Chapter Text
Prologue
End of May 2024
Charlie stares at the screen, reading the email again, for what feels like the millionth time, just to make sure he’s not dreaming.
“Dear Mr Spring,
In light of your outstanding achievements and excellent academic record, and following your admission to the University of Oxford, the Rowing Foundation is delighted to inform you that you have been selected to receive a scholarship in support of both your academic studies and your rowing pursuits.
This scholarship will cover the full cost of your tuition and college accommodation for a period of three years, in one of the colleges on the attached list, on the condition that you join the university rowing team and maintain a high level of excellence both athletically and academically. A review will be conducted at the end of each term to confirm the continuation of the funding.
Should you choose to accept this scholarship, please click on the link below to complete all the required forms and submit the necessary supporting documents by 30 June 2024 .”
He's going to Oxford. He's starting at Oxford next term. He's officially been accepted, and even better now, he can actually go!
“Charlie, stop staring at the screen,” Isaac interrupts, leaning against the doorframe. “The message hasn’t changed since last week, and it’s not going to, dear.”
“Fuck, I know, Isaac,” Charlie replies, eyes still locked on the screen. “I just… I still can’t believe it. After everything that’s happened these past few years… This is just… unexpected.”
“Unexpected? Seriously?” Isaac walks in and drops onto the bed beside him, throwing an arm around Charlie’s shoulders. “Of course the fact that you poured yourself into your studies and happen to be an insanely overachieving rower makes this scholarship totally unexpected .”
Charlie lets out a breath that’s half laugh, half sigh.
Isaac softens. “Listen. I know you’ve been through hell. But this isn’t unexpected, Charlie. This is you surviving. This is you fighting your way back and finally getting what you damn well deserve.”
Charlie leans into him, resting his head on Isaac’s shoulder, still staring at the glowing screen as if it might vanish.
“I know… but it still feels unreal. Like, I’ve wanted this for so long. And now that it’s here, it’s like… I’m finally free, you know?”
“Oh, I know,” Isaac murmurs, resting his cheek against Charlie’s hair, and for a while, they sit there in silence, grounded in stillness and each other.
Calling Charlie’s past few years “rough” is a euphemism. Isaac had been right to call it hell, because he knows. He’d walked every step of that road with Charlie.
Charlie couldn’t say exactly when it all began. There was no single moment, no clear breaking point, just a slow, creeping unraveling. His mother’s voice, sharp with control disguised as concern. Her constant scrutiny, her fixation on the tiniest details of his life. His father, silent in the background, always present but never truly there, never once standing up for him.
And then, school. The boys on the rugby team, always watching, always ready with a smirk or a whisper. Too skinny, too soft, too gay, the words clung to him like a second skin. Every day, he walked through a world that seemed to shrink him, bit by bit. He never fought back. He just... tried to vanish.
At first, it was small things. Skipping meals. Telling himself he wasn’t hungry. Then, needing to control it. Needing to earn every bite. The hunger made him feel powerful. Empty, but in control. It was the only part of his life he could hold onto.
Eventually, the emptiness spread.
He stopped feeling. Insensibility as a shield, a way to block out his mother’s relentless tirades, the looks in the hallway, the voice in his own head. He tried to chase sensation in other places, in fleeting hookups with boys who saw him as nothing more than a body. He told himself he wanted it. That maybe this was love, or something close, but it wasn’t. It was just another way to disappear.
And when even that stopped working, when he couldn’t feel joy, or connection, or anything but the ache of being alive, he turned to pain. The sharpness, it was something. Proof he still existed.
Without Isaac, and his siblings Tori and Olly, he probably wouldn’t be here. Isaac had been his constant; walking beside him at school, checking in every morning, making sure he ate something, anything. He was the one who rallied older students to step in, to silence the bullies. And it worked, eventually, gradually to fully stop at the start of the spring term in Year 11. But by the time the bullying stopped, Charlie had already sunk too deep.
Tori and Olly had done their best, too, threading a delicate line between loyalty and survival. They weren’t treated like Charlie was, but they never turned their backs on him. They spoke up when they could. Held space when words failed.
Recently, therapy helped Charlie name things he’d spent years trying to silence. He understood his mother struggled with severe obsessive-compulsive disorder. Her anxiety had found its target in him, her most sensitive child, the one in whom she saw too much of herself. And his father? He had simply retreated, emotionally numb, unable, or unwilling to challenge his wife’s suffocating control.
Everything fell apart in one night, half way through the Autumn term of Year 12… That night, Charlie cut too deep. He doesn’t remember much, just the cold of the bathroom tiles, the sound of Tori’s voice calling his name and Olly crying.
Tori had called the ambulance. She’d saved his life.
What followed was a blur: the hospital, the white walls, the questions he wasn’t ready to answer. Tori, Isaac, the doctors and Youssef, Charlie’s rowing coach, begged him to accept hospitalization and get a chance to recover and start fresh. And that’s what he did.
Slowly, carefully, he began to breathe again. To exist in the world without shrinking from it. He was diagnosed with OCD and anorexia. He met professionals, who didn’t look at him with fear or judgment, but with understanding. Four months passed, he was now strong enough to leave, but not to go back home.
That’s when Isaac and his mum stepped in.
They offered him something he hadn’t had in a long time: safety and stability. A chance to recover on his own terms.
He finished school from their house, studying remotely, far from his traumas in the classrooms. He saw Tori and Olly whenever he could. And he saw his parents once a month, under the watchful eye of his therapist, Geoff, and a social worker.
Sixth Form wasn’t just about recovery. It was about learning how to live again, slowly and deliberately. He had structure and care… And rowing.
Rowing had been part of Charlie’s life for years now, though it hadn’t started with passion. If he was being honest, he’d first joined the club mostly to earn extra points for his Oxford application. He needed something to tick the “extracurricular” box, and while he loved running, he had no desire to join a cross-country team. Running was his sanctuary, his own way to breathe, his way to ground himself. He didn’t want to turn it into something competitive, something with expectations.
His PE teacher had been the one to suggest rowing. With Charlie’s lithe but strong build, he thought he might be a natural. He connected him with a friend’s club, Truham Rowing Club, and that was how Charlie met Youssef.
From the beginning, Youssef saw something in him. Not just physical potential, but quiet determination, a kind of raw focus. He didn’t just teach Charlie how to row, he taught him how to trust his body. How to believe he had strength in him. Very quickly, their coach-athlete relationship became a lifeline. The club became a refuge.
Rowing offered Charlie something nothing else did. When he rowed, he didn’t think. He simply was . Movement took over, his muscles burning, his breath syncing with the rhythm of the oars, the boat slicing cleanly through the water. It was exhausting, yes, but also relaxing. The simplicity of effort and progression soothed something deep inside him.
Over the years, he improved steadily, quietly. He became one of the best solo rowers in the club. He liked the solitude and the control. Working in a team was harder, mainly the fact of having to trust the others, but Youssef insisted he learn every position, even the cox position.
At first, Charlie resisted. He couldn’t see himself giving orders, setting the pace. But Youssef explained it differently: a cox wasn’t a commander, but a guide. The voice that held the team together. The one who saw the whole picture. And Charlie, with his compact frame and keen awareness, turned out to be surprisingly good at it.
By his final year, he was rowing almost every day, mostly solo, but once or twice a week in a crew. He even began to enjoy being a cox now and then, discovering how grounding it could be to lead from within.
Even when things got rough, when he hit his lowest point and missed practice after practice because not even rowing could help him anymore, Youssef never gave up on him. He didn’t push, he just stayed close. He asked Charlie to come to the club, if only to show his face. He gave him small tasks, things he could manage. Quiet ways to stay connected, to remind him he still belonged.
After being discharged from the hospital, getting back rowing gave Charlie a healthy way to channel his need for control. It allowed him to push his body, not to punish it, but to honour it. It gave him some kind of direction, a purpose.
Rowing had been a part of his recovery.
Now, it was the key to something even bigger: his path to Oxford.
It was Youssef who first brought up the idea of applying for a scholarship from the Rowing Foundation.
When Charlie told him he’d been admitted to Oxford, but probably wouldn’t go, because his parents refused to support him financially, Youssef had gone quiet for a moment.
Then he simply said, “Don’t give up on your dream. That’s not what I taught you.”
But Charlie couldn’t see a way through. His parents offered nothing beyond the mandatory allowance they were required to send to Isaac’s mum for housing him. He wasn’t in capacity to work enough to meet the fees for Oxford either. No matter how much he longed for, Oxford felt like something he could see but never reach.
A few days later, Youssef came back with a printed application form, already half-completed. He handed it over and explained that the Rowing Foundation offered financial assistance to young athletes, usually to support their training. But in rare cases, when someone truly exceptional came along, they could offer something more.
Youssef had already written his recommendation. He had already spoken to the right people. Now, it was Charlie’s turn to finish the application.
And now here he was. Because of the people who had refused to let him give up, Isaac, Tori, Olly, Youssef. People who saw something in him, even when he couldn’t.
He was going to Oxford. He was going to row for them.
And the best part? Isaac had been admitted too.