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“It’s back,” Charlie stated, storming into the living room.
A very startled Nick looked up at his boyfriend from the homework he was currently grading. Wait, not boyfriend. Fiancé. Nick smiled dreamily.
Which Charlie didn’t seem to take that well. “Earth to Nelson, did you even hear what I said? It’s back!”
Nick was startled again. “What is?”
Which earned him a violent eyeroll from the curly haired tornado standing in the door. “Well, hello! IT!”
“What ‘it’?” Nick tried to clarify.
“The LEAK!”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Do I look like I’m kidding?”
He was very much not. Instead he looked furious.
“Char, you can’t be furious at a leak! I agree, it fucking sucks, but it hasn’t come back just to torture you!”
“Well, it bloody well is!” Charlie snarled, stepping further into the room and plopping down on the couch, burying his head in his hands.
Nick watched him wearily. “I thought they fixed it? I mean, you gave them quite the scare when you went all Scarface on them. I was under the impression it worked?”
“Scarface my arse, I was very civil, thank you very much. Far more than those arseholes deserved.”
“Char!”
“What? It’s true! Them with their ‘obviously you have no idea about the internal workings of a great firm like ours’. Or their ‘well, maybe our phone operator didn’t tell you in exactly the words you wanted to hear’. Oh, I almost forgot the best one. ‘We have clients still waiting for us to fix their leaks for 6 months now’! How are they even in business anymore?”
“Char,” Nick tried to soothe, joining him on the sofa and taking his hand. “It’s quite normal these days to have to wait for a plumber for that long.”
“Oh yeah?” Charlie scoffed. “Since when are you an expert in pipes?”
Nick stared at him. Charlie stared back. Then they both broke out laughing.
“Bloody hell, leave me alone! I’m pissed off!” Charlie laughed.
“At your pipe?” Nick inquired innocently, earning himself a playful shove from Charlie.
“Anyway,” Nick continued once they had calmed down. “I think you need to call the landlord tomorrow.”
Charlie sighed miserably
💦
“Hey sweetheart, how was your day?” Nick asked, when he joined Charlie in the kitchen the next day, just coming home from school.
Charlie was sitting at the kitchen table, staring blankly into the distance.
“Sweetheart?” Nick asked in concern, rushing towards him.
"No one's problem,” Charlie said tonelessly.
Nick sank down on the chair beside him and took his hand. “What happened?”
Charlie sighed deeply. Then he turned to look at Nick. “I tried to call the landlord, but no luck. Then I called the house managers. They told me they couldn’t do anything, since our flat was privately owned and not managed by them. They told me to contact the landlord. As if a leaking pipe inside the wall of the house only concerned our flat. So I tried the landlord again. No luck. Then I thought fuck it and called the company responsible for the house’s plumbing. They told me they would need an official order from the management company. That was when my head imploded.”
Nick tried his best to look sympathetic to the sufferings of his fiancé, but his mouth twitched traitorously.
“Don’t laugh! I’m in agony!” Charlie screeched.
“Poor darling,” Nick said and took him into his arms, no longer able to suppress his giggles. Still in his arms, Charlie whacked him over the head.
💦
“Okay, that’s it! I give up!! MORONS! All of them!”
Nick listened to Charlie’s angry rampage through the flat, trying to find just the right moment to interrupt without risking Charlie biting his head off.
After a few minutes more of the tantrum about MORONS and BLOODY BEAUROCRATS and FUCKING NEANDERTHALS, he saw his chance. “Hey, come here. Tell me what happened, you’ll feel better.”
“Can you stop the leak from leaking?”
“Well, no …”
“Can you conjure an actual plumber?”
“Again, no, but …”
“Can you do ANYTHING to make this better?”
“Sadly no, but …”
“Don’t BUT me, Nicholas!”
“Seriously?” Nick asked with a smirk.
💦
“Char, we have no water!” Nick called from the kitchen where he was just trying to prepare some tea.
“I KNOW that, Nicholas!” Charlie’s angry voice came from the bedroom.
Careful, Nelson! “I thought we just had a leak?”
“No shit, Sherlock!”
“What happened?”
Charlie entered the kitchen. “I convinced the plumber to come by and look at it, at least. Here, try again,” he indicated. When Nick tried again, water ran freely into the kettle. He filled it and looked at Charlie. “How did you manage that?”
“How do you think? I opened the main water tap for the flat.”
“Ooookayyy?”
Charlie sighed. “The plumber looked at the leak, but couldn’t clearly identify where the water is leaking from. He told me to call another company which specialises in leakage detection. Till then he suggested we turn off the main water tap whenever we don’t need it.”
“This is getting ridiculous.”
“Tell me about it.”
💦
“Do we have everything we need?” Nick asked excitedly. He had just finished packing for their three week holiday at a far away beach resort. And, almost more so, to their joint trip to a F1 race with Sai and Otis that he had been able to convince Charlie of. The tickets had been surprisingly affordable. The only problem was that they would cut it really short, only arriving back home from their beach holiday two days prior. The washing machine would really have to work for its money. When no answer came he looked over his shoulder, only to see that Charlie had vanished. “Char?” he called out.
“Bathroom!” came the answer.
“Sorry!” Nick exclaimed.
“Don’t be sorry, you dickhead. Come join me!”
Nick could feel all the blood rushing south. They would have to be real quick before Tara and Darcy arrived, but …
He stopped dead when he entered the bathroom and saw Charlie staring at the leak-that-was-currently-not-leaking-because-they-had-turned-off-the-main-water-tap.
Nick groaned internally.
“What if we come back and the whole flat’s under water?”
“Calm down, darling, that won’t happen!”
“What if the pipe breaks while we’re gone?”
“Don’t be ridiculous!”
“But what if they decide to fix it while we’re gone and we come home to a bathroom with an open wall?”
“Char, can we please focus on having fun while we’re on holiday? Pretty please?”
“I sometimes wish I had your confidence in the future.”
All Nick could do was take him into his arms and whisper soothing words into his ear.
💦
“Well, as great as it was, I can't wait to hop under the shower and wash off all this travel grime,” Charlie sighed. They had thoroughly enjoyed their holiday, and the weather had been amazing. Nick took his hand, and they dragged their trolleys toward the front door of their apartment building, where …
“I don’t believe it!” Charlie groaned.
Dear tenants, due to a broken water pipe in the basement of the building all water is cut off until further notice.
The plumber is already informed. We are sorry for this inconvenience.
Nick could only stare in horror at the innocent looking sign while Charlie burst into tears. With a look at their suitcases filled with dirty laundry - almost ALL their laundry - he took out his phone. “I’m gonna call mum. We’re going to need her washing machine.”
💦
Next:
Will our boys get their water back? Will the leak be detected? Will landlord and the various companies overcome their differences to help Nick and Charlie in their need? Or will Nick finally get his long wished-for superpowers and close the leak with his eyes’ laser beam? The answer lies in a yet unknown future, in a far away country, in a galaxy far, far away.
But don’t ask me.
I don’t know.
And probably never will.
If you’ll excuse me now, I’ll go weep quietly in a corner.
And the leak keeps on leaking …