Work Text:
Sometimes in life there are turning points - moments of clarity - where everything falls into place. And lately Charlie has had quite a few of them. There is a comic he has seen on the internet before - of an uneven shape trying to find it's place in the world, struggling to fit where it doesn't belong. That was what his soul felt like. The sharp scrape of two pieces pushed together, forced together, in a way that didn't work.
At first he was grateful that Ben had sought him out. The attention and adoration and - well - everything had been what he had dreamed of. He had a boyfriend. But then… wasn't it always the case that nothing in his life was perfect. Ben's reaction when he had said the word - boyfriend - the derision and underlying scorn. Fuck it had hurt. That was the first time he felt the scrape and pull suggesting that maybe their halves weren't perfectly aligned. Maybe they were together through his will power alone.
But he could make Ben love him. If he was there at the right times, and did what Ben wanted, and smiled, and wasn't too overbearing, he could make Ben love him. He was sure of it. He tucked aside the pieces of him that caused conflict and hid the parts of him that scraped. Those parts of him only fought against his goal, against his peace.
Something changed the day he met Nick Nelson though. The day he slid awkwardly into that chair, Nick's smile radiating towards him. It was as though he felt the creak of those parts of him that had been pushed down and out of the way once more straining to be free. With Nick he found he could just be and those parts that he fought against within himself no longer seemed the insurmountable obstacles that they were when he was with Ben.
Already straining, the final moment of clarity happened as he left school one day. When he saw Ben pressed against some girl, out for all to see, though a few hours earlier it had been him with his back pushed up against the library stacks. That was the moment he felt himself release. He breathed out and let it go. The pain and hurt and doubt from the past six months, expelled in his breath. Maybe - just maybe - this tension and scraping and misalignment wasn't his fault.
Everything between them, the conflict and pain, the doubt and hurt, it was Ben's. Charlie didn't have to own it. He felt the tension release and let those long abandoned parts of himself see sunlight again. And to his wonderment he found that those parts of him were not the cause of his suffering anymore. That living - embracing - his life, free from Ben, meant living more fully. It meant welcoming love that fits, not hiding parts of himself to force it.
Being fully him gave him the ability to find a partner who truly fit. And that was everything.
