Chapter Text
It’s the end-of-exams party, and Harry Greene’s house is absolutely swarming with sixth formers.
Charlie Spring can remember a time, not that long ago, where he would have died rather than attend one of Harry Greene’s parties. How times change.
He’s hardly what you’d call friends with the rugby lads, but things have mellowed since the cat-calling and shoving days of Year 9. Maybe they’ve grown up a bit. On Charlie’s end, becoming Head Boy and really stepping up the anti-bullying efforts at Truham have made a visible difference, even if he still hasn’t managed to get the vertical forms initiative or the queer soc over the line.
Getting Ben Hope expelled after he’d punched Charlie in a fit of Solitaire-related closet-case panic had, weirdly, earned him a strange amount of clout at Truham; apparently, Ben wasn’t as well-liked as he’d liked to think. Harry’s still a twat, but Otis Smith, who does the school play with Tao, is actually even kind of cool, and Sai Verma got into English Lit at Cambridge; all the Oxbridge kids are following each other’s trajectories like the world’s most stressful soap opera. Charlie’s own application deadline in October is starting to feel nerve-wrackingly close.
But he’s not thinking about that tonight. Tonight he’s letting his hair down. Exams are over. He’s told his overprotective, anxious mum he’s staying at Tao’s, and he’s planning on getting drrrrunk. He doesn’t feel remotely guilty about the lie; after all, he’s going to be consuming plenty of calories. He’ll probably even drunkenly eat some crisps. She really should be overjoyed about it. He snorts at the thought.
Elle is meeting them there, with Tara and Darcy. Tori and Michael are supposed to be coming, too.
He weaves through the crowd of sweaty teenagers, waving at a familiar face here and there, headed for the kitchen and the motley array of fizzy drinks, hard spirits and sugary liqueurs that have overwhelmed the Greenes’ fancy hardwood table.
“Charlie Spring!” says a vaguely familiar tall blond guy, wearing one of the High School Musical cheerleader outfits that most of the rugby lads had sported for their last day of school. Apparently they’ve decided to give them a second airing; Charlie’s seen a couple of Wildcats cheerleaders with suspiciously flat chests already tonight. He’s currently pouring something virulently orange into a plastic cup.
“Chrrr—istian?” Charlie attempts. He must have got it right, because the guy claps him on the shoulder a couple of times and hands him the drink. Charlie takes a sip and nearly spits it out again. It tastes like orange Tic-Tacs dissolved in petrol.
“Listen, Charlie, we were wondering – and I hope this isn’t, like, weird or anything – but if you were, like, going out with anyone?” Christian says, clapping Charlie on the shoulder again with one hand while he starts mixing another plastic cup of toxic waste with the other.
Charlie tries to calm the hackles that automatically pop up.
“No, why do you ask?” he says, sipping the drink. It tastes slightly better on the second mouthful, but not much.
“Just know someone who might be interested, is all!” Christian says. “Otis tried to ask your mate Tao, but he clammed up like a bank vault!”
“Oh, really?” Charlie says, instantly curious. There are a few other out queers at Truham now – James, Sahar, Isaac, Tori, Michael – but he’s always keen to add more to the fold. And if it’s someone cute – bonus. Charlie’s love life has been a bit of a car crash so far; between three and a half lacklustre months of dating James out of a vague sense of mutual obligation until they’d decided they were better off as friends, plus the Ben fiasco, he could really use some optimism, or at least an ego boost. “Who?”
“Harry!” Christian yells, raising his arms. For a second, Charlie thinks that’s who might be interested, and his stomach takes a hair-raising sideways lurch, but in fact, thank fuck, it’s just that Harry has just walked into the kitchen in his cheerleading outfit, and he and Christian are doing their one-two-three-squeeze lad routine.
“Charlie Spring!” Harry yells, slinging his arm around Charlie’s neck. Like everything Harry says, it reads as perfectly placed in the middle between a genuine compliment and a pit trap full of sharpened stakes, and the arm is as close to a headlock as it is to a hug. “What do you think of my outfit?”
“You look very nice, Harry,” Charlie says, trying to give Harry as little as possible to latch onto, and also trying not to let Harry pull him over, which he seems inclined to do.
He’s hoping Harry will fuck off so he can keep grilling Christian, when – luckily, or possibly unluckily – Tao walks into the kitchen.
“Harry,” he says coolly, scooping a bottle of cider out of the ice bucket.
“Tao Xu!” Harry yells. He can’t throw an arm around Tao’s neck; he’s too tall. But the distraction allows Charlie to duck out to freedom. Tao grabs Charlie by the arm, wholly ignoring whatever conversational gambit Harry was planning, and scoops him right out of the kitchen.
“Taooooo,” Charlie complains. “Christian was saying he knew someone who might be interested in dating me, and I didn’t even find out who!”
“Pfff,” Tao says, his voice liquid contempt. “My god, can you imagine the quality of person that lot would be introducing you to? Someone’s hapless gay cousin? Or worse, one of them? I shudder to think.”
Charlie’s about to tell Tao off for being too judgmental while avoiding articulating how much he wouldn’t mind getting his hands on a pair of meaty rugby thighs when Elle appears. She’s with Tara and Darcy; Darcy’s got an open bottle of champagne and seems to have sampled it extensively, while Tara’s sipping a mixer drink. Elle, improbably, seems to have found a full-on cocktail in a fancy glass with a strawberry on the rim. As usual, she’s rocking it.
They all hug and exchange hellos, which are added to when Sahar appears from the crush at the front door, wearing a sparkly crop top. Elle and Tao get reacquainted with tongues, drawing squeals of delighted disgust out of the group. Charlie looks around at his little queer (and Tao) friend group, and wonders about the precise moment when they went from being a band of borderline outcasts to being the cool kids that everyone wants to hang out with.
The strains of Katy Perry drift out of the Greenes’ ridiculously large living room, and Elle squeals and drags Charlie out to dance, the others following, a begrudging Tao bringing up the rear. Charlie slugs down the last of his orange paint stripper and decides he’s going to have a great time.
—
Charlie’s pleasantly sozzled and staggering to the kitchen when a couple of cheerleaders waylay him. Again.
This time it’s Otis and Sai.
“Charlie!” shouts Otis, while Sai appears to Charlie’s blurry eyes to be texting someone in a hurry. “How are you, man?”
“Drrrrrunk!” Charlie cheers, holding up his empty cup, and both lads raise their pom-poms in boozy solidarity. “Congrats on Cambridge, Sai,” he adds, gathering together a few scraps of his vodka-soaked script for Polite Human Interaction With Acquaintances. Sai gives that awkward shrug of someone who has both worked their arse off, and also, knows they’re insanely lucky. Charlie nods. He gets it.
“Head boy treating you alright and everything?” Otis asks.
“Oh, you know,” Charlie waves a hand. “Mr Shannon tried to get me to shut down the box fort barbecue yesterday. The usual.”
“Yeah, thanks for the heads up on that,” says Sai. “If he’d actually tried to shut it down, there’d’ve been a riot!”
“A very well choreographed flashmob riot,” Otis says, striking a hands on hips pose.
“So… what is with all the outfits?” Charlie asks.
“Oh, well, since we paid all that money for them, we thought we better get a bit more use out of them,” Otis says. “And – turns out – girls love them! Even Sai managed to snog Rita from Higgs after the barbecue yesterday.”
It’s pretty dark, but Sai is somehow embodying the blush.
“Shut up, Otis,” he says, hitting his friend in the arm.
“Anyway, I’m on my way to the kitchen for more booze,” Charlie declares.
“We’ll come with you!” Otis says hurriedly. Charlie shrugs as he vaguely registers Sai scanning the hallway behind him. He turns, but it’s just the same mass of shapeless bodies.
Sai’s phone buzzes, and he checks it and makes a frustrated noise, turning it to show Otis.
“I’m going to bloody kill him,” says Otis. “Charlie, stay in the kitchen, yeah? We’ll be back!”
Charlie doesn’t worry too much about this little panto. It doesn’t seem to have much to do with him. He watches the pair of them scoot off down the hallway, enjoying the view of all that rugby thigh under the tiny skirts, before getting his rum and coke and returning to the dance floor and his friends.
—
It’s much later; they’re all sacked out on Harry’s fancy outdoor furniture, a fire burning in the kind of Italian stone fireplace that probably cost more than Charlie’s family car. Darcy had tried to start a game of I Never Ever, but it had just devolved into everyone coming up with increasingly obscure and ridiculous sex acts until they were all just weeping with laughter. Sahar has just dropped ‘I never ever had sex with an edible food item’ when Sai rounds the corner.
“Heyyyyyy,” he says into the giggling crowd. “Um, Charlie, can I borrow you for a sec?”
“He’s off the clock,” Tao says.
“A head boy is never off the clock,” Charlie proclaims dramatically, standing up. The drunken cloud has cleared a little bit, but he’s still feeling very merry. “Duty calls. Oh, and—”
He takes a sip of his rum and cola, to raucous applause from the group and deep confusion from Sai. He follows the rugby lad around the side of the house, expecting to see – he’s not sure. A drunk Year 10 throwing up in a rosebush? Half of a weeping couple, who’ve had the uni breakup talk?
What he’s not expecting to see is Otis and Christian flanking Rugby King Nick Nelson, in an obscenely short red cheerleader’s outfit, like a pair of prison guards, while he apparently tries to flee back towards the front gate.
The rugby lad to end all rugby lads freezes at the sight of Charlie, and suddenly Otis, Sai and Christian evaporate, leaving the two of them standing on the dark pathway, staring at each other.
“Hi,” Nick says.
“Hi,” Charlie replies.
Charlie’s brain, which was already sluggish with alcohol, and which has been further slowed down by the sight of a pair of delectably strong rugby arms bursting out of a sleeveless cheerleader top, and then basically ground to a complete halt processing the pair of muscled thighs under the skirt, finally starts to work again.
Just know someone who might be interested, Christian’s words circle around in his head.
Surely not…
Surely not Rugby King Nick Nelson?
Rugby King Nick Nelson, who Charlie has quietly lusted over since he first laid eyes on those luscious arms in… what… Year 10? The school sports day? Nick Nelson, who he’s seen at the school gates with the rugby lads, his burnished hair shining in the morning sunshine. Nick Nelson, all six-foot-two of sweet smile and freckles and that arse.
“I’m Nick,” says Nick.
Charlie can’t help but smile at that. Everyone knows Nick Nelson.
“I’m Charlie,” he replies, and Nick laughs. It’s absolutely ridiculous. They’re probably the two best-known students in the entire school, with the exception only of maybe Harry, thanks to these parties.
“So… um… this might be weird, but…” Nick pauses and tries to pull down the too-small cheerleading top to cover his midriff, and fails entirely. He takes a deep breath and says, “Wouldyoumaybewantogooutsometimelikeasadate?”
The part of Charlie’s brain responsible for language finally processes that sentence, several endless milliseconds after the part of his brain responsible for feelings has set off several batches of fireworks, a confetti cannon and a symphony orchestra.
Instead of answering, he finds himself stepping closer to the gorgeous hunk of freckled honeycake standing in front of him, who wobbles and catches himself on the wall of the house. Charlie steps even closer until he’s got Nick backed up against the bricks, their bodies barely inches apart, his face turned up slightly to look into Nick’s liquid eyes.
“I’d really like that, Nick,” he says, just loud enough to be heard. “How about… right now?”
He can’t help but notice Nick’s eyes flick down to his lips, and he licks them. Oh my god. Is this really happening?
“Right now would be great,” Nick breathes. “Do you… um… do you kiss on the first date?”
Charlie just weaves a hand into Nick’s hair and tugs him down to kiss him.
Ohmyfuckinggod.
Kissing Nick is a fucking revelation. He starts out slow, careful, nervous, pressing his lips chastely against Charlie’s, but with every passing second, and every enthusiastic slide of Charlie’s lips, Nick’s kisses get hungrier and hungrier, until he’s stepped forward and hooked his own hands behind Charlie’s head, a tiny little moan escaping his mouth as he pushes Charlie up against the fence on the other side of the path. Charlie’s hand – the one that’s not in Nick’s hair – has roamed down to Nick’s waist, settling on that soft strip of skin under the little costume top, then grabbing the fabric and using it to pull Nick closer still, until their bodies are pressed against each other head to toe.
Charlie knows he’s a bit drunk, but the bigger concern is making sure that nobody spiked his drink and he’s not hallucinating this whole thing, because he is pinned to a fence by the entire brick house that is Nick ‘Rugby King’ Nelson, wearing practically nothing, kissing him like he’s water in a desert, and with a very definite hard-on beginning to make itself known somewhere in between them.
“Oh my fucking god, Charlie, you are so unbelievably hot,” Nick mutters, leaving Charlie’s lips to kiss down his neck to his collar. “I’ve had a crush on you for so long.”
“You have?” Charlie gasps, the soft touch on his neck so much better than he could possibly have imagined. “I’ve had a thing for you for years!”
“What?” Nick pulls back to look at Charlie, apparently befuddled that anyone could have a thing for him, despite being so good looking he should have come straight out of a catalogue. “Really?”
“Really,” Charlie says, and they crash back together like it’s essential for life.
It’s a full five minutes before a very rumpled Charlie and Nick register the whoops and cheers coming from the end of the path, and break apart to find three idiotic rugby lad cheerleaders doing a full pom-pom routine.
“Fucking christ on a bike,” Nick says.
“Wanna go somewhere quieter?” suggests Charlie.
“Fuck, yes,” Nick breathes.
Which is how they find themselves running upstairs, hand-in-hand, until they end up collapsed on the floor of the Greenes’ fancy upstairs sunroom. Nick’s on the floor – leaning back against the door to make sure there are no more interruptions – and without hesitation, Charlie straddles his lap, and it’s back on.
Charlie runs his hands under the flimsy polyester top, caressing Nick’s absolutely absurd muscled torso, a shiver running through him involuntarily. He opens his eyes to find Nick looking up at him absolutely wide-eyed in wonder, like an angel has somehow descended into his lap and is grinding on him desperately. Nick’s ramrod-hard boner is turning his cheerleading skirt into a circus tent between Charlie’s thighs, and Charlie inches forward until his own jeans are pushing against it.
“This okay?” he murmurs into Nick’s mouth.
Nick just puts his hands on Charlie’s arse and pulls him down harder, a whimper escaping his lips, and Charlie might just expire on the spot from the pure heat of this experience.
Every kiss is a fucking revelation; the slide of Nick’s fine stubble on his own, the softness of his skin, the even more yielding softness of his lips, the electric jolt when one of them darts out a tongue. The way Nick responds to the hand Charlie has curled behind his neck again, shivering as Charlie’s fingers run down the short hairs at the back.
And all of that, on top of the delicious friction against his cock, and those hands yanking him down by the waist and arse and any bit of him they can grab – and it’s Nick, Nick bloody Rugby King Nelson, who’s whimpering and moaning and writhing under him like he’s the Playboy Playmate of the Year. Charlie has to remind himself to come up for air every now and then, or he’d probably kiss himself and Nick to death.
Kissing, he realises, has never felt like this. Charlie thought he was perfectly acquainted with the fine art of making out; he’s had two boyfriends, after all. Plenty of saliva has been exchanged; plenty of grinding, too. But this feeling, like he’s trying to eat Nick alive and Nick’s trying to do just the same – that’s new. That’s amazing. Charlie’s never understood those movie scenes before where people just meet and kiss and start ripping off each other’s clothes before, but he suddenly knows with absolute certainty that if they were in a room with a lockable door, he’d probably be ripping his own shirt right off. In fact, he’s half-considering just pulling a sofa across the door and to hell with it.
That is, until he hears Tao’s voice calling his name from somewhere in the house. Not Tao’s normal voice, either. Something is very wrong.
“Tao?” he calls, lifting his mouth away from Nick’s delicious lips.
“Charlie?” Tao calls back, and the broken note in his voice pulls Charlie to his feet within a second. Nick clambers up after him and Charlie wrenches the door open.
Tao rounds a corner, his face stained with tear-tracks.
“What happened?” Charlie says, rushing out to his best friend and grabbing him under the elbows.
“I think me and Elle broke up,” Tao manages, and then stutters off into hiccuping sobs.
“No!” Charlie says. What? It’s impossible. “You two are endgame. I don’t understand.”
“She told me she thought it would be too hard to stay together with her in Berlin,” Tao chokes out. “So we should break up at the end of summer. And I got mad at her, because she won’t even try, and I said, well, if you feel that way we should just break up now—”
He bursts into a fresh flood of tears, and Charlie folds him up in a huge hug.
Charlie’s trying to think of a way to apologise to Nick, who’s standing to one side, awkwardly trying to straighten his skirt, when a nearby bedroom door slams open, and to Charlie’s astonishment, Sahar storms out.
“I cannot believe you!” she shouts behind her.
“I’m allowed to experiment!” a tearful female voice yells after her.
“Not on me, you aren’t!” Sahar yells back from halfway down the stairs.
“Imogen?” Nick says, astonished. “What happened?”
“Nick?” The voice appears in the bedroom doorway, attached to Imogen bloody Heaney, Nick’s ex-girlfriend and straight girl extraordinaire, her pink lipstick smeared into a rosy mess. Then she immediately bursts into tears.
“I have to get out of here,” says Tao.
“Yeah, okay, let’s go,” Charlie agrees. He turns to see Nick ushering a weeping Imogen into the sunroom they just left, looking desperately back over his shoulder. His hair is ruined, his lips are bee-stung and bright red, his skirt is askew, and Charlie did that to him; the boner that deflated like a collapsing bouncy castle when they were interrupted twitches straight back to life.
Well, on reflection, probably nothing straight about it.
He gives Nick a little wave of his fingers as he chases a fleeing Tao, but Nick barely has time to get a hand half up before the two of them are off down the stairs and out Harry’s front door into the night.
—
The next morning, when he wakes up, Charlie has a follow request on Insta from nicholas_nzzzz, and he kicks his legs under Tao’s spare duvet in glee.
That is, until he remembers exactly what forced him to leave the party and the Rugby King’s hungry and decidedly not-straight kisses.
Tao and Elle broke up.
Those two are perfect for each other, they’ve been through so much together, and they broke up.
Charlie had managed to text Elle in the Uber back last night, just saying that he was taking Tao home and that he loved her. She’d heart reacted both but hadn’t replied.
Charlie spends the rest of the day trying to glue his best friend back together, with the help of Tao’s mum and quite a lot of bao and arthouse movies of variable quality. Even that’s a minefield, though; Charlie suggests The Darjeeling Limited and Tao goes to pieces on him again, because Moonrise Kingdom is Elle’s favourite.
“Why wouldn’t she even try, Charlie?” Tao sobs. “Why do people always leave me?”
Two hours later, Charlie’s mum is calling, demanding to know why he’s not back yet. She doesn’t even want to listen when he explains he needs to stay and look after Tao; he’s forced to put Yan on the phone, who does some kind of mum-to-mum whispering trick and sorts it so Charlie can stay another night.
“I don’t understand why your friend Tao is surprised by this,” his mum says when Yan hands back the phone to Charlie. “What did he think was going to happen? No teenaged relationship is going to survive being hours apart. Even if they weren’t surrounded by new people and new experiences, travel costs a packet. And he’s got his own A levels to think about. Pining and worrying about someone who’s off having the time of their life is hardly conducive to making clear, sensible decisions about one’s future.”
Charlie has to cut her off, as she’s clearly gearing up for a nice long spleen-vent, and all of a sudden, he really doesn’t want to hear it.
But by the time Tao has finally fallen asleep in front of Primer, and Charlie’s managed to surreptitiously exchange a few texts with a morose but adamant Elle, this morning’s exuberance feels like it might as well be as far away as Berlin.
Hey Nick, he types out in a DM. Last night was, like, *amazing*, but before anything else, I just need to ask you – are you going away for uni?
Please be going to Kent, he prays silently, but then remembers: he’s applying to Oxford and Cambridge in a tiny handful of months.
His phone buzzes with a reply, and Charlie almost can’t bear to look at it, his phone hand leaden as he pulls the screen up where he can see it.
Hi Charlie, last night was definitely amazing, but um, yes. I got into Leeds University. I start in September.
Charlie’s hand, holding the phone, drops back to the duvet as if it weighs several tonnes.
Fucking Leeds.
He knows what he’s going to find, but he can’t stop himself googling it.
Four hours.
Flying to Berlin takes less time, whispers a voice in his head.
He checks it from Oxford and Cambridge; it’s barely better.
It takes him about an hour of anger, denial and depression before he finally accepts what he knows he has to do.
That’s a really long way away, Nick, he messages. I don’t think I can do long distance, not with A levels, and I don’t think I could handle a summer fling, either, knowing there was a time limit. I’m really sorry. ❤️
The message goes read immediately, and Nick types for a long time before the message comes through.
I understand 💔😭🥹
Charlie finds himself wiping a couple of tears away himself. This breakup business is catching.
Tell your mates I appreciate all that business with the pom-poms, he types. Look me up if you ever move back south again, yeah?
I will ❤️ comes the reply instantly.
And so, Charlie Spring begins working on forgetting that last night – last amazing incredible magical hot-as-fuck night – ever happened.