Work Text:
Nick stared at the worksheet, memorizing no information no matter how many times his eyes skimmed the lines. Something in his stomach churned with anxiety, yet at the same time a sick sort of excitement, his mind anticipating the moment the dam would burst.
Nick looked at his boyfriend laying on the bed above and across from him, focused on his own work, his dark curls falling into greyish blue eyes Nick swore he saw the ocean in, just as one would hear the waves in a seashell. They’d been dating for nearly a year and he hadn’t told him yet.
Nick felt guilty, ashamed of the way he’d been hiding his identity from the most important person in his life, but he was smart enough to ignore that feeling, for he knew his own reasons for being hesitant, but mostly because he knew Charlie. To doubt Charlie would accept him would be more than self-deprecation, it would be an insult to the beautiful, kind angel he got to call his.
Nick had invited him over to study, hoping to gather the courage to speak the words plaguing his mind for months now, the words that would open up new gates to compassion and confusion, awkwardness and acceptance. He knew it was a package deal, the conceptual dance of Yin and Yang tying his tongue and making his words die in his throat.
A few moments of brain fuzz before “Hey Char,” Nick found himself saying, mind blank.
Charlie looked up from his piece of paper for a moment and brushed his hand through his dark hair, “What’s up?” he said softly, his eyes darting back down to the unfinished equation.
“Can I… uh, shit, I have something to tell you.” Nick winced at his blunt tone, though his heart and brain were racing too much for him to care about how his tone came across.
Charlie looked as if he was going to reply with a joke or perhaps a witty remark, but something in his eyes shifted as he registered the tone of Nicks voice, “…Okay,” he paused, turning fully to face Nick, “what’s up?”
“I’m… uh,” Charlie stared at him with those ocean eyes, and Nick swore he could see waves of doubt crashing into the shore as his anxiety picked up the longer Nick remained silent,
“I’m trans. Like- Like, FTM?”
Charlie blinked,
“I,” he thought carefully for a moment, “…really?”
Nick suddenly felt all his emotions muffle and fade, all the anxiety and water behind that dam held back by an unknown force, and it scared him.
What scared him most, though, was his positive emotions were muffled too. His compassion, his kindness, his love for Charlie felt like they were locked behind a wall until the boy in front of him continued.
Nick nodded.
Charlie’s stare looked blank for a moment, likely thinking about god knows which part of this whole mess.
He looks at Nick, looking like he was about to say something, before hesitating just a moment when he saw Nick’s emotionless expression,
“…Are you okay?”
The dam broke.
Nick’s eyes started leaking steady tears as he regained his senses, overwhelmed by the sudden onslaught of his emotions returning to him. Charlie crawled off the bed immediately, taking Nick into his arms and hugging him tight, rubbing small circles and hearts on his bicep and letting him dry his tears onto his shoulder.
They sat like that for a few minutes until Nicks tears dried and he had calmed down. Charlie waited until Nick was ready to pull away, not daring to disturb his beloveds comfort.
Eventually, when Nick did pull away, Charlie looked into his eyes and he felt all the salty tears drop one by one into the sea that were his irises, absorbing all his pain.
“Nick, I love you,” Charlie started, holding his boyfriends hand and looking into his amber eyes as he spoke, “I don’t think you could do anything to make me stop loving you. This is gonna be hard to navigate.” Charlie smiled sadly, though if you asked anybody in the world what he looked like in that moment they would tell you he looked like pure determination, “but I love you so fucking much, Nicholas Nelson, and I’ll do whatever it takes for you to feel comfortable. I’d face my greatest fears if only to learn to help you through your own, I’d walk over coal barefoot if only I could fall into your arms at the end of the road, I’d fly- no, I’d swim over oceans just to be with you. I love you,” Charlie finished with glossy eyes that made Nick think of the full moon.
Nick smiled a wobbly smirk, “Pulling out the full name now?” he said, his voice still rough and shaky from the crying.
Charlie didn’t reply, pulling him into another hug and whispering “I love you”s and “it’s okay”s into Nicks ear for a long time. So long they lost track of time and space, so long they lost track of where one started and the other ended, so long the only two people in the universe were them and they were together and nothing else mattered.
So long they fell asleep on Nicks bedroom floor, tangled up in a mess of limbs and repeated words on top of Nicks forgotten maths worksheet, though that didn’t really matter, uncomfortable yet necessary questions would be asked later, boundary setting could be done another time,
for the only thing they cared about, then and forever, were each other.