Archive of Our Own

Then

The traditional signing of the shirts at the end of year eleven – a permanent-marker celebration of the beginning of GCSE study leave – must be the worst kind of humiliation. 

That’s the overwhelming thought in Charlie’s head as he suffers yet another sixth former grabbing him by the scruff and making him stand there and pretend that they’re not drawing a crude representation of a penis. By lunchtime, he’ll be tempted to start giving them notes.

It’s not even that he doesn’t know any of the year twelves. He recognises some of them from Elle’s time, before she left for Higgs. Some of them are even pretty decent. There’s just the overwhelming memory of the small, but vocal, population of arseholes who made his forced coming out hell on Earth. All of them now seemed to have conveniently forgotten everything they put him through. He’s been called ‘mate’ more times in the past two hours than his entire time at Truham combined by boys who, a month ago, would have looked past him like he were a ghost.

Then there are the boys in his year.

There’s some unspoken competition to see who can sign the most shirts – with each boy seemingly having his own signature doodle to humiliate the others – as if this last ditch attempt at advertising popularity will be what sees them through whatever the next few years of their life will bring.

Thankfully, Charlie has overheard quite a few of them talking about different sixth forms. Some of them are off to college, others are sticking around at Truham and a small minority have secured places at Higgs. None of them seem to have decided, like Charlie, to head across town to the new secondary; too much of a risk that their personalities won’t translate to popularity in a brand new building.

Charlie, for one, is excited by the prospect of anonymity. 

No one else seems to agree. Ben, in particular, has taken the time to shout about how proud his parents are that he decided to stick around for sixth form in the end and not head to the much shittier new grammar for sixth form; the one he’d overheard Charlie talking about when he’d received his letter of acceptance. He does it whenever Charlie passes in the corridor, as if Charlie might be disheartened by this overcompensation, instead of secretly celebrating. Right now, all Charlie can think of is the actual end of term, when he can clink a beer with Tao and pretend he likes the taste, just for the act of celebration. He’ll knock back a shitty pale ale to commemorate leaving for good, any day of the week.

Tao has been grumbling in the corridor whenever Charlie sees him. If Catcher in the Rye were written today, Charlie is pretty sure the Tao would make a good replacement for Holden Caufield. He’s one sparkly glitter pen or bold sharpie away from calling all of the other year elevens phonies.

“We’re not even actually leaving yet,” Tao mutters when the three of them gather by the gate at lunchtime. “We’ve still got the rest of our exams and then we’ll all be back for this stupid prom. I mean really. It's May. We’ve still got another term and a half of this bullshit and all these idiots are acting like it’s the start of summer.”

Isaac simply nods sagely over his tuna baguette. He hasn’t, Charlie notices, offered his own opinion. But at this point it’s easier to just nod and act like you agree with Tao than risk starting any sort of argument. Particularly for Isaac, who is sticking with Truham, along with Tao, for sixth form. Charlie may not want to torch his relationship with his best friend when Tao is already feeling a little vulnerable about Charlie leaving, but Isaac is the one who will have to listen to his lunchtime rants for the next two years.

Tao tugs at the sleeve of his shirt to try to read what someone has written on his shoulderblade. Isaac and Charlie exchange a look; later on they’ll flip a coin to see who has to tell Tao that it says ‘beanie wanker’.

The rest of the year eleven boys are moving in four distinct packs. There are the sports knobs; the slightly quiet geeky ones who seem to have far fewer signatures on their shirts; as well as the small group that acts so much like they’ve never met another human before that Charlie sometimes wonders how they managed to get into the school at all. It doesn’t give great hopes for the bell curve.

And then there’s the ones that he might consider ordinary. The ones that don’t quite fit into any group. They’re not the rugby stars, they’re not even that proficient at football and they’re barely treading water academically. They were, if Charlie remembers rightly, the worst of the bunch after he came out. They all had everything to prove and not much personality to back it up. At least some of the rugby lads would throw a ball at his head, laugh and then clap him on the back. No, the bulk of his year and the one above – the likes of Ben and the lads in Charlie’s form who constantly found things to terrorise him about instead of finding a personality – are the ones that he’s glad to see the back of.

Next year will be better, he tells himself. Sure, there’s a chance that news will spread to his new school and he’ll start once again as the only gay kid but, given it’s a mixed sixth form, he’s got slightly higher hopes that the biggest arseholes amongst the boys might be convinced to act like regular humans to impress the girls. 

Tao refuses to acknowledge the fact that he’s leaving. Every so often, Charlie catches him talking about next year as if they’re all still going to be together. When it happens, Elle rolls her eyes and points out that she’s still a part of the group, even if she’s not in school with them every day. It doesn't count, according to Tao, if someone has to leave. Real betrayal requires deliberate action. That’s usually the point where Isaac tries to change the subject, while Tao grumbles that this might be one of their last ever film nights. It definitely won’t be.

In fact, Charlie thinks they might end up hanging out more when they’re not fed up with one another after a full day of school together.

There were rumours, once upon a time, that Truham was planning on mixing up the forms. That would, Charlie thinks, have been the final nail in the coffin of his sanity. Unknown arseholes from the years above, mixed with the year sevens who still haven’t shucked the top dog mentality of primary school?

No, thank you.

Much better to stick to the familiar faces he knows and tolerates.

The day winds down almost as soon as lunch is over; teachers have taken the opportunity amongst the chaos to slip away to quiet corners that are bereft of teenagers. Every group chat that Charlie had been added to over the past two years of GCSEs is pinging with the good news: lessons seem to be unofficially cancelled. 

Charlie toys with the idea of heading to the art room, where Mr Ajayi will inevitably be sitting with a cup of tea and five portfolios of year eight work that he’s despairing over. It feels a bit unfair to interrupt his break. Although, why change a habit of a lifetime? If it weren't for Mr. Ajayi, Charlie reckons he probably never would have made it through school in the first place. Although he'll be supervising Charlie's final GCSE exam, now feels like the right time at least to go and say thanks for everything. Except when he gets there, the room's empty. Mr. Ajayi is nowhere to be found. He could be in any number of the staff rooms. Once or twice Charlie has even seen him wandering through the science corridors, where he seems to have befriended Mr. Farouk at some point in the last year.

Charlie contemplates going and looking for him, but that feels even worse than just interrupting him while he's having a nice sit down. To go and knock on all the staff room doors on his last day, looking desperately for the one member of staff that's nice to him and making it seem like Mr. Ajayi is his one friend, feels just a little bit too humiliating. Instead, he takes a gamble that they might bump into one another along one of the corridors and decides that the walk would be better for his head in any case. The quickest way to the science corridor is through the maths one, so it doesn't look too strange when Charlie wanders past the pockets of students who are chatting by lockers, given they’ve all been told about the revision displays that have been painstakingly put together by the maths department. His own locker is in the humanities building, which means he's at least got an excuse to try there next. That is, until he hears Ben's voice, a little way away. 

Given Ben's the last person he's got any energy to deal with right now, Charlie ducks into a nearby classroom and waits for him and his friends to wander past.

“Are you okay there?” A voice interrupts the quiet, and Charlie whips around to find that the room isn’t quite as empty as he'd hoped. One of the rugby lads is sitting in a corner seat by the window; body bent over an exercise book and pencil held awkwardly in his hand. One of the rugby lads is all his brain helpfully supplies while all the blood rushes elsewhere, because Charlie obviously knows his name. Nick Nelson is fairly infamous in Truham and he’s fit to boot. He’s not one of the nasty lads, although he used to hang out with Ben. Charlie remembers staring at him once, until Ben noticed and got pissed off. As if just looking at another guy was an insult. At the time, Charlie hadn’t pointed out the irony that Ben seemed to cycle through a different girlfriend every week. He'd known even then that that would go down poorly, although in hindsight Charlie hadn't quite factored in the kind of jealousy that might arise by having a friend as fit as Nick.

“Hi,” Nick says softly as Charlie flops back against the classroom door and contemplates pretending that he doesn’t exist. Nick doesn’t seem to notice his panic; instead placing his pencil down and leaning back in his chair. “You're Charlie, right?” 

There's not enough time to really think about how he knows Charlie's name. A commotion outside in the corridor draws both of their attention. Someone laughs loudly, and there’s the clang of a body hitting a locker before everything goes quiet again. The danger's passed. 

Not that danger is really the right word. But Charlie will do anything to avoid an awkward moment at this point in the year. Except, it seems, check whether a room is empty before he locks himself inside with a fit guy.

“Yeah, sorry, I just needed to, you know?” Charlie gestures towards the door, and Nick frowns. 

"Get a bit and piece of quiet?" He laughs softly. Charlie likes the sound, although typically he's never going to hear it again. “I'm Nick, by the way.” 

“Ch-Charlie,” Charlie stammers, although he knows Nick already knows that. Despite the fact that the corridor outside seems to have settled down, he wanders over to the desk where Nick is sitting and drops down in the chair next to him. “You know, I think teachers would forgive you if you don't get your homework done in time. I reckon most of them have given up and gone to the pub.” 

Again, Nick chuckles softly, and this time he goes pink around the cheeks. 

“I'm not exactly… good at homework. Usually I leave it to the last minute. This…” He taps the page with a forefinger. “Was actually due like a week ago, but Coach Singh was feeling nice.”

“Oh, wow. That really is bad at homework.” Charlie cranes his neck to look. It's clearly some sort of PE homework, and Charlie would let his brain glaze over with boredom until he spots the various biology terms that he recognises. He leans across and taps one of Nick's answers. "Check that one again," he says softly. "I don't think lactic acid is what you're looking for there."

Nick flips the pencil in his hand – who the fuck still uses a pencil for their homework? – and uses the other end to carefully rub out the answer. 

“Thanks. I probably would have figured it out. I guess I'm just a bit stressed with it all. Not exactly good at exams, even if they’re just mock AS Level ones. I've got a tendency to panic.”

“Oh yeah, I get that.” Charlie nods sagely. When he glances back up, Nick has raised his eyebrow at him. 

“You're lying, aren't you?” 

“Guilty. Rubbish at getting my coursework in on time, but lock me in a room and give me a time limit and I'm great. Between us, we might make a half decent student.” 

Nick grins, and Charlie feels a little swoop in his belly at the sight of that smile. Even more so when Nick holds up his pencil and twiddles it gently in his fingers.

“You got a pen I could borrow?” he asks. Charlie pats his pockets. He's left most of his stuff in his locker. 

“I might have a biro?” he starts. Nick chuckles softly. 

“No, I mean so I can sign your shirt. I promise I won't draw a cock and balls on you.” 

“Oh yeah, who'd do that?” Charlie grins. If he didn't know any better, he would have sworn that Nick flushes. “There’s not much space left though, so don’t feel like you—”

“Hang on!” Nick pushes himself out of the chair and trots over to the windowsill. He plucks a marker from one of the dusty pencil pots before plonking himself back down in his chair. “There’s some space right… here.”

Nick’s hands are surprisingly delicate when he holds Charlie’s bicep and gently turns his arm to reveal a little stretch of blank fabric. This close, Charlie can count the freckles on his cheeks and make out the little flecks of red in his hair that turn it strawberry blonde. When he’s writing, Nick’s tongue pokes out slightly from between his lips, as if whatever benign message he’s writing requires his utmost concentration.

If this is his last memory of Truham, Charlie thinks, he’ll take it.

Now

“Honestly Charlie, I don’t know why you kept all of this rubbish,” Jane says, clinging to the corner of one of Charlie‘s old exercise books as if it might be coated in something unsavoury. Charlie doesn’t have the energy to point out the hypocrisy, given the message that got him here in the first place. Or the fact that most of this rubbish was put into the loft by Jane herself the second Charlie finished his A-levels and, given Julio’s reluctance to let anyone into his precious loft, it’s being a challenge for anything to get sorted through. It’s all been sitting, therefore, in the darkest recesses of the house for the past few years. Charlie offered to clear it all the second he finished university and found himself a little flat to rent with Isaac, but Julio had always waved him off with some excuse about how I’ll get it done later.

Well, later appears to have hit them all full force in the face. Suddenly, Jane has decided that their cobwebbed loft needs to be converted into its own space so that the grandparents can be safely moved in. Tori has already expressed her concerns that two flights of stairs might be what finally does Grandma in, while Ollie has his suspicions that this is some long drawn out plan to finally kill the old bat off.

Regardless, the space needs clearing and Charlie is the last of the Spring siblings to trawl through every buried bad memory and decide what is worth keeping. He told Jane to dump the entire box labelled Charlie School but she had insisted that this entire process somehow be the most efficient and the most drawn out it could possibly be. Some sort of time capsule paradox designed to have them not speaking for at least a fortnight.

“You need to actually look through this stuff, Charlie. You'll regret it if you throw out something accidentally.”

Charlie thinks of a little bookcase in his and Isaac‘s front room; the one where they store all of the knickknacks of their entire friendship. Anything from school worth keeping, Charlie has kept with him, so he fails to see what kind of treasures might be awaiting him in a slightly damp box in the loft. He tries to humour his mum anyway, given he knows how stressed she must be. The fact that she’s taking it out on him does leave a sour taste in his mouth, though.

“Fine,” he snaps. “I’ll have a look. But just stop hovering over me will you?”

Jane purses her lips but says nothing before backing down through the little hatch and climbing carefully back down to safety. Thankfully, she leaves the wind up lamp behind and Charlie holds it up like some Victorian Butler as he squints into the box.

He finds an exercise book. And another exercise book. And – would you look at that? – yet another exercise book. Inside is Charlie‘s careful, neat script alongside with the slightly scrawled blip of his GCSE year. In hindsight, he’s slightly surprised that he didn’t burn it all alongside everyone else in the traditional end of exam bonfire. By that point, he’d already resolved to never step foot on school grounds again and a field adjacent to Truham had very much fallen under that umbrella.

Truthfully enough time has passed that his memories of Truham have mellowed slightly. Yes, they were objectively the worst years of his life, but they are also where he met Tao and Isaac and Elle. So the good times, he supposes, well out way the bad. He’s not about to say that out loud, though. Not when he spent so long working with Geoff to tease through all the bad parts of school and come out relatively mentally healthy on the other side.

In one of the books, he finds the little handwritten notes he and Ben left for one another; back when Charlie was convinced that they were boyfriends. He’s about to slam the box shut and insist the entire thing goes in the skip when something else captures his eye.

It’s an exceptionally poor rendition of a penis; drawn in Sharpie with lines that bleed into polycotton. His old school shirt – the one that everyone signed on the last day. You’ll keep this forever, one of the teachers had said, without a hint of irony, at the time and Charlie had rolled his eyes the second his back was turned. Yet here he is, seven years later and actually feeling a little twinge at the idea of getting rid of it.

He can even make out some of the names of signatures that have been left on the fabric. Some of the people weren’t actually that bad, when he thinks about it. They weren’t the worst people he’s ever come across, not that that’s a particularly difficult bar to beat. 

Still, on a good day after a decent sleep he might even look back and think fondly about them.

They really all were obsessed with penises, though. Even now, Charlie‘s not completely convinced but he likes the sight of them enough to want to draw sixty of them in one day. Maybe a really good one but they do tend to be attached to guys with bad personalities, in Charlie’s experience.

No matter. It does seem wrong to throw it out entirely, so he folds it neatly ready to place it to one side. He folds it like he always used to: right arm first and then left arm crossing over the chest. When he does, he notices something written on what would’ve been his left bicep.

Sorry you’re leaving Charlie. Maybe give me a call sometime 

Then a phone number written, with exceptional neatness, underneath. The kind of neatness of someone who doesn’t want any of the digits to be misread. Much neater than the handwriting written above. 

That can’t be right. Charlie remembers who the last person to sign his shirt was. When the only space left meant that they needed to lean in intimately close in a way that none of the other lads would’ve dared too.

And there’s no way that Nick Nelson would’ve given Charlie his number. Not even in Charlie’s wildest dreams.

And yet, five minutes later, Charlie’s dropping down in front of Tori at the kitchen table

“Finished already?” she asks drily. 

“It’s been twenty minutes.”

“Yeah well, I would’ve thought you’d be launching it all into the skip from the skylight after three.”

“You know I’m terrible at throwing.” 

Jane had to get special permission from the council to leave the skip in front of the house for a week. Julie’s been grumbling about having to park three streets away after sacrificing his parking space. Even on a good day with the wind in his favour, there’s no way Charlie is getting anything in that thing.

“I found this.” He drops the shirt on the table. “What do you think it means?”

Tori frowns, leaning in slightly.

“That everyone in your year was obsessed with their own appendage?” 

“Not that,” Charlie snaps, jabbing his finger tip against the phone number. “This.” 

Tori rolls her eyes.

“You cannot be that dense to not be able to tell when someone’s making a move.”

“Yeah, but this is the thing. I’m pretty sure Nick Nelson wrote that.”

“Nick Nelson.”

“Yeah.”

“The rugby guy? Floppy hair? Like a giant puppy? That Nick Nelson?”

“Exactly! So he can’t have been making a move, can he? There was absolutely no way that Nick Nelson was anything other than straight.”

Even as the words come out, he can hear the beggy note in her voice that desperately wants Tori to turn around and say, ‘Oh! On the contrary! He stills writes poetry online about how he was secretly in love with you!’ 

Maybe he should finally re-download Hinge and be done with it.

Tori barks out a laugh

“What?” 

“I don’t think Nick Nelson knew who he was at all.”

“What do you mean?” 

“Well he never quite fit, did he? He hung out with all the dickheads in the rugby team whilst somehow remaining one of the friendliest people ever. I’d guess about eighty percent of my year at Higgs was obsessed with him and yet he looked like he might panic the second any girl spoke to him.”

“Well, he dated Imogen Haney for a bit, didn’t he?”

“So? Doesn’t mean you’re straight. I imagine saying no to Imogen was probably fairly terrifying. She had those big blue eyes. She could probably hypnotise people.” Tori shudders. “Besides, you know as well as I do that bi people exist.”

Charlie tries not to think too hard about their little brother’s recent foray into dating. Turns out, he’s very good at it. Instead, he lets Tori’s words a lot neatly into the canon of his teenage years: the way Nick’s fingertips held his arm so gently as he wrote; the soft way he said goodbye when Charlie had panicked afterwards and made himself scarce; the voice in his head that told him to cling onto the way that Nick’s eyes followed him until the second the door swung shut behind him. The voice that Charlie had, ultimately, ignored as he tore off the shirt when he got home and stuffed it into the back of his wardrobe.

“So…” he muses quietly. “You think there’s actually a chance that Nick might have been interested in me and I didn’t realise until it was far too late?”

“Not too late,” she says thoughtfully. “We could just call the number and ask him.”

“Sorry? You think that seven years after he maybe might have made a pass at me I should call him up and say ‘Hey, I know you’ve probably settled down and all and haven’t thought about me in years, but is there any chance that you once hit on me and I’m a fucking idiot?’”

“Well, I wouldn’t phrase it like that.”

“Well, how would you phrase it? Cause I think, anyway I do it, I’m gonna come out looking like a tit. Besides, it might not even be his number anymore.”

“Only one way to find out.”

Tori fishes her phone out of her pocket and squints at the numbers on the shirt.

“I wouldn’t have the first clue what to say to him!”

“Well, you should probably figure it out.”

“Tori…” he warns sternly. “What are you doing?”

She says nothing, just hands him the phone, already mid-dial.

“Tori, what the fu— h-hello?”

“Hi?”

Whoever is on the other end of the line sounds out of breath. Oh good, Charlie thinks, I’ve interrupted some random person's day. It gets worse when the voice suddenly turns muffled; talking to someone on the other end of the line and telling them to stay put. Then, they’re back again, slightly frazzled.

“Sorry, hi, who is this?”

Somehow, Charlie would recognise that voice anyway, even though they only really spoke that one time. Charlie must’ve absorbed it into his psyche – random times when he passed the field and overheard Nick calling to his teammates, or when Charlie heard his laugh echo down the corridor – because he knows straight away that it’s Nick on the other end of the line.

“Erm, this is Charlie.”

There’s a muffled rustling on the line again and Nick‘s voice goes far away as he tells someone called Henry to stop whatever it is they’re doing, before his voice comes back even clearer: the difference between a Bluetooth headset and a phone held directly to an ear.

“Sorry, Charlie who?”

“Never mind, this was stupid. Sorry I just found your number and I thought—”

“Wait, Charlie Spring? From school?”

“Er, yeah…”

The line goes a quiet, a pregnant pause.

“You found my number?” Nick says slowly, just as Charlie is about to hang up on humiliation. “Where?”

Charlie feels himself flushing furiously.

“Someone must’ve written it on my shirt. Sorry, probably someone’s idea of prank. I shouldn’t have—”

“No, that was me.” Nick’s voice sounds thoughtful and possibly just a tiniest bit sad. I-I’d hoped you’d maybe call or text or whatever.”

“Yeah, well—”

“Seven years ago.”

Charlie takes a deep breath as Tori gives him a thumbs up across the table. 

“Would you believe that I’ve literally just found it in the loft?”

“And you thought you’d try your luck?” Thankfully, Nick sounds amused.

“I suppose that depends on whether you’re regretting giving it to me now.”

“No, no. Definitely not regretting it.”

“No girlfriend at home?”

“No, no girlfriend.”

“Boyfriend?”

Nick chuckles lightly.

“Never actually had one. First time I hit on a boy I got completely ghosted and I was a bit too much of a coward to ever try again.”

“Who’d ghost—” Charlie starts, before he realises that it was him.

“If it helps, I definitely wouldn’t have if I’d realised,” he says softly.

Charlie glances across the table at Tori’s wide eyes. She can probably pick up some of Nick side of the conversation and she looks delighted.

“I suppose it’s been long enough,” Nick says thoughtfully, “I could give it another try…”

Charlie holds his breath.

“Do you fancy going out sometime?” Nick asks softly. “Just for a coffee?”

“I could do that. Are you free this afternoon?”

Charlie hears the jangle of metal on metal over the line.

“As soon as I drop my mum‘s dog home, I can be yours.” There’s a pause and Charlie pictures Nick’s attempt to hold in a grin. “I could text you? Later on, when I’m free?”

“That sounds— No, wait!”

“No?”

“This isn’t my phone. My sister made me call. I was too much of a coward to do it myself.”

Tori leans forward, grabbing a pen from the top of their dad’s crossword and holding the fabric of Charlie old shirt taut as she writes:

You owe me.

Charlie gives her a look he hopes conveys exactly how much he knows this before turning his attention back to the phone.

“You don’t by any chance have a pen, do you?”