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Never had there been a longer interval in the space-time continuum than the one between “I don’t know” and “maybe”. Charlie found himself transfixed by every tiny movement on Nick’s face as he waited for his life to change.
No, scratch that. It had already changed when Nick hit him with that “joke” about the pronoun assumption he had indeed voiced. The way one statement had turned his insides upside down… The part of him crowing he’d been right all along. The part of him still worried it didn’t mean what he hoped it meant. Hanging on every breath as though it might be his last, ice crystals in his airway since his organs had frozen in the grip of anticipation.
But there in the seven seconds between “I don’t know” and “maybe” was simultaneously a lifetime of heartbeats for Charlie Spring. He watched Nick swallow. He watched him look away. He watched his mouth open… and then close. He watched two lines appear where his brows drew in above his squinting brown eyes.
Then Charlie’d been freed by the “maybe” to act again. Throat tight, organs thawing just enough to feel shoved up into his esophagus. Somehow he’d managed to ask two more questions, questions he knew were life-changing as he asked them, no matter the answers. Where he’d drawn that gumption from, he didn’t know.
And then he sat as Nick found his own courage, staring as the wide open eyes, whole iris seeming black in the dim light of an abandoned ballroom, first focused on him then looked down at their pinkies which had taken on a life of their own, drawing their bodies together so tenderly and tentatively ahead of everything else that followed.
Then the eyes were back on his, the contrast of the white sclera setting off how huge and fragile they looked. Then… oh god, this is happening… the vulnerable gaze had dropped to Charlie’s lips for what felt like yet another forever. Charlie could not move for fear of ruining this one long shot at romance unfolding before him.
Finally, finally… the defenseless eyes had come back up. An image captured in memory and treasured for the rest of his long life, that moment Nick’s eyes met Charlie’s own, the trembling of both young bodies failing to interfere with the laser-like line connecting them. The universe held its breath.
Then Father Time had released them both, Nick’s lips parting to utter that single syllable… The profound nature of it made prosaic and humble by its very informality- casual and yet deeply deeply… not. “Yeah.”
—-
I’m part of one of his favourite days… ever. How is this my life now?
The arcade may as well have been a rollercoaster the way his stomach had swooped and dropped already in this conversation by the claw machine. Twists and turns and hairpin angles. Fear and guilt and then having to swallow a smile at what a dork Nick was with that whole Imogen thing.
But there was this interlude, this piece of time once again set outside time. Where Charlie could not get enough of this boy’s face, his shy smile and his bashful posture and a million freckles and three little crinkles on the edge of each eye when the cheeks pushed them closed, like in that fabulous photo from their day in the snow.
“I really like you.” Charlie couldn’t believe his ears. Gaze absolutely stuck on every facet of Nick’s appearance. The way his fringe kept threatening to consume his left eyebrow. The rainbow lights behind him and those swirling off his iris when he leaned just so and then flipping to the other side when he shifted. Before he died, Charlie wanted to see every star in the universe reflected there at some point in those warm, dark brown eyes.
“Wasn’t that obvious?”
He could feel the happiness radiating out of him like sunlight, like waves of hydrogen and helium liquifying inside his chest and then rippling across the air between them. It made the room feel stretchy and he swayed there, until Nick asked him the most ridiculous question ever and broke the surface tension on the bubble of superheated plasma which was Charlie’s silent joy.
Now it could burst out of him, giggling at the way this boy could even imagine it was in doubt. Obviously Charlie liked him. His soul vibrated with it.
Oxygen was solid inside his lungs and he struggled to work through it. He felt his fingers shift on the handles of the gift bag and he ducked his head. Releasing words was his key to breathing again.
“I want to kiss you so bad right now.”
On the other side of that blissful contact, he was gratified to hear Nick’s breath was just as affected. And he noted, before reclaiming his composure and their plan for the day, the softness in those eyes which had fallen closed with such trust. Nick really did like him back, he could see it.
—-
In the sideways sun of this corridor, there’d been a torrent of words, an interruption for reassurance and a kiss which was really ten kisses back to back. He’d watched Nick’s face carefully as it turned into the light, considering, and then back to him with the beams hitting one golden cheek and drawing out the hidden depths of one eye.
Charlie drank it in as his brain whirred through the possibilities of what Nick planned for them to do on Sunday after confirming he was free. He could stay there in those arms, scanning these features for the rest of his life.
Normally the brown is a solid mocha layer, easy to miss in the artful symmetry which is Nick Nelson’s face. But close up, as Charlie now gets to be, there’s so much more to the iris, to the boy.
There’s a secret forest in those eyes, rich greens under the earth. They peek out when the light is just so. There’s also an amber pool down there, nestled between the trees. Charlie learned to look for it then. To relish those moments where he had the time and the angle to plumb down into that well.
In hindsight, he’d noticed Nick’s eyes right away. That first day in vertical form. He’d noticed everything, memorizing the object of his sudden and intense crush. That initial moment had sideways light too, a giant windowpane reduced to a tiny rectangle on the side of Nick’s cornea. The way the rugby player had been so open, so ready to welcome a new deskmate… a new friend… a new reality.
The way Charlie’s existence had become something richer because it got to be perceived in those eyes. The way the brown-eyed man stands now near the door back to the reunion, waiting for him to finish his reverie here in this hallway with its faded and chipped teal paint. Charlie breathes out and steps over to take one broad hand in his own, wedding rings clinking together, and smiles up into a kiss where they both close their eyes at the last possible second.