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The plane is taking too long. Charlie has a bad feeling on his gut. He is trying to ignore it, but it is getting harder each minute and he’s sure it means something bad is about to happen. His headphones are low on battery and he is trying to concentrate on his reading, but can’t.
He glances again to the blond, tall guy sitting next to him at the airport. Charlie has been observing him way more than he should. He isn’t a teenager anymore, and he knows what the urge he has to look at the man and then look away means: attraction.
Before he can look away again, the guy stops looking at his phone and catches Charlie staring.
Shit. He hoped he wasn’t being this obvious. He needs to stop having momentaneous crushes on good looking men he sees on the street all the time. This isn’t going to go well.
Of course, you never know if anyone is straight or not, and Charlie hates to assume other people´s sexuality, but still. There’s always the vibes. Ad he doesn’t want to be inconvenient, nonetheless.
Before he fixates his eyes on his book again (which he is going to pretend to read, even if he is too blushed and embarrassed for that now), Charlie thinks he sees a glimpse of a smile.
He is probably imagining things.
Not even a minute later, the speakers go off. His flight is being delayed. All flights are being delayed. He is snowed in.
He can’t stop himself from frowning and letting out a few not very polite complaints.
The guy by his side snorts and Charlie looks at him again. His face has a mix of disappointment and curiosity.
“Well, it looks like we’ll be stuck here for a while, huh?”, he says. His voice is soft and kind.
Charlie is sure that his surprise is written all over his own face.
“Um- I… Yeah. Yeah, I guess.”
He doesn’t want to be rude, he just doesn’t know what to say. Also, as it was already established, he probably has the fastest developed crush ever. He hasn’t even talked to the guy and is already stumbling with his own words. He’s pathetic.
“You’re going to Paris too?”
There’s that voice again.
Charlie takes a short deep breath to calm down before looking at him and trying to act like a normal person.
“Oh. Yeah. Now I wish I’d taken a train or a bus”, he answers.
“Well, I don’t think it would have been much better with this weather.”
Charlie tries to figure out where all this niceness is coming from. Maybe this is just a very sociable man.
“You’re right. I just really need to be there tomorrow afternoon”, Charlie says.
“Oh, do you have a commitment?”
“Yes, my friend has a painting on a very important art exhibit. I just hope I get there on time.”
The guy raises his eyebrows. He seams surprised and amused.
This seams like an appropriate reaction for Charlie. Elle certainly is amusing.
“This seams very fancy”, he says, and Charlie can’t help but smiling.
“Yeah. I guess it is.”
They stay silent for a few seconds, but Charlie doesn’t open his book again, and stares at the ground for a moment.
“Well, I think it will be alright. Probably in the morning we will be able to fly.”
Charlie nods, and then there’s one more short silence. But clearly this is a talkative person.
“In the meantime, maybe we can keep each other company?”
Charlie looks up again and sees a vulnerable, but still kind of flirty look on the man’s face. Now he’s definitely feeling like he’s 15 again. What’s going on?
He realizes he’s smiling when he talks. “I guess it can’t hurt.”
The guy smiles too. Charlie likes this way more than he would admit out loud.
“I’m Nick”, he says.
“Charlie.”
They don’t shake hands. They just stare at each other for a moment, and Charlie feels butterflies in his stomach in a way he hadn’t in many years.
Nick is sweet and funny. He’s 26, almost two years older than Charlie. He went to Leeds University and he has a managing job in a rugby team. That seems kind of straight behavior for Charlie, along with the sweatpants and Marvel hoodie he’s wearing.
But Charlie knows better than to reduce gay people to a stereotype. He can’t be imagining things.
He can’t be imagining the way Nick puts his arm near Charlie’s, or the electric shock when their hands accidentally touch. He’s a hundred percent sure a straight guy wouldn’t look at him like that.
And he’s definitely not creating stuff in his head when Nick gets up and offers him his hand.
“Do you want to go get something to eat?”
Charlie smiles and nods, affirmatively. And then there are the few seconds when they kind of hold hands, between the moment Charlie takes his to get up and they get their bags and walk to a bar.
They order burgers and fries and soda and Charlie can’t stop thing about how this whole situation feels like high school, if it had been good and cute like in a romcom, and not full of bullying, loneliness and mental health issues.
“So, did you meet your friend in art school?”, Nick asks, while sipping some of his Coke.
Charlie takes a while to understand what he’s talking about.
“Oh, Elle?”
Nick looks at him as if to remember Charlie that he doesn’t know who Elle is, and that makes him smile. Again.
“Elle is my friend from the exhibition. But no. She did go to art school, but I didn’t. We met in high school, actually. We went through… some stuff together. She’s one of my best friends.”
“Oh”, some shadow goes through Nick’s gaze for a moment. “That must be nice. I don’t… I don’t have many friends from high school. We… drifted apart.”
Charlie wants to ask. He wants to know what happened. Was he bullied, like him? Did he not have friends because people were homophobic? Did his friends leave him when they figured out he was gay? Was he actually straight and just had a girlfriend and stopped talking to his friends?
“Wait”, Nick squeezes his eyebrows. “I thought you said you went to an all boys school.”
“I did. Elle changed schools in year 11, but we still remained friends. Then she started dating my best friend, and so we´re tied for ever.”
It takes a minute, but Nick understands.
“Ah. That’s cool.”
There’s a quiet moment. They finish eating, pay the check and then go back to the gate their plane is supposed to leave from. They find a quiet corner and make it comfortable by using their coats and travel pillows to lie on the floor, which is the closest thing they’ll get to a bed this night.
They talk more. They laugh. They make dumb jokes. They figure stuff out about each other. They have awkward silences. They stare at each other for full minutes. They look away.
This goes on for hours. Everyone in the airport is asleep, and Charlie’s getting sleepy, and all he can think about is that he feels like a teenager in the best way possible. And he doesn’t want it to end.
Then it happens.
Nick talks about his ex. He says it took him a lot of time to get over her, and he hasn’t been in a real relationship since college because of that.
Charlie’s instinct is to get closer. He’s leaning towards him, his head almost finding support in Nick’s shoulder.
So it hit’s him. Get over her. Her.
Fuck. No.
Something sinks in his stomach. He wants to ask more. But he also wants to fade away.
He’s so tired that he does none. He just hums something and tries to deal with that information.
He doesn’t know when his mind shuts off. It just does, and he drifts into sleep.
They wake up with the sound of a woman on the speakers, saying that, in one hour, operations will go back to normal. Their plane should leave by 10am.
It takes a while for Charlie to process what’s going on. Surprisingly, he did actually sleep, and well, on the floor of the airport. Then he notices he’s basically using Nick as a pillow. He smiles involuntarily, but it soon goes away, as he remembers the last thing he processed before falling asleep.
Nick’s ex-girlfriend.
“Hey. Good morning”, Nick says, in a low voice, and Charlie quickly sits up.
When he tells Tao he fell asleep with an unknown probably straight man on the airport, he’s gonna face a very bad humor.
“Hm- Morning”, Charlie says, starting to gather his things. “We should- I should organize this. Be right back.”
Without waiting for an answer, Charlie goes to the restroom to make himself more presentable and also escape that silly, crazy situation.
“Idiot. You’re a complete and utter idiot, Charlie Spring.”
He mutters to himself as he settles his hair, looking at the mirror. He has to stop doing this. Tao is right. He falls in love for anyone who’s nice to him.
He breathes in and out a few times before going back out.
He finds Nick in front of the bathroom, holding some recently bought croissants and lattes. Airport croissant and lattes, that were probably very expansive.
Charlie accepts it, but asks to pay it back to him.
“You can buy me coffee next time”, Nick answers.
Next time?
What does that mean? Was he blinking when he said that?
Charlie is very confused. It doesn’t take long until they’re being called for boarding.
They don’t seat together on the plane. Their seats are very distant, actually.
Charlie was planning on writing a congratulations card for Elle during the fight, but he basically does nothing but staring at the paper and fantasizing the moment when Nick would come to his seat and discretely pass him a note saying he was going to the bathroom and saying to meet him there, where they would live their own cliché sexual romantic experience that only happens in movies from the 2000’s.
Obviously, this doesn’t happen.
He’s not gay, Charlie. Get over it.
When the plane lands, Charlie tries do get out of the as quickly as possible, but as he’s walking towards the exit of the boarding area, he hears his name.
“Charlie! Wait!”
It’s Nick.
What does he want?
Charlie stops and waits for him to reach him.
“Is everything ok?”, Nick asks.
Charlie’s not sure how to react. He doesn’t think Nick did anything wrong. He just created a lot of ridiculous expectations in a record short period of time.
He brings his hand to his own neck, embarrassed. Maybe he should be honest.
“Yeah, I- I just… Sorry if I was out of line, and I was probably imagining things. I don’t wanna make you feel uncomfortable, but… Yesterday I thought you were flirting with me”, he looks at Nick’s face and a playful, kind of sarcastic smile is taking shape. “Don’t worry, I won’t do anything, I know you’re stra-”
He’s cut off by Nick’s lips on his. It’s not subtle, it’s not uncertain. It’s very, very confident. And he definitely knows what he’s doing. He grabs Charlie by his neck and, when he starts kissing him back, he brings them closer by pulling his back.
Charlie can feel Nick’s smile as they kiss and, honestly… He never wants to stop. Nothing has ever felt so right.
But, eventually, they have to pull apart to breathe. And they stare at each other in silence, panting, for a few seconds.
When his breath evens, Charlie finally says something brilliant. “Oh.”
“Actually, I’m bisexual”, Nick says, with a smirk, but gets kind of serious when Charlie doesn’t react again.
“Oh.”
“Do you have a problem with that?”
Charlie just shakes his head. He doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t even know what to think. So Nick continues.
“Good. Next time, try to remember that.”
Charlie’s finally able to form a complete sentence. “Next time?”
Or almost.
“Yeah, well. You were flirting with me back, weren’t you?”
Charlie sees he’s smiling now, and can’t help but do the same.
“I guess I’m not completely hopeless, after all. What do we do now?”, he says.
Nick’s smile gets bigger. “Maybe you can start by inviting me to your friend’s exhibition.”
In that moment, Charlie knows he’s very, very much in trouble. Or very, very much interested.
“That sounds great.”