Archive of Our Own ^beta

He had been bouncing around their shared kitchen, pouring cups of coffee and putting them down, getting eggs and putting them back, all high nerves until Elle puts her hand on his arm and makes him sit. His body, clearly out to get him, decides that that is the right time to open his big mouth, and honestly once that happened, he stops being in control of anything and Elle, the darlingest of darlings, only rubs his back and kindly promises to not tell any of their friends until he was ready.

Which.

Was never going to happen. Because shagging Nick Nelson was only something people who looked like Charlie Spring did in their dreams and he clearly hallucinated the whole thing and thus, was in no danger of ever having to be ready to tell anyone about anything.

Only.

Only, it happens again.

Charlie is well on his way to being beyond sloshed when Nick finds him in the crowd of first years. He's got on a shirt so tight he might as well have worn no shirt at all considering how much of him Charlie can see even in the dim lighting and a smile so bright that Charlie actually squints at him a little.

"Hi," Nick says with his puppy brown eyes, looking at Charlie all shiny for inexplicable reasons. Charlie checks covertly behind himself in case he's accidentally blocking the drinks and finds nothing but empty chairs.

"Hey," he offers. He grips his drink with both hands, doing his best impression of cool, calm, and collected (which, in face of his inebriation might actually have come off as drunk, debauched, and kind of desperate but Nick doesn't say anything and a little delusion never hurt anybody).

They stand around for what feels like an inordinate amount of time, staring at each other in a quiet so removed from the rest of the room, it's like Charlie's ears have popped until he recalls the reason for the party in the first place and, "Congrats," he says, "On the rugby."

"Thanks," Nick says with a laugh that only isn't mean because he says it with that Nick Nelson smile and a shy tilt of his head. "Saw you watching, did you have fun?" he asks with a wry twist to his mouth, "At the rugby?"

Charlie feels the need to shove him for that, and because he's probably more sloshed than he thinks he is and he wants to know if his hallucinated recollection of Nick's arm is as good as Nick's arm actually is, he does shove Nick with his hand. Nick just laughs some more and doesn't move at all, not even swaying a little to pretend that Charlie's shove was capable of any serious injury to his person. Charlie's head swims a little more. He feels like he had shoved himself instead of Nick with how unsteady he feels and he grips Nick a little tighter with the hand he had forgotten was still on Nick's arm.

Nick, by some miracle, doesn't object, only leans closer and prompts him again, "So, did you like the game?" His breath is a warm brush against Charlie's ear.

Charlie squirms a little where he stands, hoping it goes unnoticed. "Yes," he says to somewhere south of Nick's chin because that is how close they are standing and Nick is not moving back. "The running and the-" Charlie furrows his brows, "the ball throwing, they were very good?" He should probably sound more sure though he doesn't think anyone present is labouring under the impression that he's any kind of sportsman. "I liked watching you run." That at least, is the truth. "You looked-" Beautiful. Violent. So fit. "-nice."

"Yeah?" Nick says, the statement posed as a question that really wasn't a question at all, not with the way Charlie abruptly realizes Nick has been slowly caging him in against the wall.

"Yes." Charlie finds himself bracing both his hands on Nick, drink vanished though he could not tell where or how. "I love sport. Sports. Athletics."

Nick leans forward and ends his misery by kissing him hard and licking the seam of his mouth. Charlie decides that discretion truly is the better part of valour and stops trying to talk. Especially when Nick's hand has migrated down to his arse.

Elle - the loveliest, lovely Elle - does not berate him as Tao would do or even tease him as Isaac might. She only leaves him with some paracetamol and gently suggests telling the rest of the group chat if this is going to be a regular thing. He fervantly assures her it is not. She just walks out with a knowing smile. Charlie pulls his covers back up over his head with a sigh.

The third time should've been even more of an impossibility than the first because what kind of rugby player crochets? More importantly, what kind of rugby player crochets and thinks the crochet society is a good place to pull?

Nick only laughs into Charlie's curls in response. "It is if you're here," he says nonsensically with an eye crinkling smile.

Charlie doesn't even try to decipher that. Instead, he shoves his hands under Nick's shirt and makes insistent noises to get Nick to pull it off.

Nick, obliging, affable Nick with his obliging, affable Nick smile, does.

Then he takes his trousers off. Then his pants. And then Charlie is thinking maybe his therapist is right and he does deserve good things.

Charlie does not tell Elle about the third time. Or the fourth. Or even the fifth. She would look at him too knowing or worse, too hopeful. And Charlie cannot have that. Not when he's not done not freaking out about why Nick Nelson, the rugby lad, the rugby-est lad-est lad, is doing whatever they are doing with Charlie, who's only claim to fame is that for a few months, he spoke so little his literature professor genuinely thought he was mute and gave him forms for exam accommodations.

Charlie screams into his pillow.

Unfortunately, it does not provide any pearls of wisedom in response to being assaulted in such a manner.

The ninth, or tenth, or maybe even twelfth time they shag, and Charlie did nearly fail maths thank you for asking, Nick suggests they go out for dinner.

Charlie lifts his head up from where he's sprawled across Nick's very, very generous chest. "Like right now?" He's confused because they had met up after dinner and he wasn't hungry in the slightest, not even in the his-brain-is-broken not hungry way, but actual physiological mentally-not-ill way.

He sits up to look at Nick properly. Shifts a little because um, he's sore, for reasons that are not his fault and then Nick is smiling at him in that slightly smug way and presses soft, closed-mouth kisses to his side, just enough to tickle and make Charlie squirm even more.

"Stop that," Charlie tries leaning away, "I thought you were hungry."

Nick follows with a hum, pressing harder, biting kisses across Charlie's skin. "I'm open to other options."

Other options end up being a giant bite mark, not even a love bite, but an honest set of teeth marks that Charlie has to cover with makeup he bought during his first week of fresher delusion about being sociable, and dinner with Nick in a nicer than anticipated curry house after one of Nick's late night practices.

Nick falls on his food ferociously, like a person who's been starving for days in the desert, or a teenage boy who hasn't eaten in three hours. Which, Charlie thinks with some fondness, is sort of exactly what it is despite the big two in front of Nick's age. Regardless, it lets Charlie pick away at his food at his own slow pace.

Between the entertainment of Nick's near militant dismantling of their food and the slivers of his life he offers up in between bites and that Charlie then interrogate him on, especially once he discovers Nick has a dog (a dog!), dinner passes quick. Charlie finds himself slowing down even more while eating, just to wallow a bit in this warm cocoon of candlelight, crystal reflections, and whatever power makes Nick glow in that horrible sunshine way.

Nick apparently agrees, as he kisses Charlie slowly at the door, gripping him tight enough that Charlie suspects he'll have new marks by the morning. They had already attempted two previous goodbyes that lead to Nick walking Charlie back to Charlie's quad, then to his building door, then to his actual door, and then quite possibly to Charlie's bedroom door if Charlie hadn't recalled that he was currently living with Elle and Elle would definitely comment and ask and do all manner of thoughtful friend things if she wakes to Nick in his bed.

Charlie pushes Nick away. "You should go." He rests his hands around Nick's neck, breathing way too heavily for someone who has exercised not at all the entire evening. His mouth feels bruised and Nick's doesn't look all that better.

"See you tomorrow then?" Nick asks. The only sign of his exertion, a ruddy flush over his cheeks.

"Sure," Charlie murmurs back. He is definitely not going to think about what any of that expectation means. And he will not think about it for the rest of the night. Because he is excellent at never overthinking anything ever and taking things as they come.

Nick leaves him with one last lingering kiss that has enough teeth in it that Charlie might actually have a bruised mouth by the morning.

Charlie very much does have a bruised mouth in the morning. He fixes it by avoiding his friends and pulling Nick's hat down over his face when he smiles too widely at the sight of Charlie's face.

"Stop that," Charlie hisses under his breath when the girl behind the counter looks at them just this side of irate. He elbows Nick, hard, in the ribs and orders for both of them.

Nick shows his contrition by taking his card out to pay. And then a much more genuine, "Sorry," with a wince when he realizes Charlie's mouth is a little too tender to kiss properly. Not that it stops his ministrations in any way, the awful man just moves onto Charlie's neck.

Somehow, they end up having dinner together again. Somehow, Nick manages to rush across from one end of uni to the other to have dinner with Charlie for the rest of the week. And the week after that.

Tao riots around the third week.

"Charles Francis," he says omniously the one day of the week their classes line up enough to get breakfast together, "where have you been."

Charlie presses his mouth into a thin line and looks around for help. Elle is staring determinedly down at her psych text and Isaac is doing his usual reading, though he doesn't bother to hide the smile on his face. Charlie sighs and turns back to Tao.

"I've been busy." He shrugs.

"With what?" Tao is belligerent between bites of cereal being crunched menacingly.

Charlie can only shrug again. "School stuff. Like everyone else."

"You're not being bullied again, are you?" Tao pauses in his chewing, lines becoming prominent across his forehead. "Because if you are-"

"No Tao, I am not being bullied." Charlie can't help but smile at Tao's, while tightly clenched, very unthreatening fist around his spoon. "This is uni, everyone's too tired to be a bully." And when Tao continues to look unconvinced, he adds, "Truly, I would tell you guys if anything was happening."

And then Isaac, in a save that was not a save at all, says, "Of course you would." There's a weird inflection in his voice.

Tao picks up on it immediately. "What does that mean?"

Isaac makes a noncommittal noise and turns back to his book, leaving Charlie to say, "I don't know," with his most carefully blank smile.

They are in bed again, Nick's calloused fingers tracing mind melting grooves into Charlie's neck, when Nick, ever the aficionado for talking when Charlie's brain is completely broken, brings up the term break.

Charlie doesn't even attempt to sit up this time, face smushed into Nick's chest. "I'm going home first and then to Tori's," he says. He's not sure how intelligible it is, but he's not the one who scrambled his brains before asking for a meeting. He can, however, feel the pause in the rise and fall of Nick's chest. "Why?"

Nick takes a moment before replying. "My mum's coming up for the break. She's bringing Nellie, I thought you might want to see her."

Charlie's heart lurches in his ribcage. "See Nellie?"

Nick makes a quiet mhm noise. Charlie is slowly regretting not having this conversation face to face. He swallows around the dryness in his mouth.

"Won't your mum be mad if you abandon her just to meet up with some random, your um, me?" he asks, trying his best at light-hearted and counting his breath so Nick can't feel his anxiety. "And taking the dog as well?" He forces himself to smile because he is literally skin to skin with Nick and Nick would have to be lobotomized to not feel what Charlie's face is doing.

There's a pause in Nick's breathing again. "Well, my mum would be there too." He keeps stroking the back of Charlie's neck like this is a completely normal, sane thing to do for two people who, despite a shared affection for activities performed on a horizontal surface and food, things most people have in common, don't actually know each other that well. And aren't actually friends.

Nick seems to take his silence for fear because he adds, "She doesn't bite, my mum. Neither of them do in fact." There's a smile in his voice.

"Is this where you tell me you bite because you're adopted Nicholas?" Charlie's mouth is moving without his brain processing a single word.

Nick huffs out a laugh though, so he's apparently not doing too bad even though he wants to vomit every time the word mum crosses his brain.

"No." Nick braces his hand tight against Charlie's shoulder to shake him a little. "I am not adopted. But I do want you to meet my mum. I've been talking about you so much if I don't introduce you soon, she might think you're imaginary."

Here, Charlie does freeze. How could he not. "You tell your mum who you're having... sex with?" He is never going to recover from this ever.

The, "No," that comes through this time is emphatic and sharp. Nick slides his hand up to cup Charlie's jaw and angle him so they can look at each other. "Please never mention my mum and sex in the same sentence ever again."

Charlie frowns. "I am not the one who's telling their mum about their bedroom activities."

"I am very, very much not telling my mum anything of the sort, thank you." At Charlie's continued frown, Nick softens and says, "But I might have mentioned a boyfriend."

His face is not quite hesitant, it's more business seminar on how to make eye contact and maintain it to show your dominance or something equally horrible and Charlie, oh Charlie is definitely frozen this time. Ice age frozen. So frozen in shock for a hot minute, he thinks he's gone blind.

Still he tries. "Your what?" Well, not as hard as he could've, it comes out so soft he can barely hear himself.

Nick finally looks away. Not far, just towards their feet. "Boyfriend." His jaw is tight.

"Oh."

Nick looks back. "But if you're not-"

"No." This time Charlie's the one too fast, too sharp. He braces himself on Nick and sits up. "I just didn't know."

Nick looks at him askance. "We've been dating for months. Exclusively. Unless you know something I don't." Here Nick frowns. "Unless we're not?"

Charlie rushes to reassure him, "No, I'm definitely only - with you. I didn't know if you were-" Charlie pauses to grimace a little, "that you, you know."

Nick goes pale under his freckles. "Charlie. I don't think that I do know. I don't - wouldn't-"

"No, I know." Charlie bites his lip. He should probably place a limit on the amount of no's he keeps saying but Nick is so. So. So like that.

"Did you think, the entire time that I was..."

"Well I didn't think. Wasn't thinking at all. I just," Charlie places a careful hand on Nick's shoulder, "You're so rugby, Nick. And I really didn't know you at the start and obviously I know now and I'm so glad I know but I also didn't want to presume or get my hopes up or anything. I'm really fine with just being a shag, I'm not needy or anything. I'm cool with whatever."

The way Nick stares at him in silence is not reassuring. His dark eyes trace over Charlie's face again and again without saying anything until, "I wish you would be."

Charlie tilts his head to the side, brows wrinkled.

"I wish you would be needy. I wish you would need me. All the time." Nick's face contorts. "Because I need you. All the time."

"Oh Nick."

"If you don't need - or want - Charlie, I need to know now I think. I can't bear-" Nick breaks off with a shake of his head, his hands sliding off Charlie. He's taking a deep breath.

"No! I'm sorry, I do - I really do Nick." Charlie's chest is going to cave in at the rate he's sucking in air but. "I'm sorry. I'm really bad at this, I've never," he stops, and then decides well, he's already here, "I've never really had a boyfriend. Not a real one anyways."

Nick stares at him some more, the lines on his forehead smoothing out. "Well clearly, I'm worse at this. Considering my boyfriend didn't even know he was my boyfriend." He trips over 'my boyfriend' at an almost normal speed.

Charlie huffs out a laugh that's more air than noise. "Your boyfriend is kind of an idiot Nick Nelson. You suck at choosing."

"No, I think I'm pretty great at choosing. Just kind of shite at the whole communicating." Nick moves his hands back to supporting Charlie's waist.

"Well it takes two to tango and all that." Charlie hesitates for half a second before leaning forward to press a soft kiss against Nick's nose. "I wasn't all that great either."

Nick turns his head and kisses Charlie properly, on the mouth and not even a little soft. "No more blaming. Only kissing."

Charlie agrees with a laugh that doesn't make it past Nick's mouth.

Tao slides into the seat opposite Charlie the minute Nick leaves the coffee shop, dumping his bag on the table agressively enough some of Charlie's texts slide towards him.

"Is that him then?" Tao stares daggers in the direction Nick went. "The bully." Tao pauses. "Or general knob. He's not making you do his assignments for him, is he?" He peers balefully at the stacks of paper on the table.

"Hello Tao. I am doing very well this afternoon, thank you for asking. And yourself?" Charlie goes back to his laptop.

"No, seriously, what did that rugby lad want from you?" Tao starts shifting through the stuff on the table, doing his best forensic anthropologist. "He doesn't look like he's in your course."

"It's not nice to judge people by the way they look." Tao looks at him, unamused. "Okay, he isn't in my course," Charlie acquises.

"What did he want then?"

Charlie shrugs. "What does anyone want? Companionship, someone to-"

"Charlie."

"He's my boyfriend."

"What." Tao's hand stops over the table. "What." His face doesn't change. Charlie lets him percolate. Tao sits back. Looks around the coffee shop. Looks back at Charlie. Leans in. "Boyfriend?" he hisses, sotto voce.

Charlie smiles, grim. "Yes."

Tao looks around again, not unlike an episode of Punk'd. "When?"

"A while."

Tao sighs. Heavily. With his head bowed and hands clasped.

"He's not that bad Tao."

"Do the others know?"

Charlie does not wince. "Maybe. I don't know. I didn't tell them. But they might've figured it out. Only Elle has seen Nick."

"Nick," Tao repeats derisively, "Rugby lad." He shakes his head. "Well tell him, he's to come for film night," Tao demands.

Charlie smiles at his notes. "Okay."

Charlie fits meeting Sarah Nelson and Nellie in between packing and handing in last minute assignments. He even manages to get the Nelsons to leave Nellie with him when Nick takes his mum to the fancy art exhibit happening in town. There is an abundance of hugs and kisses (Sarah) and cuddles (Nellie) and other types of cuddles (Nick).

And then, he is on the train home to his parents, where he tells them absolutely nothing of import, and then to Tori, where he still says nothing but she drops more and more omnious hints about meeting that giant ginger she keeps seeing on his insta, though she softens a little near the end to tell him that uni seems to agree with him. He just nods and brushes past her to the relative safety of Michael on the sofa.

Charlie decides to make it public, not close friends and family public, but public public, the random people from his childhood and extended family he hasn't seen in years public, during a game. Although, it's been pretty public at school. Charlie's accumulated his own collection of Nick curated jumpers and is currently wearing one with Nick's name across it. The only way he could be more obvious is if he pulled down the jumper to expose his own neck so everyone could see Nick's vampire tendencies.

Nick's reponse to seeing the grid post is to rush over, all sweaty from the game, bend Charlie over like a wartime bride, and then kiss him full on the mouth to the whistles and jeers of his team behind him. Charlie thinks he can hear Sai telling them to get a room in the distance.

Nick breaks away to lean his forehead against Charlie's. "Hey you."

Charlie raises his brows. "Hello stinky."

Nick laughs. "You love it."

"Unfortunately."