Chapter Text
Tao Xu was a good friend. Right now, he also was a good boyfriend as he massaged his girlfriends feet and listened to her talk about her day.
“… and all of the kids got to paint their hands and leave their hand prints on the shelf, it looks really good and I can’t wait to pick up the books we’ve ordered! The woman I talked to at the book store even asked if she could copy the list of books so they might stock some of them. Wouldn’t that be amazing if they had all these different literature about LGBTQ+ topics at the store?”
Elles face was so full of hope and happiness whenever the talked about her work at the community centre, Tao fell a bit more in love every time. That was something he’d only ever admit to her in private though. They were sitting on the bed in his small room at the flat he shared with Charlie.
Typically these flats for students were as tiny as a shoe box but Tao didn’t mind.
As Elle went on to tell him about the books in detail, he could hear the front door open and close with a thud. So, Charlie was back from that meeting he was supposed to have with Nicks management and by the way he had closed the door, it probably hadn’t been a nice sit down for tea and scones.
Tao stopped massaging Elles feet and she went silent, both perking their ears to listen to Charlie rummaging around the apartment. He kicked off his shoes, went into his own room and closed the door more loudly than usual. Not that closing the door really helped because their bedrooms were right next to each other and the walls were thin. (Tao had discovered that in a rather mortifying way.)
Soon they could hear Charlie playing on his keyboard. He had picked that up when he was still in therapy, a couple weeks after the break up with Nick. His therapist had suggested he turn his feelings into music and while the drums were perfect for letting out anger, the piano was able to catch the finer tunes. Charlie had started writing his own songs then and Tao was relieved his best friend had found a way to deal with his feelings in a non destructive way.
Not that it hadn’t been painful to listen to his songs at times when the melody oozed with sadness. One time Charlie had forgotten his notebook in the kitchen and Tao couldn’t help but take a look at what his friend had written. The lyrics were undeniably good but it hurt to read how dark it could get in Charlies head.
Tao had always know that, he was there when Charlie went to hospital because of his eating disorders back when they were still in school. And he had been there when Nick left for university and the relationship between him and Charlie went downhill.
Him and Elle had picked him up as a crying mess from the train station after the break up and he had taken turns with Tori go drive Charlie to his weekly therapy sessions.
He had helped him move to London, seen the way his best friend had blossomed until he was strong enough to tell his parents that he wanted to change his field of studies.
He’d heard the happy songs, they goofy ones Charlie made up when making breakfast, the ones he practised for college, the ones he wrote when he had joined a funk band for about six weeks.
He knew them all and he recognised the melody of this one right away. Charlie wasn’t singing along but Tao still remembered the words.
I want all of my flights back
When you were going to college
Promised we'd make it work
Threw all my clothes in a backpack
Twelve hundred miles just so I
Could say "I love you" in person
“I’m gonna ...,” he started and Elle pulled her feet away from his lap. “Sure!”
Tao walked over to Charlies room, knocked on the door and waited a second before opening it. His best friend sat on his bed, the keyboard in front of him, the wire twisting halfway through the room.
“Hey,” he said and Charlie looked up to him, eyes looking like they were holding back tears.
“Elle is here, we were about to watch a movie. I told you about it before, the one about a painter but in the whole movie he doesn’t paint once, the story is not in chronological order and the characters only speak Russian?”
That made Charlies face look a little less sad and more confused. “I don’t know if I want to remember you telling me about that. It sounds horrible,” he said and managed to lift the corner of his mouth by a fraction.
“It’s art, it’s not supposed to be processed or understood, only experienced and wondered at! Come on, I know where we’ll find a full version of it,” Tao said and Charlie grumbled but turned off the keyboard and got up from his bed.
“How long is the full version, exactly?” he asked and trailed behind to Taos room where Elle had already set up a bunch of pillows so they could comfortably lean on the headboard of the bed.
“Round about 205 minutes,” Tao grinned and Charlie and Elle both started trying to argue him out of watching said movie.
In the end they decided against watching Andrej Rubljow (“I can’t believe I have to deal with such uncultured people!” Tao had sighed dramatically) and put on a baking show instead.
Charlie sat between the couple and Tao glanced over to him every once in a while.
He really loved his best friend and he really wanted to know what had happened today but they could still talk about it later if Charlie felt ready to do so.
There had been other guys in the past years, nothing serious but enough to make Charlie mope around for a few days. But no one had ever hurt him like Nick Nelson and Tao wouldn’t let it happen again.
He thought about the song Charlie had played earlier and involuntarily gritted his teeth.
“… but that was then and this is now
And while you're moving on,
I'm breaking down tonight
And in the end, no matter how hard I try
Unloving you is so hard to do,
It's like trying to fight the rising tide.
It's like catching the moon or telling the stars not to shine
Unloving you, I must be a fool
‘Cause only a fool would waste their time
On somebody who has already moved on with their life
Somebody help me,
This isn't healthy,
Don't know what to do,
Can't make it through
Unloving you.”
-
‘Charlie, I am so sor-’ – deleted
‘Sorry for being -’ - deleted
‘Today was-’ - deleted
Nick groaned and threw his phone down next to him on the grey sofa, it bounced off the cushions and fell onto the floor but he didn’t bother picking it up.
He knew that he had acted weird as soon as they stepped into the office building earlier. He had felt his face harden, his voice dying in his throat, making sure to keep a distance between Charlie and himself.
Charlie must have been so confused by the sudden change in Nicks behaviour but he simply couldn’t do anything about it. The whole thing became very real in that moment and the more his manager and the woman from the PR team had talked about the party, the pictures, how much affection should be displayed, that they would be brought to a hotel afterwards together and Charlie would be sneaked out so the press wouldn’t notice that they weren’t staying together for the night – it all got too much.
This wasn’t some kind of funny play pretend, this was a well structured plan so save his career and his good image. The reality of it all had come down on him when they were sitting at that stupid office table.
Nick slouched down into a horizontal position on the couch and looked at the ceiling that was too high up to make out shapes on the white ingrain wallpaper.
He had thought this would be an easy ride. They’d have a bit of fun, get to know each other again, laugh about the articles written about them in magazines. But this was actually a serious situation, something that would for sure put them in a lot of stress, a kind which Charlie hadn’t experienced before because he had never stood in the public eye like that.
Maybe he should eat a full bucket of ice cream, that’s what people in movies always did in a situation like this. He would if he had any ice cream at home but he was pretty sure that his freezer was pretty much empty. He couldn’t call Otis and ask if his security guard would get him some, could he?
Nick turned over onto his stomach and tried to reach his phone without falling off the couch. He almost managed to do it but when he reached out just the tiniest bit farther, he tumbled onto the floor.
When he got up again, he accidentally propped himself up on his phone.
He hadn’t closed the messenger app before tossing it away earlier and so the screen still showed his and Charlies chat – and a message from him which consisted of random letters and numbers.
He deleted the message quickly but remembered that it would still be shown to Charlie as a deleted message. Which was even worse, like, who thought it would be a good idea to let you delete a text and still tell the other person about said message?
He had to explain himself, so he wrote: ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to text you’
Okay, that sounded plain rude.
‘No, I DID actually but no like this’
Next to Charlies name the word online popped up.
‘I fell onto my phone’
Gosh, that was such a rubbish excuse even if it was true but would he ever believe it if someone told him that? Probably not.
‘I am sorry’
Sorry about the weird stuff he was currently texting? Sorry about how he had acted earlier? Sorry about being so freaking confusing and confused at the same time since Charlie had been catapulted back into his orbit?
Nick took a deep breath and started typing.
‘Charlie,
I am sorry about this afternoon. I know I was behaving like a total douchebag.
I guess I realised how big of a challenge this will actually be. Back home it seemed exciting and now it feels … threatening?
As soon as we stepped into that building it was in my head, like, we haven’t talked for years and suddenly we’re supposed to pretend that we’re dating while the whole world is watching.
I should have talked to you right then because you probably felt the same.
I am truly sorry’
The message was marked as read nearly instantly but Nick stared at the screen for what felt like hours before finally, three dots appeared.
‘I am scared too’
Nicks heart ached at these words because he didn’t want Charlie to be scared but it also good to know that he wasn’t alone with his feelings. He remembered how Charlie had once told him, that he made him feel fearless. He had just said it with a shrug when Nick had asked him since when he wasn’t afraid of heights any more, had said it like it wasn’t a big thing, like he was just stating some simple fact. Nick had stared at him in wonder until Charlie had pulled at his hand and dragged him to the Ferris wheel.
He really needed some ice cream now.
One call and twenty minutes later (in which he had tried thinking of a good answer but had failed miserably), Tara and Darcy were on his doorstep, holding a bucket of ice cream in each of their hands and Tara had a can of whipped cream tucked under her arm.
“We should start an emergency ice cream delivery service,” Darcy said while she and Tara piled the buckets in Nicks hands to put off their shoes.
“What emergency requires ice cream?” Tara asked and Darcy nodded over to Nick. “This one!”
“Excuse me, did you just call me an emergency?”
“Sure did, Nicholas,” the blonde woman answered happily and went to get some spoons from the kitchen. It was nice when your friends were feeling right at home. For a second, Nick thought if maybe Charlie would ever feel like this in here as well.
The three friends sat down in the living room, Nick and Darcy up on the sofa while Tara sat cross-legged on the floor. “You should really get a new carpet,” she said and pulled a loose thread from the fabric. “Yeah, you can buy a real fancy one from a designer!” Darcy chimed in, then her face turned into a little frown. “Are there designer carpets?”
Tara looked it up on her phone and then they spent several minutes scrolling through the most hideous designs they could find.
They stuffed themselves with ice cream and Nick listened to his friends talking about their holidays. Darcy was just done telling a story about Tara locking herself in the car and missing church service (“It was an accident!” - “Really, Tara? Because it looked like you were just glad to miss out on this years nativity play which was phenomenally bad.”) when Tara, who was cuddled up to her girlfriend on the sofa by now, shot Nick a soft smile.
“So, why did you need an emergency ice cream delivery today?” the brunette woman asked him while casually stroking through Darcys hair.
Nick let out a sigh but really, he had been waiting to talk about it the whole time so he told his two friends about everything that had happened today. How he had been so excited to give Charlie his present, how he had tensed up at the office, how Charlie didn’t want to drive back home with him afterwards. He showed them the text message he had send and then looked into their faces, hoping for an answer to … his life, basically.
It was Darcy who spoke first, “You never told us about your break-up.”
Tara thrust her elbow into her girlfriends side and threw her a look that clearly said ‘shut it!’ but Darcy was having none of that.
“What? Why can’t I ask that? We’ve known each other for more than three years now and Nick never told us the whole story. Sure, it’s his business but now that business is back in his life which means it’s part of our life too as we can already see,” she said and nodded over to where a small rest of ice cream was melting in its bucket.
“You’re right, Darcy,” Nick said and Darcy let out a “duh!” in return.
“You don’t have to tell us,” Tara insisted but still added “You absolutely can if you want to, though.” And Nick did.
When he went to bed that night, he put on a playlist and was about to put away his phone when a text popped up. ‘goodnight’ it read.
He typed a quick response (‘goodnight Charlie’) before falling asleep with his heart a lot less heavy.
‘… you can ebb and I can flow and we’ll take it slow and grow as we go, grow as we go.’