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If you asked Nick Nelson what he knew about wine, he’d probably say “white or red.”
You’d maybe assume that he was asking a question—what did he know about white wine, or what did he know about red wine?
You’d humour him, maybe say, “Red. I’m looking for a nice pairing for a bolognese.”
To which he’d say, “Sure, red sounds good, I think.”
You’d maybe gently suggest he go to a wine shop, rather than Tescos, to buy a nice bottle for his friends’ engagement party.
So Nick would find himself stumbling into a wine shop in his most typical, ruffled golden retriever fashion, well-meaning and a half hour before he was due to the party, in a bit of a desperate panic.
He’d accidentally slam the door, wince and pat it as if he were apologising, and then turn around to find every person in the shop turned and staring at him.
There would be just one person in the shop. Staring.
Nick would stare back.
He would completely forget that he was there for a reason, heart kicking up and neck flushing pink.
A new desperate panic, a tripping tongue, caught up in a wide-eyed blue gaze.
Nick would think very eloquent thoughts: fuck.
Nick would hype himself up, think comeonnickyouidiotsaysomething —something inspired, something… something heartstopping .
He’d open his mouth. Close it. Try again, and end up with—
“Hi.”
— n & c —
Charlie was bored.
There were only so many times he could dust bottles, only so many new wines he could justify tasting on one shift to be able to give reliable recommendations .
He was twenty pages into his reread of Emily Wilson’s translation of The Iliad , slumped on the uncomfortable stool behind the till, one solid bite away from a highlighter-chewing disaster, when he walked in.
Well, stumbled in like a baby deer, more like, but even so, Charlie’s brain went offline the second he got an eyeful of him.
The man was tall—definitely somewhere over six foot, and broad, all pale skin and freckles, thick arms and strong shoulders and—
The door slammed, and the man turned around, rather adorably patting it — what the hell?— before turning in what Charlie could only describe as a walking wince.
Time may have stopped when their eyes met.
The thing was this—it had been a long time since Charlie’d seen a man who was, well… exactly his type.
His type being tall, muscled, and maybe a bit too similar to a ‘ Charles Bingley mood ,’ in the words of his best friend Elle.
Well . This man could put Charles Bingley in a headlock, easy, but the vibes were all there.
Startled, adorable man .
Startled, adorable, undeniably, most likely straight man. (Note: this was also, unfortunately, usually a trademark of Charlie’s type.)
When the man spoke, it was only a cracking, confused, “ Hi .”
But to Charlie, it sounded more like: Oh. There you are.
— n & c —
Nick wasn’t sure what he was doing here.
The man behind the till was still looking at him like he had three heads, like whatthehellareyoudoinghere , and he thought about cutting his losses, claiming he’d entered the wrong shop by mistake, and actually he was just headed to the book shop next door.
But then, this man, with his perfect bone structure and even more perfect curls, was of course reading a book , literal Greek literature , and he’d maybe ask what book Nick was after, to which Nick couldn’t possibly respond that Red, White, and Royal Blue was the only book he’d read since sixth form that wasn’t for primary schoolers.
He’d be laughed out of the wine shop, then he’d have to go into the book shop to save what little of his dignity remained, and then he’d be laughed out of there, too.
He realised he’d been stuck staring, caught up in the shop clerk’s blue gaze, and now the man was smirking at him, holy fuck .
Nick needed to get it together. He was on a mission. Wine, then Tara and Darcy’s party.
“Hi,” the man finally responded, plucking the pink highlighter from his lips as if it was a cigarette, smirk still tilting his lips and a curl falling over his left eye as he ducked his head to mark his place in the book with the Stabilo.
“Hi.”
Nick’d already said that, hadn’t he?
The man’s smirk bloomed into a smile showing dimples .
Nick was fucked.
“Can I help you?”
“I need wine.”
Of course you do, you bloody idiot, you’re in a wine shop .
The man gingerly climbed down off of his stool—was that thing structurally sound?—and approached with crossed arms and a cheeky glint in his eye.
“Well, I’d say you’ve come to the right place, then.”
When he got close, Nick noticed that he smelled of coconut. Nick had always hated coconut, thought it smelled like suncream, but now he thought that it could easily become one of his favourite scents.
Nick needed to turn this around, and fast. When in doubt, honesty .
So he shook his head, rubbed the back of his neck somewhat habitually, and hoped that for once his tongue wouldn’t get tangled in front of a pretty boy.
“I… I need wine for an engagement. A good one. I think the last time I had good wine was at my dad’s third wedding, and to be honest, I was less concerned about developing a discerning palate and more concerned about getting absolutely sloshed as quickly as possible. Actually, can we not do any dry reds? I do not want any possible association between my father and these wonderful people. Maybe something—“
“Well, no way I’d recommend a ‘ dry red’ for an engagement party, anyways,” the man—why didn’t this place have name tags for their employees?—grinned, looking a bit endeared, and Nick tried not to be embarrassed that he’d literally had to be forced to stop rambling. “Let me take you to the good stuff.”
— n & c —
Bubbles. Bubbles were the good stuff, according to the gorgeous man at the shops, and according to Darcy as they practically yelled in his face in delight, grasping immediately at the bottle whilst simultaneously pulling him in for a hug at the door.
Nick tried not to wince as, in a display of their state of early-party tipsiness, they spilled half the bottle onto the floor before any made it into a glass. That was probably 20 pounds splashed across the chipped laminate of Tara and Darcy’s little kitchenette as Darcy crooned their love into Tara’s ear loud enough for the whole flat to hear.
To be fair, Nick could have guessed himself that bringing prosecco would be a hit at any engagement party. He could have gotten a half-decent bottle for a quarter of the price at the corner shop and been on his way, could have gotten there a bit early, helped set up the cheese board, and made sure the baked brie didn’t get scorched around the edges.
But then he wouldn’t have met him .
He dug around in his pocket for the receipt, which he’d normally never say he wanted, but he was hoping against hope that it would be there—the name of the person at the register.
Charlie . There it was, at the bottom, like a beacon.
Charlie .
— n & c —
Charlie figured that was just his luck, drawing the short straw for the holiday shift schedule and having to work both Christmas and New Year’s Eve. Not that he was planning on attending his family’s Christmas on Christmas Eve—it was his mum’s side, so they’d be going to midnight mass, and it was in everyone’s best interest that he not show up and spoil the thing by being such an… outspoken disappointment.
He was pretty sure those were his grandma’s words over Easter last, when he’d picked at his Yorkshire pudding and asked why they made such a fuss celebrating a holiday they literally didn’t even believe in.
You’re half-Spanish, for Chrissakes, Charlie. Show your Catholic heritage a little respect .
He didn’t have it in him to argue that they’d never even bothered to send him through confirmation, so of course he’d ended up an—again, in his grandmother’s words— agnostic heathen .
So there he sat, working his way through Charles Dickens, like any self-respecting depressive British bibliophile, as Christmas Eve day tipped into Christmas Eve night, the meagre sunlight dimming through the old Victorian windowpanes and casting the shop in shadow.
Charlie watched the streetlamps flick on one by one, cars passing every once in a while and throwing up the slush of last week’s unseasonably heavy snow.
They’d had all of three customers all day, the last being a woman in her late 40s who overshared about having just divorced her husband of twenty-five years after losing both of her parents over the past year. She was apparently planning to celebrate it all with three bottles of wine and a marathon run of movies featuring a young Colin Firth.
Her eyes held a strange gleam as she glanced up at Charlie’s curls, and he’d felt distinctly uncomfortable, ushering her to the closest three bottles of chardonnay—he had a feeling that quality didn’t matter over quantity in this particular situation—and out of the store as quickly as possible.
So now it was just him and Dickens, Charles Darnay slipping away into a future with Lucie at Sydney Carton’s expense. The best of times, the worst of times , indeed, he reflected as a dull drizzle started up outside.
He’d jammed his book down, danger of a cracked spine be damned, and turned to flick on the kettle behind the desk when the bell went again.
He honestly wasn’t sure if he was annoyed or glad for another customer—he’d been certain he could close up a few minutes early and the owner would be none the wiser, that he could snag a nice-ish bottle of wine with his employee discount to take to Tao’s mom’s in exchange for an empty seat at her holiday table, a plate of warm dumplings and an even warmer hug.
He didn’t turn immediately—figured the customer could tend to their own business while he made his cup of tea.
A splash of milk from the mini fridge, and he was blowing across its surface, sipping too soon as he turned back to face the music—literally. Santa Baby had just come on, and Charlie was keen to hit skip as soon as possible.
He wasn’t counting on a literal Santa standing in his shop.
“Uh, er—“ was all he could manage to sputter for long enough to be considered rude. They just stared at one another as Charlie got his wits back about him.
“Father Christmas, all due respect, but I don’t think the civil aviation authority will take kindly to you drinking and driving a sleigh.”
“Wha—?”
— n & c —
Shitfuck .
Literally only Nicholas Nelson would manage this—popping into the shop on an errand for his mum, on the way back from the community centre’s lunch with Santa, which he’d been volun-told he’d be playing the lead role in this year—and managing to run into the man he’d literally been thinking about since October.
“Fuck, bloody—” Nick muttered as he ripped of the thick white scarf that was obscuring the bottom half of his face, “Sorry, I—“
What came out of the crush of wool and fur wrist cuffs and utter humiliation sounded more like “Fbdy shrrey.”
When he saw Charlie’s face after this, the babbling flowed like the eggnog when his mom and aunt queued up Love Actually on Christmas Eve.
“I haven’t already been drinking, I swear, I… well there was that splash of Bailey’s in the cocoa earlier, but… what I mean to say is…”
Suddenly, Nick couldn’t stand it any longer, the hours of heavy velvet and sticky, candy cane-spit covered kids, the pillow belted to his midsection that he kept having to adjust as it slipped.
“Jesus Christ, is it meant to be boiling in here? It’s starting to feel like I’ve been shoved down a fucking chimney…”
He had the vague thought that he was overheating, and by consequence overreacting. This was maybe a panic attack, mortification and too-tested patience coalescing in clothes flying this way and that until he could finally, blessedly, feel fresh air against his flushed skin.
It wasn’t until he was stood, flurry completed, and soaking in Charlie’s open-mouthed expression of mild horror, that he realised he was down to pants and vest, Santa’s trousers pooled ‘round his black dress boots, with hat askew but still somehow atop his head.
The pillow-stomach had flown onto the till behind Charlie.
“Oh… oh my god, it’s you,” Charlie managed, breaking the long silence that had settled around them with Nick’s clothes. “Holy fuck. Whatthefuck.”
And then he was cackling, spilling his tea onto the velvet coat at his feet. “ Shitfuck,” he managed, sliding the cup onto the nearest stable surface before doubling over with gasping laughter.
Nick, not sure what else to do and certain he was going to be carted out for public indecency as soon as Charlie got his wits about him, started apologising profusely.
“I’m so sorry, I— I don’t know what came over me, I—“
“No sorries,” Charlie managed between giggles.
And fuck, if his giggles weren’t contagious.
Before he knew it, Nick was laughing too, pulling up his trousers before he tripped or Charlie noticed he had dogs dressed in Christmas costumes printed all over his pants.
He managed to get the bottom half of the costume to sorts by the time Charlie began to calm, but he patently refused to wrangle himself back into the belly contraption. Instead, he took off the hat and rolled it and the pillow together, cinching the roll with the belt.
“Genuinely, Charlie, I—“
The curly-haired man paused from where he was managing to finally have another sip of what tea he had left. “Wait, how do you know my name?”
And just when Nick thought he couldn’t get any redder, become any more of a walking disaster, there it goes. “Um, it was at the bottom of the till receipt the last time we met.”
“You noticed and remembered that?”
“I’m a primary teacher? I’m good with names?” Nick knew this was a see-through excuse if he’d ever given one.
“Hmm,” Charlie just turned, face obscured by his tea cup, and flicked the kettle behind him.
Nick wished he could read the man’s expression. Instead of embarrassing himself further, he reached to fluff his hair where the hat had been as the water came to a boil.
“And to think I was about to close early.”
“Oh shit, sorry,” how had Nick forgotten that he was meant to be grabbing things for his mum? “I’ll just get what I came for and be on my way, then.”
Before he could get the request list pulled up in his messages, however, Charlie was turning and holding out another mug.
“You seem like a milk and sugar type…”
It took Nick a moment to realise the tea was for him, and that Charlie was waiting for him to fill in a gap.
“Nick.”
“I think you mean Saint Nick.”
There was that smirk, the dimple that made Nick forget his every thought. Nick’s cheeks hurt with how wide his smile spread.
“I have it on good authority that he's a bit busy in India right now. It’s just Nick. Nick Nelson.”
“Well, just Nick, Nick Nelson,” Charlie was pure mischief, a bit lip of slight hesitation and blue eyes gleaming like the sun through tropical waters, “No sorries, remember? If I’d closed up early, I’d have missed quite the show.”
Oh?
Nick lifted his mug of tea to his lips, flexing his arm a little more than necessary. An experiment, if you will.
Oh.
Charlie’s eyes caught just so, gaze like sparks raking across Nick’s skin.
“Well I’m glad my minor anxious breakdown and borderline heatstroke was entertaining to you,” Nick turned with his cup of tea, wanting to keep up the banter but not wanting to overstay his welcome or his confidence.
“Where do I find your best bottle of sherry?”
“That depends. What’s your budget, Nick Nelson the primary school teacher?”
“Oh no, my prick dad’s paying as an apology for not caring to see his kids on Christmas. Price is much less of an issue than potency.”
Charlie smiled, eyebrow raised, and they were off, thirty minutes passed sipping one too many samples and, when Nick was feeling especially brave, grazing fingers over bottles of wine passed into his canvas tote for the trip home.
“Nick, you can’t honestly go back out half-dressed,” Charlie insisted as Nick gathered up everything, feeling a bit like a child gathering up his things after a sleepover, “You’ll ruin some poor kid’s belief in Father Christmas.”
“I already left the beard at the community centre. It was borrowed,” Nick protested. “They’ll just have to learn that sometimes Santa sends out representatives when he’s otherwise occupied.”
“Is this how you explain it to your students who ask too many questions leading up to holiday?”
Nick couldn’t help but laugh at that, clenching his hands in the feather pillow and grounding himself in the quills that stuck into his hand. Suddenly, it was nearly impossible to not be touching Charlie, to not reach out and brush his perfect curls away from his eyes, to not trace the dimple in his cheek.
Was he misreading this? Nick Nelson, the king of Missed Signals, really hoped he wasn’t misreading this.
And if he wasn’t misreading it, whatthefuckwashesupposedtodoaboutit?
There was silence for a bit too long before he turned to retrieve his mug from where it had been abandoned a few shelves away. He came back to find Charlie throwing the last bottle of wine into his tote.
“Well.” He passed the cup to Charlie, one last lingering graze of fingers. “I'd best be going so that you can close up. Happy Christmas, Charlie.”
“Happy Christmas, Nick.”
Walking away from the wine shop felt a bit like ripping himself in two, which was ridiculous, because Nick didn’t even really like wine and also he’d only had two conversations with the man inside.
It wasn’t until he was home, emptying out the bottles of booze onto his mum’s appetiser- cluttered countertop, that he realised a receipt was slipped into the bag, stuck to the condensation around a chilled bottle of prosecco.
“Add me to your nice list xx.”
And a number there, a series of digits that somehow felt like a key to the other part of himself.
He didn’t waste any time.
So you think you’ve been a good boy this year?
Nick rapidly realised the connotation of what he’d sent.
Shit, I’m sorry, I am literally so bad at this. Pretend you never saw that.
I’m going to try again.
This is Nick Nelson.
Hi.
*Insert something smooth here.*
His mum breezed into the kitchen, saving him from himself. She was already mostly tipsy, with a glass of red in one hand and a half-eaten sausage roll in the other. “Nicky, what are you doing in here all by yourself? And why are you so red, darling? Did you walk all the way home from the shops? Your nose must be frozen.”
She was in his face, rubbing his cheeks to warm him, and Nick thought he was going to actually die of mortification.
“I’m fine, mum, just a bit heated. Need to get out of the rest of this suit, is all.”
“Well here,” she shoved the wine at him. “Take this, and go get changed. Your aunt wants to order a Chinese. I’ll get your crab rangoon.”
“Thanks, mum.”
He left the glass as soon as she was out of the room and dashed upstairs, feeling like a child again as he rifled through his old clothes to find something that would fit. He tried not to think about the disaster that was his sent messages box.
Where had he sat that glass of wine?
A half hour later, he found himself already two glasses of sherry in, mouth full of fried rice, when his mum stumbled in from the kitchen, his anxiety-abandoned phone in hand.
“Nicky, who is this Charlie, and why have you not told us about him? He should come over for our Love Actually , don’t you think, Diane?”
Nick didn’t like the gleam in his aunt’s eye as he lunged for his phone.
“Mum, no, he’s just—I don’t think—“
Charlie xx : Pretty sure I have, if I’ve somehow got you as a Christmas present.
Charlie xx : Nick Nelson, I don’t think you could be smooth to save your life.
Charlie xx: xx
Charlie xx: Hi.