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Switching schools at seventeen and two weeks into his A-levels was never in Nick's plans. If he was honest, he’d be hard-pressed to find any seventeen-year-old who would want to do this. But he also never expected his parents to divorce. It would be a lie to say his parents had a perfect or even good relationship. His childhood was full of memories of their fights that slowly turned into neither of them caring enough to fight. His brother David choses a university that was far away from home when Nick was thirteen, leaving him alone for the four long years of his parents barely speaking. Then one day he came home to his mum crying at the kitchen table and his dad's car as well as a large amount of his clothing gone from the closet. His mum telling to him a few weeks later, tears once again in her eyes, she’d accepted a position back in her hometown of Truman, where his aunt Diana and her husband and children lived. Explaining to Nick that she was sorry, but she and his father had decided to sell their family home since his father was moving back to France.
Gone were his dreams of jeans and his comfortable jumpers, his old school letting A-level students wear appropriate street clothes, replaced with a stiff navy blazer, white button down, and blue striped tie. Nick looks down at the map of the school. The counselor emailed his mum when his transfer was finalized, trying to locate the office he’d been directed to go to on his first day. He slowly walked through the hall, steadily growing busier with students, and looking down at the paper when he bumps into something. Nick looks up, finding that something is a fellow student. His vision blocked by a head of dark curls and olive skin, Nick doesn’t notice when he crashed into the other boy, it had caused him to drop his bag. Nick takes a step backward and feels something crunch under his foot.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” A harsh voice says before Nick can say anything. He looks down, seeing a drumstick that was sticking halfway out of the boy's bag, cleanly snapped in two by Nick’s foot. “That was a brand new stick!”
Nick fumbles, almost dropping his bag on the floor. “I’m sorry,” Nick says, the words coming out rushed and slightly panicked at the look on the other boy's face.
“Yeah, whatever, apologies aren’t going to get me £25, and now I’ll have to use the shitty school sticks. All because some lumbering idiot couldn’t bother to look where he was going.”
“I can pay you back. I don’t have any money on me right now, but I can pay you back,” Nick says, finally looking up and meeting a pair of the iciest blue eyes he’s ever seen.
If the circumstances had been different, Nick would be at a loss for words for a different reason. There was one specific reason why Nick was worried about switching schools. He’d already done it at his old school, with his friends he’d left hours away. He’d already come out. Nick had gone through the awkward and slightly terrifying moments of telling his mates and his mum that he’s bisexual. Not bothering to tell his dad. He wasn’t around much anyway, and Nick figured he’d tell him if he ever brought a boy home. Little did he know that his dad would be across the channel and out of his life six months after he figured out his sexuality. If this boy wasn’t glaring at him, with hard, expressionless eyes and his lips drawn into a thin line, Nick would be having a full on bisexual crisis. But instead, he felt that he was on the verge of tears. The combined stress of moving across the country, his parents divorcing, and now this beautiful stranger yelling at him in the hallway of his new school on his first day was almost enough to push him over the edge.
“Are you even listening?” Nick’s drawn to from his thoughts by fingers snapping in front of his face. “Whatever, I don’t care. My locker is number twenty seven in the year eleven hall, you can slip the money through there.” He says, scooping his bag off the floor and shoving his belongings back inside before turning a heel and walking away from Nick.
“Wait, what’s your name?” Nick asks, his voice rough like he hadn’t spoken in days. The boy doesn’t turn, doesn’t answer Nick, he only flips him off over his shoulder and continues to walk away.
Nick wanders down the hall, finding his way to the office. A small room with a bouquet of flowers on the desk, and a middle aged woman sitting at the computer behind it. “Give me one second, dear to finish this up for Isaac here, and I’ll be right with you.” She says, not bothering to look up from the screen.
“Um, yeah. Okay, thank you.” Nick says, sitting down next to the boy he assumes is Isaac. A boy who looks to be about his age, with a book held in front of his face. He looks up at Nick, briefly, a small smirk on his face, before he goes back to his book. Only to look away when his phone buzzes on his thigh.
“Here you go Isaac, your schedule should be all fixed up. Sorry for the mix up.” The secretary says, passing a piece of paper to Isaac over the top of the desk. “Now what can I do for you?” She asked, turning to Nick.
“Don’t let Charlie get to you,” Isaac says from behind his book, holding it open with one hand, the other holding up his phone to briefly show Nick a picture of the broken drumstick. “He can be a bit of a dick, but don’t let him get to you.” He says before patting Nick on the shoulder and walking from the room
Nick blinks, trying to take in the information Isaacs told him and also answer the secretary's question. “Sorry, right. I’m Nick. Nicholas Nelson, my mum got an email saying I should stop in here for my schedule and information about my form group.”
“Yes, dear, I was expecting you a bit earlier, but we’ve got it all sorted.”
“Sorry, I got lost on my way to the office.”
“No worries. In this old building, some of the hallways can act a little like a maze.”
The rest of Nick’s first day passes smoothly. No unpleasant run-ins with any other students and positive interactions from his teachers, most of whom haven’t had a chance to look over his transfer transcript but seem pleased when he’s able to answer the questions asked of him in class. He’d pushed the unpleasant interaction from this morning to the back of his mind until he walked into his maths lesson. Nick never wanted to continue math into his A-levels, his dad had insisted. Despite his better judgment, Nick agreed. He’d never particularly liked math. He was alright at the subject. It was never something he wanted to pursue at uni. He thought he would be able to skate by, do alright, and then pick a non-math focused area of study in two years. Until he walked into the room and saw who he assumed to be Charlie sitting in the corner of the room. He looks up when Nick walks in, rolling his eyes before turning his attention back to the notebook at his desk.
It was a little embarrassing to ask his mum to borrow twenty five pounds after his first day at school. Until he told her what it was for and she patted him on the cheek, telling him he was ‘such a nice boy’ for replacing something that he had broken. He didn’t have a problem paying Charlie back for his broken drumstick. What was keeping him up and causing him to roll from side to side in his bed was the way Charlie treated him. As much as he tried, he wasn’t able to get the way Charlie looked at him out of his head. The cold stare and unkind words replayed over and over again while he tried to fall asleep.
The next morning, Nick finds an envelope in a drawer in their kitchen. He shoves the money into it, not bothering to fold the bills nicely before he scribbles a note on a piece of paper and stuffs it inside the envelope alongside the crumbled bills. Nick makes sure he gets to school actually early this morning, the halls are empty outside of a few students making their way to the library for some last minute computer time. He finds the year eleven hall easily, walking down the row of lockers until he finds number twenty seven. Nick pushes the envelope through the vent on the locker door, barely fitting through the slot with the corner sticking out. He doesn’t care, just happy to be done with it. Nick walks off, the hallway becoming busier by the second.
Charlie wasn’t sure what to expect. The older student, whose name he learned was Nick, was the large sporty lad type that cared about nothing more than throwing a ball around and being cruel to those weaker or different than themselves. Something that Charlie went through two years ago. The bullying had been intense when he was outed in year nine. Older students calling him faggot and gay boy. Telling him was disgusting simply for existing.
At first, he tried to ignore it. Pretending that the bullying didn’t bother him and that his sexuality was his and his alone, not something others could judge him for. That attitude worked for a while, until the bullies realized their harsh words and well timed slurs were no longer affecting him, and they started relying on more physical ways of taunting him. Shoving Charlie in the hallway and knocking his books from his hands. After that, Charlie couldn’t take it anymore. The next time he had his belongings forcefully pushed from his hands to the ground, he was suspended for a week for punching the other student in the face.
So when he got to his locker and saw the corner of an envelope sticking out from the vent, he was shocked. Charlie opened his locker, catching the envelope before it fell to the ground and opening it. Not only had he been paid back for his broken drumstick, but Nick had left him a little note. Charlie wasn’t one for sentimental gestures, though who could blame him when Nick looked the way that he did? All broad shoulders and freckles scattered across his cheeks paired perfectly with the flecks of red in his dark blond hair. There wasn’t a doubt in Charlie’s mind that he was as straight as they come, so if he ended up not being a complete arse, Charlie could at least have something pretty to stare at during his maths lesson.
He unfolds the note, a small smile on his face, only to read ‘you didn’t have to be such a prick’ Charlie balls up the note, scowling and tossing it into the bottom of his locker. He was right, there wasn’t any reason to hope that Nick would turn out like any of the other boys at his school. Charlie did his best to avoid Nick, something that should be an easy task given their large school and the number of students. But no, somehow they kept running into each other. It started with their maths teacher rearranging the seating and putting them at the same four top table. And then, almost like some cosmic force is pushing them together.
Charlie would go to use the toilet between classes, and Nick would be walking out, their shoulders brushing when they went to the door. They had the same lunch period, when Charlie decided to eat outside and Nick would be there, tossing a rugby ball with some of the other lads on the team. But the thing that got Charlie the most was his weekends. Outside of drumming, his only hopping was running. Charlie had a preset route he liked to take from his house to the park, around the loop, and back. He liked routine, he liked knowing the terrain, and he especially liked the few dogs he’d see playing with their owners at the park. So much so that he noticed a new one, a brown and white border collie, eagerly chasing a frisbee and bringing it back to the waiting hand of Nick Nelson.
And just when Charlie thought things couldn’t get any worse, they did. Who was he kidding? It was his life, so of course things got worse. Charlie was waiting in line for lunch, one of the rare days he bought lunch at school instead of bringing a packed lunch from home. He had his tray in hand, thankfully no food on it yet, when a year thirteen walked past him.
“Fucking faggot.” The boy said, slapping Charlie's tray with his hand and sending it sliding across the tile floor. Charlie rolled his eyes, flipping off the other student off and picking up the plate that clattered at his feet.
“Here,” Charlie sees the tray held out to him before he realizes who’s holding it.
“I could have gotten it myself,” Charlie says, snatching it from Nick.
“You know, I don’t know what your problem is or what I did to earn your hate. You’re a real dick. Sure, I broke your drumstick, and I paid you back. And ever since, it’s been nothing but mean glares and snide comments from you if we’re forced to talk in class. I heard what he said and can’t stand people being homophobic, so I was just trying to help.”
Charlie shakes his head, not sure he really heard what Nick had said to him. There was no way that the six foot something broad chested and arms to die for star on the rugby pitch had just told Charlie that he hated homophobia.
Nick knew just what he needed to get his head in the right place. A good jog around the track, letting the fresh air clear his mind. Helping him forget a certain curly haired menace he couldn’t quite get out of his thoughts, no matter how hard he tried. He gets to his locker, thinking about whether he was going to take both Nellie and Henry on his jog, when he sees the yellow sticky note stuck to the front. Well, two sticky notes, one covering the other, so what was written stayed hidden. Nick raises an eyebrow and peels the covering piece of paper off, only to read ‘I don’t need pity from a stupid rugby lad’
Nick pulls the blue sticky notes his mum instead he’d get for school from the bottom of his locker, scribbling a reply and hurrying to stick it to Charlie's locker before the hall is filled with students. ‘better be a stupid rugby lad than an utter dick nerd’
The next morning, Nick finds a new note on his locker ‘the utter dick nerd says fuck you’ Nick feels himself blushing and butterflies fluttering in his stomach. No. No, it couldn’t be. He couldn’t be developing a crush on Charlie Spring. Not on the boy that glared at him any chance he got or kicked his chair ‘on accident’ when walking by during maths. Nick writes a note back - ‘the rugby lad says you wish’ and slaps it to Charlie's locker before going to class.
The little notes continued, ranging from saying things that were downright insulting to little jabs that made both Nick and Charlie laugh despite themselves and their dislike for the person leaving the notes. Over the weeks the tone of the notes change, Nick wasn't sure when but suddenly they're less hateful and more playful ribbing. Charlie making fun of the way Nick's hair looks when he doesn't have time to comb it back one morning. The way Charlie writes it sounds more like two friends poking fun at each other instead of the hate he'd grown use to from Charlie. Where's Nick would write notes about how Charlie's tie looked crooked and if he was going to be head boy the least he could do was make sure he kept up his appearance. Nick wasn't sure why but he started keeping the notes, hiding them away in the pocket of the front of one of his notebooks. He'd sometimes go back and look at them, finger tracing over Charlies soft handwriting while he thought about the dimples he saw when Charlie smiled at one of his friends when he saw him across the library. One day he found himself absentmindedly drawing a heart under the words while he thought about the way Charlie looked with his curls all wet from a sudden downpour of rain while he'd been walking to school
They carry on with the notes until one day Nick was sitting down in his normal spot in the one and only class he shared with Charlie, and he notices the other boy openly staring at him. It wasn’t the normal look he got from him. The cold, vacant look in Charlie’s eyes was replaced with something Nick couldn’t quite put his finger on.
“What?” Nick asks.
“What’s that?” Charlie asks. Pointing to the pin, a little rugby ball colored with pink, purple, and blue was secured to the strap of Nick’s bag.
“Oh, so you’ve decided that I’m good enough to speak to now? How lucky for me.” Nick says, his tone dripping with sarcasm.
“Well, clearly you’re lucky for me to speak to you. Why do you have a pin in those colors?”
“My mum bought it for me, saw it in a shop and thought I’d like it.”
“But the colors?”
“Yeah, what about them? Going to tell me you're biphobic as well as a complete arse?”
Charlie blinks, trying to get his brain to catch up to Nick's words. “You’re, wait, are you?”
“Bisexual? Yeah-”
Before Nick can finish his sentence, Mr. Lang cuts him off. “Nick and Charlie, please keep it down. And Nick, see me after class.” Class goes on as normal, well as normal as Nick can think, when he catches Charlie looking up at him with an expression somewhere between confusion and curiosity each time he looks up from his notebook.
“Ah, Nick Nelson, now let’s see.” Mr. Lang says when Nick approaches his desk, as the rest of the students file out of the room. “Apologies if this sounds critical. Do you really want to be taking A-level math?”
“Well my dad,” Nick starts, Mr. Lang holding up his hand and nodding.
“If that’s the case, I’d like to get you signed up for our tutoring program. I think you’d do well with just a few sessions. Help you catch up on a few concepts before the next exam.” Nick agrees. Mr. Lang explains that they have a few students who provide the tutoring, and he completes the schedule. Nick picks a weekend time and doesn’t think anything of it until there’s a knock on his door Sunday afternoon.
He gently pushes Nellie and Henry out of the way, opening the door and almost closing it when he sees Charlie Spring standing on his doorstep. “Absolutely not,” Nick says, his groan cut off when Nellie wiggles through his legs and presses her wet nose to Charlie’s hand.
“Oh, hello. And who might you be?” Charlie says, squatting down to be on Nellie’s level and giggling when she licks his face. “Aren’t you just the best?” He says, giving her a few pats before standing up. “Yeah, I know, alright. Mr. Lang put you on my schedule, and the school pays well for me to be a tutor since I’m in advanced placement for maths, so I can’t really tell them no, now can I?”
“I guess not, let's just get this over with,” Nick says, stepping aside and letting Charlie into his home.
“Nicky,” he turns, his mum standing in the doorway to the kitchen, dog leashes in hand. “I’m going to take them on a little walk to keep them out of your hair.” Both the dogs perk up and run to Sarah as soon as she says the word ‘walk’
“Ready to study now, Nicky?” Charlie asks, bumping his shoulder playfully into Nick's.
“Oh fuck off,” Nick says, motioning for Charlie to follow him to the kitchen.
Nick can’t help but watch the clock over on the wall, watching the minutes slowly tick by while Charlie explains the different components of the equations they were working through. Letting Nick make his way through the questions, checking his work, and making little corrections as they go. Once they’ve made it through the longest hour of Nick’s life, he slides his notebook over for Charlie to check his work. He looks it over, making a few corrections here or there with his pen before he picks up the notebook to sit back in his chair and hold it, causing the front cover to flop over and the little pocket on the cover filled with scraps of paper to spill open.
Nick quickly realizes what has spilled out over the table and scrambles to pick up the yellow sticky notes. Every note that Charlie had ever left in his locker. Keeping the notes would only be a little embarrassing, maybe he could convince Charlie that he just shoved them into his notebook without thinking, and never looked into the little pocket. That would only work if Charlie didn’t get his hands on the note, because then there would be no way to explain all the little hearts he’d drawn around Charlie’s words. And as fate would have it, a majority of the notes fall right into Charlie’s lap. Nick sits, watching in horror as Charlie flips through the notes. His long fingers tracing slowly over the little drawn hearts around words like ‘rugby lad’ and ‘fuck you.’
“You got a crush on me or something?” Charlie asks, not looking up, but Nick can see the redness creeping up his neck and onto his cheeks. So he does the only logical thing he can do.
“And what if I did?” Nick says, letting a little bit of confidence slip into his voice.
“I’d say good, cause I’ve got one on you too,” Charlie says, standing up slightly and leaning forward to press his lips to Nick’s before he can reply.
Nick hesitates for just a moment before he lets his lips move against Charlie’s, gently parting so he can feel the other boy's tongue lightly trace his bottom lip before he pulls away.
“So you don’t hate me?” Nick asks.
Charlie laughs, “No, not really.”