’m always going to support you, Nick, but that’s not—did you think I’d be excited about being left behind?”
“You’re making it sound like it’s about leaving you and not a decision I have to make to set up the whole fucking rest of my life.”
“But that decision is leaving me!”
“Jesus, Charlie, you’re not the only one who struggles,” Nick explodes, climbing right up onto his feet.
Charlie stares at him.
Nick pushes a hand through his hair; from the state of the soft strands, it could be for the hundredth time today. Charlie hadn’t noticed, when Nick got here a few hours ago. “You’re not the only one who gets anxious, or scared, or worried about being left. You’re not the only one in this relationship.”
Some of Charlie’s thorns wither. He leans to set his mug on his nightstand, then twists towards Nick. “I didn’t—”
“Do you think I’m not constantly thinking about what it means if I’m going to uni somewhere else? It means no chance of going on and sharing housing with anyone I know. It means not coming home to mum everyday for the first time ever. It’s not even just you, even though that’s the worst part.”
“Nick, I—”
“It’s stupid, because I keep thinking it’s going to be like when you were at the clinic, but worse. As if there’s anything in the world that could have been worse than that.”
The pricks in Charlie’s chest are slowly being swapped out for the prick of moisture behind his eyes. “How do you mean?” he asks hoarsely.
Nick seems to get smaller, downward and inward as if he’s shrinking and deflating at once. His voice has lost all its power when he answers, “I didn’t know I could feel that alone until I had you and then you weren’t there.”
Charlie’s prickly feelings die at the root. “Nick,” he whispers, thickly, and then he climbs to his feet and gathers his boyfriend in the hug he’d wanted in the first place. Nick sinks into him in the way he always does, head dropping down onto Charlie’s shoulder and arms wounding tight around his middle.
“I always felt so stupid,” Nick whispers, an admittance meant barely even for Charlie. “You were really struggling and actually on your own and I couldn’t go a day without thinking about how lost and lonely I was. I never even had to worry about feeling guilty by telling someone that because you weren’t here to tell.”
Charlie squeezes Nick’s shoulders. “Nick,” he breathes, again, because what else can he say? “I thought you said you talked to your mum, and you spent a lot of time with the rugby lads and our friends.”
“I know,” Nick says, and it does sound guilty. But more than that, it’s miserable. “But they’re not you.”
For a beat, Charlie’s heart stops, and then all he can say is, “I know,” because he does. Out of everything Nick his said, nothing sums it up better in a way Charlie intrinsically understands.
It doesn’t matter how many people Charlie loves or has loved or will love. No one else is ever going to be Nick.
He can’t honestly say that it comes as much of a surprise to him that Nick knows this because he feels it just the same.
“Come here,” Charlie murmurs, giving Nick’s shoulders one more squeeze before parting enough to guide Nick to his bed. Nick settles himself in by the wall while Charlie collects Nick’s—likely cold—cup of tea and places it next to his own, then picks up Nick’s laptop and takes it with him to the bed.
The aimless anxiety that had clawed through him since waking settles some as he settles into Nick’s side and an arm comes over his shoulders. It means he only has to take one steadying breath as he braces Nick’s laptop on his own knee and gets a glimpse of the various tabs, and the open application site.
“I’m going to sit right here,” Charlie announces, “and we’re going to work on this together. Because that’s what it’s going to be like later.” He nudges the laptop onto Nick’s knees and snuggles closer, wrapping both his arms around Nick’s. “I’m going to be right here, and any time I’m struggling or you are, we’ll work it out together.”
When he’s met with silence, he tilts his head up to find Nick’s lopsided smile making his eyes miles brighter and softer than they had been all day. “Are you sure?”
In answer, Charlie presses his lips to Nick’s shoulder. “I’m sorry I never thought about how hard it was for you when I was away. I’m sorry I got bratty because I was feeling shit and I didn’t realise you were, too.”
There’s a weight against his head, a kiss pressed to his curls. Instead of enforcing their s-word rule, Nick says, “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. About either.”
Charlie skims over Nick’s wrist and eventually finds his hand; Nick laces their fingers together. “I meant it, you know. I’ll always support you. And that means I can be there for you as much as you are for me, when you’ll let me. I love you more than anything in the world, Nick.”
“I know,” Nick murmurs, squeezing Charlie’s hand tight. “I love you too.” With a sigh, he lifts his head from Charlie’s and steadies his laptop with his free right hand; the rest of them parts no further. “Right then. Where to next?”