Work Text:
Present day - today at lunch
“It’ll never work!” Charlie huffed aloud to himself, staring at his phone and throwing himself into a chair in the break room.
Leah was just coming in and raised her eyes in interest at usually-calm-Charlie’s outburst.
“What exactly will never work?”
He startled, having been entirely absorbed in his text messages, and clutched his chest while gasping. “Fucking hell, Leah.” He tossed the phone across the table towards her as she slid into a chair with her unironic Spice Girls lunchbox. “It’s my friends again, trying to set me up with people.”
Leah scanned the recent texts quickly. “Random people.”
“Random normal people. Without an ounce of experience in the life of an air traffic controller.”
“Oh hell. Those poor guys don’t stand a fucking chance.”
“They really don’t. If I’m going to be serious about finding the next future ex-Mr. Spring, I can’t be wasting time with these poor normies who are looking for a guy to snuggle with in front of bakeoff every night and to garden together with their mum on the weekends and create healthy emotional attachments.” The two of them shudder automatically.
Leah knew exactly what Charlie was talking about. She’d had two divorces already and was tiptoing a bit around the topic of future plans with her current girlfriend. Mohammad, who was presently rummaging in the fridge looking for his energy drink, only had the one divorce under his belt like Charlie, but his second wife had been “visiting relatives” in Germany for a while. Sean, who usually joined them for lunch but today was stuck at his station with a delayed flight, had somehow avoided marriage so far, but the string of broken hearts he’d left in his wake was long and loud. Their sharing of complaints about him had almost discouraged the pack of them from hooking up with other ATCs…almost.
So. The setting for our tale: the wasteland of love lives of a ragtag group of air traffic controller co-workers, mangled marriages and doomed connections littered about as far as the eye can see, but with something inside each of them still refusing to give up all hope. And risking emotional injury to themselves and others as they plowed on in attempt after attempt.
At least Charlie didn’t have kids. He didn’t know how his co-workers managed those complications as the divorces piled up. Of course, he had his own inner obstacles still to face. Or, well. That one, at least. It’s just that it was kind of a big one.
*****
20 years earlier
Charlie could have sworn this was meant to be a love story. Everyone said so. There were no sweeter two names ever put together than Nick and Charlie, and the universe knew it well. Hell, Romeo and Juliet couldn’t even hack it, knowing this incredible duo was yet to come along. So even after the fight at Harry’s party, even after a couple of weeks not hearing from Nick, he still had a bit of faith in the future and faith in them flickering down deep, and he didn’t give up hope, and he printed the damn photos, and he posted them through the damn Nelson letterbox. His friends and his sister, they loved to encourage that stupid fucking hope. Shows how much they knew. It would have much better been labeled naivete, foolishness, misguided belief that good things happen to good people.
Now he knew that they most certainly do not. At least, well, maybe they do, but so do very, very bad things.
Nick never did see the photos, which of course means he was never able to have a conversation with Charlie where he explains that he broke his phone, and they could never realize they’re worth putting in the hard work, and they could never be a happily ever after. They couldn’t and they can’t; deepest apologies to the pure at heart reading here today, but it simply wasn’t in the cards for these two.
Nick is gone.
You don’t come back from gone, no matter how much you were supposed to be a love story. You don’t come back from Nick’s lovely mum who cared for him more deeply than she could express moving up their annual Menorca trip to help distract him from losing Charlie, but apparently thus tempting fate, and the plane going down on the way home.
Lost loves don’t come back from that. Entire families don’t come back from that. Fragile psyches like Charlie’s (or jesus, like probably anyone’s who goes through something as traumatic as that??) almost don’t come back from that, and only just barely scrape through with the help of every deeply invested friend and sibling and parent, a fair amount of inpatient and outpatient care, and decades of Geoff and meds. And can one really say he’s “back to normal,” when he’s followed his dead love into a career, just to make sure Nick can’t die again??
He can’t do that, of course. And if you ask him directly if that’s why he works in the tower, he’ll say fuck you and I obviously fucking know he’s gone and then he’ll storm off angrily. But if there’s a little tiny man sitting on his breastbone, kicking his heart right in the most painful spot every time he directs a plane to landing and holds his breath to make sure Nick doesn’t die again, who the hell is ever going to know?
*****
About five years ago
“Charlie! It’s Uncle Charlie!!”
When Tao flung upon the door it was with the widest, most unadulterated smile Charlie had ever seen upon his face, and it tugged at his heartstrings a bit. Not to mention being called ‘Uncle Charlie’. Despite himself, he teared up. He may have spent the morning in domestic turmoil, but goddamnit, this was one of the biggest days of his best friend’s life, and he wasn’t going to bring any rain into this day of unqualified sunshine.
He stepped forward into Tao’s waiting embrace and just about lifted him off the ground. “Congratulations, you two! I literally could not be happier for you!” And then the both of them were swept inside to the rest of the beaming crew, everyone gathered around either Darcy’s punch bowl (brunch punch, not prom night punch) or the cozy-looking bassinet, from the side of which Elle did not depart the entire time. The baby inside was literally perfect. Amal. Hope, in Arabic.
The morning was honestly a lift to Charlie’s spirits, as well. At one point when Isaac asked about Gareth he simply shook his head, and Isaac understood enough not to keep asking. It did make Charlie need to go stand in an out-of-the-way corner and breathe deeply for a minute, but then he got through it. Another relationship over, another failed promise, but it wasn’t surprising anymore. He didn’t expect another fairy tale. He gave what he could when he could, but Gareth wasn’t the first to tell him that it simply wasn’t enough, and he had grown used to hearing it. At least, enough used to it to shut it out and try and focus on his friends’ utter bliss today. So what if lives begin and end every day–that doesn’t make this new addition to his chosen family any less special. And so what if he knew he wasn’t going to make any additions himself, at least not any that lasted longer than a standard man’s patience with his emotional distance and workaholism. He knew very well he was still a lucky bastard to be in this community.
When he couldn’t delay any longer going home to face the inevitable Meeting to Divide the Belongings, he made a quick run around the room to say his goodbyes. He got another chance at cradling Amal gently and placing a soft kiss on her forehead, feeling an unimpeded love for her in spite of himself. He grabbed Elle and Tao somehow in one hug, and honestly had to fight the feeling that he never wanted to let go. Elle gave him a kiss on the cheek that also served to wipe away that one tear that had dropped, and he counted himself yet again fucking fortunate to have her in his life.
After bumbling hugs and handshakes to the rest of the group, he almost made it outside before running into Isaac and his partner Caleb, who were also grabbing their coats and heading out. He didn’t begrudge them the peaceful home they’d be returning to, almost certainly an afternoon of reading books together on the couch rather than fighting over the books and the couch, but they were both a couple of perceptive fuckers and gave him sympathetic looks in unison. They’d clearly been together too long, provided Charlie’s embittered and jealous heart unprompted.
“Do you want to come by and rest at ours this afternoon?” suggested Caleb.
Charlie smiled ruefully. As cynical as he was now, he couldn’t deny that Isaac had found a true soulmate in Caleb, and he didn’t entirely hate being cared for by both of them now. Couldn’t accept it fully, but didn’t hate it.
“Thank you, but I better get home. Got another partnership to close out.”
Isaac threw himself around Charlie’s neck, and Charlie leaned into it for as long as he could allow himself. “We love you, you know that.” The muffled words coming from under his collar were a declaration, not a question.
“I know. You think I’d still be here if I didn’t know that?” The two leaned back apart so they could exchange a knowing glance, and then each headed their own direction towards home. Or at least, for Charlie, if not home, the building where his body lay at night while his heart wandered the skies.
*****
Present day - later this afternoon
Charlie had had two more rotations after lunch break, and was just finishing up his last few minutes as executive controller before heading home for the evening. He had enough seniority to not have to work nights much, and he was looking forward to a restful few hours on the couch with a good book and maybe checking the dating apps. He wasn’t ready to commit to being alone for the entire rest of his life, just needed his potential partners to understand where the emotional challenges might crop up. Not for the first time he wished an app existed just for ATCs and other socially challenged single folx.
He was stretching his left hand a bit due to the beginnings of a cramp as he completed a successful landing for BA7054, landing a bit late but entirely safely from Madrid, when a very, very odd blip popped up on his screen.
“BAL1221? What the hell is that?” He looked around frantically, both at the station in front of him and inside his short-term memory, but he had received no handover from another controller on this flight nor was there any flight progress strip on the desk with that call sign. There were no flight progress strips at all, actually – he’d been about to unplug and sign out for the day.
His mind raced – wasn’t BAL the call sign for Britannia Airways, which didn’t exist anymore? – but meanwhile he was aware Sean was instantly behind him, as well as his Watch Supervisor Hannah. She was leaning over clicking buttons before he could react, as Sean practically shouted right next to his ear, “Did you just fucking say BAL1221?”
Charlie knew there was something important about that number but couldn’t pinpoint it. “Yeah? So?” He concentrated on keeping his breathing measured as a small crowd gathered around. Like all good ATCs, he wasn’t going to slip into panic mode, but the uneasy expressions on the faces of his normally stoic colleagues were starting to get to him. What did they know that he didn’t? Or perhaps better put, what were they remembering that he had suppressed?
Hannah ordered him to push back and she plugged in immediately, going to work speaking to the pilot, who had called in and was clearly announcing the same call number and asking for guidance to land. Charlie felt a fog in his mind and retreated uncertainly, almost stumbling over an empty chair, but was saved by Leah’s steady hand on his elbow.
“Charlie. Charlie. BAL1221. It’s that plane that disappeared after takeoff from MAH 20 years ago.” Charlie sucked in a breath and whirled to face her. She stared into his eyes, clearly trying to magically impart some calm strength to him. “It’s Nick’s flight.”
*****
Right this very second
Charlie’s feet were carrying him down way too many flights of stairs and across the tarmac where he had no actual authorization to be this afternoon. No one stopped him because they didn’t know where he was assigned today, but also, no one would have been able to stop him in any case. His secondary school boyfriend was back in his heart and his secondary school running speed was back in his shoes.
Charlie had known Hannah wasn’t going to get into any gossip or side conversations while she tried to bring the plane down as safely as possible (did it have 20-year-old brakes and tires??), and she’d effectively kicked him out from the communication systems with the flight deck anyway, so there had been no more information for him at that moment in the tower. So he ran.
At the same time, his mind spun in circles. They never had found the plane, but also, they really had not had much idea where to search, so the fact that it hadn’t been found had not raised any alarm bells. An inquest had determined the plane’s black box must have been faulty to not have sent any distress signal or location pings; Spanish, French, Italian and even a few Algerian coast guard and military branches joined in the search for a time, but there was a moment when it had to be abandoned. And that was that. Literally no one thought anyone from the flight had survived. How could they have? This wasn’t an episode of Lost, this was real life. Missing planes didn’t go into other dimensions or travel through time; they crashed or sank and there are only so many resources available to search for them, and the longer it takes the less chance anyone will still be alive. The fact that no one from the crew or passenger manifest had ever turned up, anywhere, ever, was proof enough to the authorities that the plane had gone down with everyone on it.
But now – here it was? Suddenly appearing at Heathrow acting for all the world like it was about to disembark a few hundred tanned vacationers? Nothing made any sense anymore, so Charlie’s mind flashed through all the possible illogical explanations. Did the plane somehow go through a wormhole and jump over 20 years in time–would the Nick inside still be 16 and ready to start his life with Charlie (or still be fucking mad after what happened at Harry’s!)? Or had the plane been in suspended animation somewhere while everyone on board aged at the appropriate rate, so the Nick inside would still be one year older than Charlie, probably with a straggly/hot beard, but also just the right age to come and spend the rest of their lives together?
Charlie mentally kicked himself as he pounded across the pavement to where he could see the plane slowing down on the runway. Other folks on the ground crew were already starting to turn and stare, not having seen a Britannia Airways plane in a dozen years or more. But that sight was nothing compared to what they could have examined of Charlie’s mind if only they could peer inside. “Which Nick was going to get off that plane?” Really? Was he serious with this? It was not actually physically possible that there be any Nick at all. There was going to be some other explanation, like that a terrorist group took them hostage and had been using the plane this whole time for their own purposes–maybe scary, but nowhere near supernatural.
There isn’t going to be a Nick on that plane. There can’t be a Nick on that plane. Charlie repeated this mantra over and over to himself as he came to a breathless stop in front of the plane’s nose. It had also stopped. Any minute now the doors would open and someone or someones would descend.
But it can’t be Nick, it won’t be Nick. He’s not going to come down the steps and sweep me into his arms and into our future and fix everything. He’s gone. He can’t.
The door began to creak open and Charlie didn’t care that he’d stopped breathing. Was Nick there? Nick couldn’t be there. Was this going to change his life, make him come alive again? It couldn’t. It could never work.
And then…