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Charlie had long ago accepted that no one else would ever fully get his tics.
Sure, he still managed to get friends and his family all accepted his Tourette's for what it was but none of them truly, personally understood what it was like.
Then, he met Patrick.
Patrick had Tourette's too but, unlike Charlie, he didn't try to hide it. He even had swearing tics (Charlie didn't have those, which he was grateful for), but he never tried to suppress them. Charlie supposed it made sense- Patrick was the gay kid at school, so he probably long ago gave up on trying to be socially acceptable.
Still, it was crazy to Charlie, because it felt like he was looking at everything he wished he had the balls to be.
Patrick didn't notice Charlie's tics at first, because the kid hid them so well, but he soon began to pick up on the little neck jerks and the occasional, forced eye roll and the quiet throat noises and the occasional odd word that the boy would call out and then try to write off.
It filled him with a weird sense of hope because, like Charlie, he'd never had any friends who truly got it before.
"Charlie, can I- Mph!- Ask you something?" he asked one evening as the two sat in his car. They'd done that a lot after everything with Brad- Just sit for hours on end and talk and occasionally leave to wander around the park.
"Yeah, sure"
"Do you have Tourette's?"
Silence filled the car, only occasionally broken by an involuntary shout from Patrick or throat spasm from Charlie. Eventually, Charlie shut his eyes and nodded and suddenly Patrick was hugging him.
"Why didn't you- Fuck! Fuck off! Haha!- Say Something earlier?" Patrick asked, releasing the freshman from his hold.
"I've suppressed it for so long" Charlie replied and then his neck jerked to the side and he shouted nonsense and looked at Patrick in fear but the older boy didn't judge him. "I guess I was just afraid"
"I know it- Heyo! Ha! Fucking faggot!- Might be hard, but- Haha!- You don't need to- Haha!- Suppress around me, bud"
"I know..."
"Then stop"
And then the same, shaky silence came out for a moment until Charlie broke it by a string of vocal and motor tics that had been slowly building under the surface.
Patrick smiled and not in a teasing way everything was okay because he wasn't alone in this anymore.
And neither was Charlie.