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We should go camping again sometime, Charlie texts Dan one morning. They’re mid-conversation, reminiscing over the loveliness that had been the mini indie stores tour even though it had only finished a handful of weeks ago. What they should have been doing was gearing up for the proper UK tour that started in just over a week.
Instead, Charlie was messaging Dan over Whatsapp as he went about his day, smiling at his responses whenever his phone buzzed with the newest ones. He couldn’t remember the last time his eyes had been so glued to a screen—frankly, it was embarrassing.
Before he lost his entire goddamn mind (hadn’t he already? He’d just asked Dan to go camping. Alone. With him.), he planted the phone solidly on the kitchen countertop and decided he needed a shower.
He heard it vibrate the moment he crossed the threshold into the bathroom. He stood there, contemplating his reflection in the mirror, and sighed. Why. The fuck. Was he like this.
He turned around and stared at the phone as it buzzed again. Fuck this.
(Maybe the shower could wait.)
We should!! Would be nice to have something to look forward to after tour
Charlie let out a relieved laugh when he opened the text, and immediately messaged back something that he prayed didn’t come across as too enthusiastic. Everything always did, it seemed, especially when it came to Dan. He was always just…too much. Always had been.
…Then again.
Dan had, for whatever fucking obscure reason, actually said yes to spending even more time together with him than he was contractually obligated to.
In a tent. In the middle of nowhere, probably.
He probably already regretted saying yes.
(But he’d still said yes.)
Maybe, Charlie realized, mid-shower, Dan had only said yes because he’d felt obligated to. He was just as much of a people-pleaser as Charlie, if not more. Charlie hadn’t exactly asked him to go with him, had he? He’d simply, well...heavily suggested that they should go. Did that count as pressuring someone?
Hmm. Fuck.
So. Maybe Dan didn’t want to go after all. Maybe Charlie was being a bad friend. A horrible friend he was indeed, pressuring one of his best mates into hanging out alone with him in a cold, damp, possibly-spider-infested shelter. How could he do that to poor Daniel?
The water chose that moment to turn frigid without warning, and Charlie thought that was fairly fitting. His quite creative swears echoed off the tile as he escaped and lunged for the fluffy towels he’d splurged on after his first paycheck from Bad Steel Inc. way back in the day.
He gloomily shuffled out of the bathroom and into the bedroom, feeling (and probably looking) like a pathetic alley cat caught out in the rain.
As per fucking usual, he’d been impulsive without considering the consequences. Someone needed to lock up his phone, or maybe throw it out the window.
Right. He glanced over at the curtains in the window of his flat. He lived on the ground floor. Watertight plan there, Charles.
His phone pinged.
I have an idea.
Charlie stared at the screen.
How opposed are you to proper camping?
As in, cold shitty tent camping
Not the fancy shit the label picked out
Unless that was what you were suggesting
In which case I’d love to go fancy shit camping
I believe the common term is “glamping”
Right…
Anyway.
When’s the last time you were at Glastonbury?
“Perhaps major record labels aren’t all shit after all?”
“Mmm. Just misunderstood, then?”
“Ask me that again the next time they put me on a Spirit airlines flight knowing it’ll get delayed five hours, will you?”
“If that ever happens again, I’m turning around and going home, America be damned.” Dan huffed and held out a hand. “Gimme.”
Charlie didn’t question why Dan grasped his wrist gently and carefully secured his festival wristband (procured by said record label) around it. Dan had just…gone and done it. Like any good pal would have. Nothing to overthink there.
Right? Right.
He took the lead when they stepped into the campsite―Dan had about as much of a sense of direction as a weathervane during a hurricane. They weaved through the rows of tents until even Charlie started to think they’d never find their way out alive.
Far, far too many pitching-a-tent jokes later, they were settled. Charlie was already struggling to picture how the two of them would manage to fit in there without, well. Cue another pitching-a-tent joke.
Dan seemed to be a bit pink around the ears as he stared at it, but he’d also probably forgotten to put sunscreen on them before they’d headed out here, so Charlie elected to ignore that particular observation.
He took a breath of dusty air and pushed his hair off his forehead. This was going to be excruciating.
Predictably, he was clinging onto Dan for dear life by the time they stumbled back to the campsite that night. Everything was fuzzy, though Charlie was fairly certain he hadn’t even had that much to drink.
If only he could just be fucking normal without having to try so hard.
He could feel the facade cracking with every step, a familiar heaviness settling into his bones. Hopefully they could find the tent without too much wandering around, and he could sink into unconsciousness without having to so much as face Dan.
Charlie could feel the body heat radiating off of Dan, and he concluded that this had been his worst idea yet. He was on his back, trying not to move, staring blankly at the ceiling as his thoughts spun around him.
Beside him, Dan put down his phone and sighed, shifting in his sleeping bag.
“Charlie?”
“Mmm?”
“You okay?”
“Yeah? Today was great.”
“Mm. Good. Yeah, it was.”
“I just…you seemed…I dunno.”
Charlie squeezed his eyes shut.
“Seemed like what?”
It came out sounding more hurt than he’d intended.
“No, it’s not like…you just…god, this is going to sound ridiculous, but you seemed less…less like…you. I guess. Sorry, that’s stupid.”
“‘S not stupid,” Charlie said before he could help it. He paused. Dan waited.
“This is also going to sound stupid,” he said eventually. “But sometimes…sometimes it’s just easier to be less like me.”
“Why?”
Charlie shrugged, even though he knew Dan couldn’t tell in the darkness of the tent.
“Dunno, really,” he lied. He could feel Dan’s eyes turn to look in his direction, and it burned.
“I―it’s. Complicated.”
“Try me.”
“Well―” He struggled for the words, knowing how it was going to sound to Dan. “If someone doesn’t like you, isn’t it easier to know that what they don’t like is only one facet of you, and not your entire personality?”
Dan sounded puzzled when he replied.
“Why on earth wouldn’t I like you?”
“I’m…you know me. You know what I’m like most of the time.”
“Charlie…of course I do. I know all sorts of sides of you. And I like them. Why else would I be here?”
The unspoken alone, with you hung in the air between them.
“I thought maybe you were just being polite.” It sounded so foolish when he voiced it aloud. Of course it did. Everything always made sense when it was too late and he’d already fucked it all up for himself.
Dan snorted. “I’ve thought that about you ever since you joined the band.”
Charlie sat up on his elbows.
“What?”
“That you only ever did things with us because you felt like you had to.”
“Oh. Well. No. Definitely not.”
“Hmm. Good.”
“Charlie?”
“Yeah?”
“Can I say something else stupid?”
“‘Course.”
“I should have brought an extra blanket.”
“Ah. Me too.”
“Y’don’t suppose we could…?”
Charlie swallowed and stared harder into the dark void above him.
“If―we could probably unzip both sleeping bags, but―”
“‘M sorry, forget I said anything. I have a jumper somewhere―”
“No! No, it’s fine, I just. I don’t normally…”
“We’re all touch-starved from Covid, mate, I get it. C’mere then.”
Touch-starved is the right word for it, it seems. When Charlie wakes with the sun, his breath catches at the feeling of a warm arm lying heavy over his stomach.
It isn’t just that, though. A sudden burst of early-morning clarity—Dan’s arm is around him, and it just. Feels right. Dan’s arm is around him, and he wants it to stay there. That’s…unusual for him. He’s just not used to liking this. From anyone.
But Dan isn’t everyone.
He tells himself it’s the warmth, or the early hour of the morning, that gently tugs his eyelids shut until he’s startled awake again by a group of lads stumbling past the tent singing a song he vaguely recognizes as Post Malone. Dan shifts, and Charlie freezes, waiting for the moment Dan comes to his senses and puts as much distance between them as possible. The moment he questions why Charlie hadn’t moved away when he had the chance.
There’s a sigh from behind him, and the arm still slung over his torso twitches, then stills. Charlie must be losing his mind, because it almost feels like Dan shifts infinitesimally closer.
He fights back a flinch when he feels Dan's breath hot against the back of his neck, and his nose nestling into the curls at his nape.
Charlie feels the effects of last night's drinking pressing into his temples, and he's somehow freezing and disgustingly sweaty at the same time. They'll have to drag themselves back out into the chaos soon if they want to get cleaned up before the lines get too long for waiting to be worth it.
Right now, though? Right now, Charlie couldn't give less of a fuck if he tried.
And though he tries his best to fight it, a little voice whispers to him that maybe he's not quite too much for all this. Maybe (it's a big maybe, though) he could be just enough.