Chapter Text
Charlie
Never has 6pm on a Friday come soon enough, I swear to fucking God.
I'm pretty sure that I pulled my tie off and undid my strangling top button before I'd even made it halfway to the lift. But, as orgasmic as that felt, giving Barbara a stealthy, but aggressive, middle finger as the silver doors slid closed, still won by a country fucking mile.
Swivel on that, you dried up old bint.
Whilst the archaic lift groaned and grumbled its way slowly down from level 12, I had attempted to unpop a fortnight's worth of stress from my spine against the stainless steel handrail. Needless to say, it didn't fucking work and, at the rate I'm going, I'll probably have an attractive neck hunch by the time I'm thirty to add to the ever-growing list of ‘Reasons Why No One Wants To Actually Date Charlie Spring.’
This week felt like The Megalodon of all weeks, filled with more narky emails, ridiculous deadlines and helicopter-y head office visits than you can shake a fat, shitty stick at. But, now, I'm almost home – back to my safe space – and my chest swells in the heady relief of it all. We have most of the weekend to do sweet fuck all; my absolute favourite pastime with my absolute favourite human.
As I make the final turn, slowing my battered Fiesta down to a full and creaking stop, I can't help but smile as I unclick my seatbelt, feeling it growing wildly up my face like ivy.
It’s possibly the first time I've smiled since leaving the house this morning and, with thoughts of Nick on the horizon, it seems easy to shrug the remaining deadweight of the day from my shoulders and let it all go.
There’s always something that feels a little bit fucking special when I pause here, basking in the build up, before actually getting out of the car. At this time of year, during the ass-end of dreary winter, the warm glow of the street lights throws the front door into hazy gold-like auras. It looks pretty… Well, if you squint or try not to focus too hard. Maybe, it even slightly resembles some house in a cheesy introduction to a nineties classic romcom movie instead of the bog-standard mid terraced reality that's revealed in broad daylight. But, either way, it’s home. And I love it.
The heavy curtains are already drawn and, as I rummage madly around in my satchel, blindly searching for my key on the chilly doorstep, I breathe in deeply. Usually, I attempt to figure out what Nick’s cooking, ciphering through all the delicious smells that tend to drift through the gaps around the letterbox, but tonight? Nothing. Very odd.
What's even odder is that when I open the doorway it's pitch fucking black. There’s no light coming from anywhere, and I almost break my neck on the death trap that is my pile of fucking shoes before making it over to the light switch.
Flick.
Flick.
Another fucking flick for good fucking measure, just in case I’m doing it wrong, but no…
Just darkness.
“Nick?!” My dulcet tones echo back at me as my stomach sinks back to the depths of where it's been sitting all day.
Is he not even here? That would be the fucking worst. I'd probably start weeping right here in the hallway like the self-pitying wally I am. “NICK?!”
Immediately, a huge dark hulking-like shape bursts through the lounge door, practically sliding sideways on the laminate in his socks, and my relieved spleen gives a happy little clap. “Char! Thank fucking Christ, I’ve been trying to call you!”
His slightly panicked voice bellows around me while my eyes adjust in the dimness. I can see he’s in his usual tight white t-shirt and jogger-shorts configuration. This, or some variation of it, gets thrown on his body every time he arrives home and, like always, I’m struck by just how fucking cuddly he looks – a human-sized teddy bear, but with abs – and it doesn't even matter that I think this thought every single fucking time, it still makes my mouth dry up and my stomach fizz over in dizzy anticipation.
“What’s going on? Why are the lights not working?”
“Power’s tripped out.” He sounds on edge. I think I can make out the anxious slope of his eyebrows. “I’ve called Eon and apparently it's the entire street. They can’t even tell me how long it’ll be...”
“Oh, for fuck SAKE!”
The groan that groans out of me could probably be used as wind energy to sustain a small Welsh village. Even without any lighting, I can see him wincing at my less than reasonable reaction and instantly, I’m feeling like a dick.
It’s not his fault I’ve had the fifth shit day at work in a row and I'm at the end of my fucking rope. It’s not his fault that all I wanted to do was get home, get in my slobs, eat dinner and sit around watching brain rot TV with him, complete with the fuel-added fantasy that he might fall asleep and drool down me again.
Urgh . This is all starting to feel like it could become a monumental effort.
“Sorry. It’s been a bit of a day.” I sigh, chucking my satchel carelessly onto the considerable pile of Converses, not even wincing as my work laptop smacks straight into the plasterboard. “It's just not what I needed…”
“Oh, God. That bad?” A light hand briefly brushes an elbow before it is immediately retracted and I curse that I can’t really make out his expression properly in the dark. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Fuck no… Sorry, I mean, thanks but, maybe not right now? How long has the power been out for?”
“About thirty minutes? I’d only just put the en croute in the oven but it’s not even fucking defrosted…” My heart and stomach immediately go into deep depressive mourning for en croute . Maybe we should hold a frozen funeral and perform a solemn eulogy over the bin.
“Have you called Darcy?” I ask, with a growing slither of hope.
“It’s the main power grid Char, nothing an electrician with a set of wire strippers could possibly hope to sort out…”
Sighing, again, I carefully follow his breadth through to the kitchen only to find tiny tea lights lit up all over the place, scattered across almost every horizontal surface. It might be a fucking fire hazard waiting to happen but it sure looks nice with the amber flickering up the white walls, its incandescent dance reflected on the surface of our stainless steel appliances.
I can see Nick much better now. His frame is lit up amongst the glow, freckled face just as soft and domestic-looking as always, and I try my goddamn hardest not to visually swoon into my girly ankles. Beside him is the evidence of his abandoned dinner prep, a broccoli was clearly halfway through being thoroughly dismembered, and he starts clearing up all straggled remnants of peel.
“Carrot?” He chucks one at me before chomping down on the end of one himself and, surprisingly, I manage to fumble-catch it. “I'm a bit scared to open the fridge and let all the cold out, just in case the electricity is off all night and our food spoils.”
Usually, someone talking with their mouth full would give me the considerable ick but, for some reason – and one that I'm not fully prepared to deep dive into right now – I don't mind it when it's him. In fact, when Nick does it, it's disarmingly cute. “I was thinking I’d do a cupboard raid in a minute and we could spend the evening eating salvaged salty carbs? Or, we could order pizza but I'm a bit skint to be honest…”
“Same." I sigh. "No, let's just eat pre-packaged crap. Do we have any lager?”
“In the fridge… fuck .” Nick’s eyes widen as he works it all through. “Oh bloody bollocks to it, I'm definitely not not drinking tonight. I'll raid the fridge too. Maybe we'll find some hummus to go with all these peeled carrots.”
“That sounds like a plan. Right, I need to get out of these fucking work trousers…” I abandon the carrot and pick up a tea light gingerly between a forefinger and thumb, feeling like I'm about to embody the long-dead spirit of Wee Willie Winkie, but Nick barks out a laugh.
“Char, here.” He chucks me a wind-up torch from the kitchen side. “Much less likely to set fire to the upstairs carpet this way.”
I spend a while cranking it round and round but every time I stop, the light flickers and dies in my hands. Hm . I try a few more times, hoping the ancient battery will hold the charge, but no luck. “Okay, you’ll have to come with me and wind this bitch about whilst I search for some clothes.”
Nick puts his hands on his broad hips and smooshes his signature side-smirk at me. I already know exactly what he's about to say. “Um, well, if you put your clothes away, Charles, you might have some hope of finding your things in the light, as well as the dark?”
I mirror his body language but add an eye roll, bestowing my best bored drawl upon him. “Well, fuck you very much for that bit of unwanted wisdomousness. Come on. I need you, so shush your mush…”
His heavy footsteps follow me up the stairs, the creaking ratchet of the torch continuing to wind along as he goes, and we stumble into the darkness of my room. He points the torch in various corners, back and forth, and blows a long horsey-noise through his pursed-up lips. “Jesus. Okay… which particular floor-drobe are we focusing on here?”
I ignore that dig and start undoing my shirt, throwing it sideways towards god-knows-where, basking in the relief of getting that starchy-stiffness off my skin. “Char?!”
I turn at the slight waver in his voice only to find the flashlight practically in my face. “Jesus, fuck! Can you get that bastard light out of my eyes, please?!” I throw up a hand and recovery-blink but, as he's in total shadow, I can't get a read on him. “What? What's the matter?”
The white beam drifts down, somewhere in the region of my chest, and I feel my face heat up. There was a time when I used to be pretty body conscious, paranoid about my skinny chest and the fact I was severely lacking in the bicep department. Thankfully, years of therapy and regular exercise has meant I'm less hung up on it these days, but I guess it's still more than a little nerve wracking when Achilles himself is standing next to you in all his golden glory.
“Where am I pointing the torch, Char?!”
“Oh, um…” I point at a semi-tidy fabric mountain that's piled up on my chair beside me. “Let's start here.”
Miraculously, within a minute, I've found my skinny joggers and I'm kicking my work trousers off with the disdain they deserve, pulling the soft heaven of stretch-cotton-mix up and over my boxer briefs so they’re swung low off my hips.
God, I just felt my mood improve by about 500% . No feeling fucking beats this. Well, not one I’ve come across yet, anyway.
Unfortunately, the exact hoodie I'm looking for remains annoyingly elusive. Nick is patient enough, continuing to monotonously wind as I point him to where I need the light while I toplessly scour through various piles until, after about five minutes in, he starts huffing. “What's wrong with that hoodie?” He asks, as I reject yet another.
“I need my Superdry one.”
It's so well washed and worn that it's soft as fucking sin. The fact that it once belonged to Nick, before he went into gym-bro-bear-mode and I rescued it from the Oxfam pile, is by the fucking by, m’kay?
“Why?”
“Because?!” I dramatically huff, before reluctantly elaborating in the vague way I always do when shit like this comes up. “It's my favourite. You know that!”
He must know that.
I wear that hoodie to death.
“It's probably in the wash.” I can hear the smile even if I can't see it. “In fact, yeah… I remember seeing it damp on the clothes airer this morning.”
The whine I'm whining would impress an overtired toddler in the biscuit aisle of a supermarket, and I feel Nick's sigh hit the side of my face. I didn't realise he'd moved that close. “Come on then. Which one do you want to borrow?”
“The green one.” It flies out my mouth on autopilot and I wonder if this is what I subconsciously wanted all a-fucking-long.
“Umm, I'm pretty sure I got ketchup on that yeste–”
“Don't care, it’s dark. Let's go.” I manhandle him a little, spinning him ‘round, exalting in the feel of his waist as I push him along and out of my room from behind in a conga-line made for two. He's warm and weighty under my palms and I can't help but lock this entire thing into core memory as we meander across the hallway, giggling a bit as we bump into door frames along the way.
I don't really get to go into Nick's room all that often but, even in the dark, it's a fucking treat. His scent in here is pretty overwhelming, all Musky Man™️ and yet sorta low-level fruity too – is it grapefruit? – and I'm glad I can't really make out the tidy expanse of his king size bed and the crisp white duvet. Resisting the carnal urge to full-pow body-slam into it at speed would be far too much to expect of myself right now.
I sat on it with him once, about five months ago. It was only because he had the flu and I had to make sure he was staying hydrated. Of course, then, I eked it all out thoroughly under the guise of playing nursie, bringing him Ibuprofen and microwave meals and ‘keeping him company’.
Okay, so ‘keeping him company’ mostly entailed admiring Nick as he snoozed with his mouth open and, yeah, I ended up catching it afterwards, but when he played nurse to me the following week and he was making parsnip soup from scratch, I quickly decided that it was entirely fucking worth it.
Nick finds the green hoodie soon enough – it is on the top of his laundry basket where he left it, after all, the smug bastard – and I pull it down over my head, shuddering into the softness and breathing the remnants of his pheromones as deeply as my lungs will allow.
“There,” he smiles, as my head pops out and ruffles my hair up a bit as my medulla spinalis does a little wiggle. “Happy now?”
“Oh, exponentially.” More like, embarrassingly. “What else do we need whilst we're up here?” My eyes seek out the subject of my prior thoughts on autopilot. “Shall we grab duvets and shit?”
“Are we turning this into a slumber party?” Grinning, Nick doesn’t wait for my reply, throwing a couple of pillows at me in quick succession which smack me full pelt in the face. I don't complain. In fact, I inhale the fresh wave of Nick-ness that wafts off the cotton pillowcases.
“Might as fucking well. There's naff all else to do tonight…”
Was that response suitably chill enough?
I almost suggest that I grab mine too but thankfully my brain kicks in at the last second. If he doesn't say anything, surely it’s safe to assume he's up for sharing?
With pillows tucked under both arms, I take my turn at torch-winding – zip-locking my overactive gob shut as we slowly step back down to the hallway – and mentally high five myself once we manage to make it to the sofa without the topic arising.
It's one of those massive corner sofas, the ones with extra wide seats, huge movable cushions and square extensions on wheels. It cost my parents the best of three grand five years ago and Dad almost gouged his eyes out in frustration when Mum decided to redecorate the lounge in naranja. I managed to buy it off them for five hundred quid and it's, hands down, the best adult purchase I've made so far.
Nick does well not to set the duvet alight as he squeezes past the candle lit coffee table, throwing the squidged up bundle down in a mish-mash manner.
“You sit.” He proceeds to push me roughly down onto said bouncy mess and my stomach flips like a pancake. He might as well have thrown me over one shoulder in a fireman's carry from the way my body's overreacting. “You've had a shit day. I'll go forage for food…”
“Thanks, husband!” I joke, but instantly freak myself out. I've never quite gone that far before. Luckily, Nick just laughs and lumbers off, leaving me simmering in my lucid gaydreams.
I spend some time rearranging the cushions for maximum fucking comfort, sniffing his Musky Man™️ duvet every so often for creepy fucking kicks, until he starts coming back and forth with foraged offerings. There are the carrots and sweet chilli hummus we talked about but also the remains of a quiche, a bag of pretzels, breadsticks, an abundance of tortilla chips, a tub of supermarket guac and olives. In fact, I think it’s safe to say the fridge has been more or less emptied.
“You absolute beaut. Well done.” I grab a handful of pretzels and throw them in my mouth whilst he smiles, arranging the snacks in some semi-methodical order, one that makes sense only to him. “Well, it's not exactly cheesy-chicken stuffed in pastry, but it's not too fucking shabby, I guess… here.”
Nick passes me a bottle of open beer and I let the fizz wash over my tongue, only noting my moan of orgasmicness once it's reverberating right through my ear canals and out the other side.
“That good, huh?” Nick throws his bodyweight down next to me and all my neurons celebrate as he slides under the duvet, clinking his bottle against mine. His left arm is casually resting along the back of the sofa, his standard position in truth, but today it takes every bit of self control not to slump myself sideways to surreptitiously sniff my way up his armpit.
“This, not one word of a lie, is the highlight of my fucking week, lack of electricity not withstanding.” I admit with a grin. “Well… let's face it, you know I pretty much live for the weekend anyway.” I dive for a breadstick and dip it in hummus as he breaks out the quiche, giving me his usual dissenting Hmmm.
Okay, it might be the highlight for other reasons but I'm not about to bring up those. It's not like I can tell him that his foot being so close to mine feels like I'm close to unlocking some kind of ultimate life goal. I find myself thinking of natural-seeming ways to get even closer and I retrieve my phone from my jogger pocket, waggling it at him with one eyebrow raised. “Do you want to watch absolute shit on Netflix?”
Sharing such a small screen is bound to do the fucking trick. “I've only got 38% battery but that's more-or-less two episodes of Drag Race, right?”
“Nah,” Nick shrugs and I feel our toes knock blissfully together again beneath the duvet. “Not especially. I'm enjoying just chatting to be honest, but… if you want to, feel free to crack on…”
I fling my phone unceremoniously to one side, utterly un-disappointed by this response. Okay, so getting all up close and (almost) personal to watch something might be off the cards, but the fact that he's got his present face on and is offering me his full attention does not feel like any kind of consolation prize.
“Why was work so awful?” He lifts his beer bottle to his lips for a quick swig but his earnest eyes never leave me, and I find myself stuck in the melty caramel of them. Why have I never had a boyfriend that's given this much of a shit?
“Was Barbara being a fucking bitch again?” He prompts, at my extended silence. In truth, I don't really want to think about work. I'd rather just be happy – here and now , in this moment where I’m very almost, kind of, nearly, tucked under his arm – and forget about the whole shitty business but, of course, I can't deny him anything.
“Like you wouldn't believe…” He patiently lets me collect my thoughts and, after swallowing the remainder of my breadstick, I decide to just say it. If anyone has always proven to be consistently on my side, it's Nick. “Um… I think I was pretty lucky not to get myself a written warning for delivering a few home truths today. I got pulled in and given a dressing down for my ‘abrasive attitude’ when, to be honest, I was just fucking sick to death of being treated like an expendable…”
“Oh.”
It’s a soft noise, sad but non judgemental, and instantly I'm feeling like a whinger, like I’m bringing a damper on this dark, but very nearly perfect, evening, so I attempt to change the subject. Slowly, I roll my head along the underside of the bicep that's resting behind me, looking up into those heady, amber eyes. “Enough about that crap. Let's talk about you. How was your day?”
I watch his mouth tighten, like he feels guilty for living his literal dream. “Standard really… played rugby for three hours and cricket for two with a bunch of goofy teenagers so, yeah. There was one numpty that I had to put into Internal Reflection but, apart from that… not fucking bad.”
Smooshing my lips up, I nod-smile at the pretty visual. Not just him in his PE dept shorts, now there's a fucking sight, but of how commanding he must be, how he easily earns the respect of most people without too much effort. I bet the majority of those kids love him nearly as much as I do. In truth, I've always envied Nick. How he’s always known what he wanted and then just fucking did it. And how much he loves his life, his job and how it makes him happy. He's got no idea how rare that shit is.
“Sounds ideal.”
He swallows loudly before taking a big breath in, and it feels like he’s teetering on the edge of something. After a strung-out moment of baffling tension, in the end, he just says, “Have you thought about looking for a new job recently?”
I don't think that was what he was originally going to say, but a sadistic laugh escapes through my teeth, nevertheless. “Only every day of my fucking life.” Taking another swig of beer, I try to unclench my butt cheeks as I stare into the dancing tea lights. I adore Nick, with every fibre of my fucking being, but he's not a realist. He's got no idea how it's not that easy.
“I hate watching you come home so stressed,” he admits quietly. “Did you ever look into that editors course at the Open University?”
“Yeah.” I snort. “Three grand! Then it's mostly self employed and it's difficult to make a living until you've built up a solid client base so…”
“What about a PGCE? Teach English or Maths or…”
“Nick… I can't afford to retrain, okay?” I say it wearily. I'm already sick of this conversation, but Nick ploughs on relentlessly, like the happy-go-lucky, adorable, knuckleheaded puppy-man that he is. “I'm not saying it'll be easy but, if I cover the bulk of the bills for a while and you get a student loan..”
I can feel my forehead collapse under the full weight of all my internal scepticism. “For a while? For years you mean? I don't think so…”
“Why not?”
His voice is measured, curious, but rather than soothing me, it just gets my back up and I can hear the octaves rising at the end of every sentence. “Because financially, we're already on the bones of our ass?! Maybe because that's a massive commitment?! And, how about the fact that you don't owe me shit?”
Nick’s eye contact breaks away, shifting down, and suddenly I feel vindicated in my scorn. His rose-tinted aviators know that I'm right, but I can’t help but continue on in the same fucking vein. “And what if you suddenly decide you want to move out? Or, want me to move out? Maybe in six months, you and Amie might be ready to...”
“There's no me and Amie.”
He says it quickly, like one merged-up super word - no pausing, no enunciation - and I feel every muscle in my face freeze. I wait for him to elaborate on that particular bombshell until Nick finally takes a huge breath in, raising his gaze back onto me from where it had been puddling in his lap. “We broke up last week.”
A part of me was worried I’d see a flash of pain flicker across the back of his eyes – I really don’t think I could bear it if she broke his fucking heart – but it’s markedly absent. His broad, honest face just seems resigned, parted mouth twitching in the awkward prelude of the unsaid.
“It just... wasn't working.” He says, eventually, eyelids closing for a brief second. “We both knew it. She's not what I want and I was kidding myself that she ever was, so… there you go.”
It feels like it takes a full thirty five minutes to close my mouth and compose a coherent sentence.
Amie .
Big, blue-eyed Amie from Brittany who could probably have become a Cache Cache model if she hadn't found her life's calling teaching Kent’s spotty teenagers French nouns and verbs.
Amie, who volunteers in Uganda every year during the six weeks summer holiday, transcending Princess Diana's white saviour spirit with every seemingly perfect footstep.
Amie, who has all her pretty ducks lined up in a row and has, up until now, seemed destined to be Nick's fucking pedagogical soulmate…
Fuck.
“You didn't tell me…” My heart is in my fucking throat, I can practically feel it beating against the back of my tonsils, and it's a bit like I'm trying to recover from a bout of whiplash. I wasn't expecting it. Not even slightly.
He usually tells me everything.
“No. I guess I didn't.” He raises his right hand and claps the back of his reddening neck, rubbing up and down as his eyebrows fluctuate from whatever internal processing that's going on in there. “I think I just needed to sit on it for a bit…”
“Okay.” I'm finding it hard to take this in, to react as well as a good friend should, and I find myself a few beats behind sounding something near natural. “I'm really sorry to hear that.”
“Why? You didn't like her much anyway, so…” Nick shrugs beside me in the dimness and I’m instantly feeling bad that I made so little effort to pretend over the last four months. Reaching across, my left hand finds his where it's slapped back down upon the duvet and I give it an apologetic squeeze.
“It really doesn't matter if I liked her, Nick. You were the one dating her. And, besides, it’s not as if you ever got along with any of my ex’s, as fleeting and sporadic as they were…”
Nick's response is unusually vehement. “Yeah! Because they were all self-involved arseholes that couldn't see past the end of their own dicks!”
In the echoing silence, I find myself chuckling at his semi-deranged expression. "Good point, and well made….”
Over the past three years, it’s safe to say that all of them were absolute bellends, for one reason or another. The kind you wince and cringe about when you look back at what utter cuntery you put up with in the slim hope of things getting better. Amie isn't anywhere near as bad as any of them though… She's - and I hate to admit this, even to myself - nice. And that, along with all the giggly phone calls in fluent fucking French, might have been the reason I despised her the most.
“We've wandered far from the point I was trying to make…” Nick says, softly this time. “Char? Please listen to me… I just can't watch you be miserable from Monday to Friday anymore. You shouldn't have to settle for living your life during the weekend.” His left hand, the one resting along the back of the sofa, lowers and all the hairs on my neck prickle upwards as his fingertips graze lightly, almost subconsciously, along the tip of my shoulder. “And I want to help. We can cancel Disney Plus, stop buying takeaways and actually meal-plan. I'll sign up for one of those PE exam moderation jobs for some extra cash and tap my dad up for some guilt money and we can make it fucking work!”
Throwing my neck sideways, I stare into the depths of his pupils, fighting the urge to break away. I usually try to avoid them in times like these, these rare moments of tentative intensity that I can't usually hope to fathom, but right now, I'm transfixed. Locked in. He's obviously thought about this. A lot.
“You'd give up Disney Plus for me?”
His smile breaks across his face like a sunset and he doesn't even blink. “Of course I fucking would. I’ve got all the best ones on DVD anyway…”
Then we're chuckling and I find myself turning my torso fully sideways, creeping further in towards the comforting crevice of his arm with a questioning eyebrow. “Why though? Why do you care that much to put yourself out like that?”
The stalwart sigh that huffs out of him hits my face, auburn eyelashes fluttering in hesitation. In the end, I get a mumbled ‘Because’ and everything about him seems to drop, from his gaze to his chin as well as his left arm that’s now found itself at full weight around my shoulder blades, pulling me ever so slightly in .
The amount of times I’ve given him that elusive because instead of a real fucking answer must be as infinite as the melanin smattered across his skin, but this is the first time I’ve realised just how frustrating it must have been on the other side of it, to have the answer right fucking there and yet fully veiled within vague. There’s minimal space left between us but I cross it anyway, repeating and questioning in a fit of feckless hope. “Because?”
The silence I get after that is maddening. All my brain can do is whir away on overdrive, propelling through a thousand thoughts at once.
Please.
Just fucking say it, Nick.
You know me. You know my favourite hoody is the one that used to be yours. Just like you knew that the only thing to make the absence of it better would be to offer me another.
And you know why. Surely, you do.
Because you're it for me. You're endgame. You always have been, right from the day you moved in and set up your PlayStation in the living room and bullied me into playing FIFA.
From the minute you decided to regularly make me toasties and flat whites, and then how you changed the way you made your smoothies, omitting the banana, so I’d like them too.
From the very second you started paying attention; genuinely entertaining whatever random bollocks came out of my mouth on any given day and remembering said bollocks weeks later.
Because.
Eventually, Nick’s head tilts, turning to press his soft lips against my head as his thumb moves in, seeking out the exposed skin of my throat. It's light, barely even fucking there but, somehow, it's everything.
“Because your happiness matters to me, Charlie.” His mouth hasn't moved from the home it's made against my temple, and I close my eyes as his murmured words vibrate into my skin. It's a heartfelt premise. And sweet. And very nearly reaching the realms of honesty that I need. There's an important distinction to be made here and, somehow, I manage to swallow my nerves to gently point it out.
“I'd never be willing to trade my happiness for yours, Nick. Never.”
It's the closest I can get to a love declaration, at least while we're tentatively tango-ing our way across this tightrope. I can't be the first to let go.
It's too far to fall if I'm wrong.
“Ours, then.”
The fingers of his right hand lift from where they've been clasped within mine, guiding my chin up and sideways until we're basically atoms apart. There's the butterfly rush of his lashes as they open and close, the moist fullness of his bottom lip as it hovers, occasionally brushing, by where my mouth meets my cheek. Slowly our feet start to gravitate at a glacial pace, each seeking out the other, until our toes finally touch.
"Our happiness matters to me, Char… you being happy makes me happy.”
My lungs are no longer functioning, brain buffering with stunted static. Words have no hope left to word, not with all power of logical thought suspended in a lucid state of paralysis.
“It might have taken a few lacklustre relationships to figure that one out, comparing them side by side, but… I did it. I realised that living with you, spending the weekends with you, making you smile, meant something. Meant everything...”
Nick exhales hard, the warmth of it rising up along my face, and I think I can feel his leg trembling along mine. I've been too quiet, too reactionless, and I can practically smell the anxiety as he opens his mouth to speak again. “If you don't feel the same, Charlie… if I've been reading the situation completely fucking wrong, now’s the time to let me down gently, okay?”
I lean my head back to get a full read on him, only to find that his eyes are starting to gloss over into golden-bronze. I kinda want to cry too. How he could doubt my feelings is fucking beyond me, but the words are still feel so fucking far out of reach. Instead, my hand sweeps up the back of his neck, into his hairline, and I move fractionally forward until I'm finally perfectly parallel and pressing lightly onto his lips.
They're there, waiting – soft, pliant and on the inviting side of cautious – and as we slowly start testing each other out, navigating uncharted waters, everything inside me moves with the gravitational force of the turning tide. Soon enough, he gathers momentum, upping the pace and kissing me back with a newfound confidence. We're all light gasps, toying tongues and palming hands until it feels like we're being carried along the current and thrown into the depths of the impossible.
Eventually, we slow, lips creeping back to leisurely, seemingly content to drift here, lingering in the novel taste of one another. His thick fingers have found their home within my hair, their scalp-grazing making me want to arch my spine and purr like a cat, but it's then that we start to break away. Just enough.
The soft flickering amber waits for us, and Nick's freckled face comes into soft focus. He looks wide eyed and overwhelmed, but I guess that could be normal when you've just kissed a boy for the first time. I can see myself in his pupils, alongside my own thoroughly kiss-dazed expression, and I shiver despite not being even slightly cold.
Did he like it?
He seemed to…
But what if he didn't.
What if this is the moment that his bicuriosity is parked firmly back in the brain box labelled ‘100% not for me, thanks though.’
What the fuck happens then?
I watch as the top corner of Nick’s lip twitches into a steady, but uncertain, smile. His pupils dart back down to my mouth as I become re-aware of the fingers on his right hand. They’re back, lacing their way through mine. “Say something, Charlie.”
I'm still not quite fully back to compos mentis; my mind is underwater, all thoughts stunned and unmoving at the bottom of the brain pool. My lips are slightly puffy from where our mouths have met, and then I feel the words coming out of them, fully formed, words I've not been able to filter.
“You like boys?!”
I shake my head in the hope it will rattle some much needed sense into me. Of all the things I could have said, this feels like the ultimate anti-climax.
Why didn't I confirm how he’s right? That all my feelings have been lurking like an iceberg beneath the surface for so fucking long?
Or, that I'm not even sure happiness exists, for me, without his steady, solid presence in my life?
Or, of how I've always known that this was what was missing – physical intimacy and vulnerable honesty – and the fact he wants to hold my hand and swap spit too is the best headfuck of my entire life…
“I like you, Charlie. ” Nick drags his top tooth along the bottom lip of his crooked smile, dark pupils dropping down towards my mouth and back up again to consider me. He's leaning in, but pauses with a deep inhale, a breathy word lingering between us before he commits to another kiss.
“Because.”