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Charlie does not have a thing for Nick’s hands.
He’s pretty sure.
It’s just that they’re so… he can’t quite think of the right word. They’re so pretty. Not delicate, exactly, but not especially rugged, either; just large and corded, and kind of square, and covered in little freckles that remind Charlie faintly of glow-in-the-dark stars. They just look warm, and like a piece of art. Carved out of marble, brought to life by a Hellenistic sculptor.
But it’s not really even that they’re hands. Not particularly. It’s mostly just that they belong to Nick. Charlie thinks that most parts of Nick look like art.
Charlie wonders idly if he should give Nick a packet of glow-in-the-dark stars, for the sole purpose of offering to come around on Saturday and help him put them up in the shape of constellations. He’s still got one spare from Olly’s fifth birthday.
Nick has been totally fixated on astronomy for weeks, ever since the night in February when the two of them took Nellie for a walk and ended up flat on their backs on the cold grass, watching the sun go down and the stars blink to life. The still air was freezing, but Charlie’s side burnt where it was pressed to Nick’s. He’d wanted to joke that this took ‘sharing body heat’ to a whole new level. Then he remembered that Nick likely was not feeling the same way.
To distract himself he pointed out some of his favourite constellations, and told Nick the story of Cassiopeia and Andromeda.
The next Monday, in form, he watched Nick draw little doodles of Orion and Ursa Major and the Big Dipper in his school planner. Nick flushed when he realised Charlie was looking. The whole thing was so unbearably cute that Charlie wanted to grab his hand under the desk and never let go.
He is well aware that this much pining over a friend is probably not great for his head in the long run — and Mr Ajayi’s words about trying to put some space between the two of them bounce around nonstop in his head, giving him a painful little jolt whenever they hit a corner like the DVD logo — but he just likes Nick so much. There’s some kind of gravitational pull there; one that Charlie could break out of, if he wanted to find the strength, but he doesn’t want to. Not just yet.
Or maybe they’re a binary system with no choice but to orbit around each other for eternity.
And there he goes again, thinking things that he just can’t think if he’s going to keep any kind of grip on his sanity.
Charlie’s daydreaming in form; a Tuesday. Despite the strict no-coats-inside rule, which is usually viciously enforced, everyone in the classroom is still wearing some kind of winter jacket over the heavy uniform blazer. Even Nick, who generally refuses to wear his full uniform — he complains that it’s too stiff and itchy, and has taken to carrying around his blazer so he can put it on quickly if a particularly pedantic teacher is within detention distance — is wearing every layer available to him today.
He arrives later than Charlie, which is unusual, appearing in the doorway with a clatter of his muddy satchel against the doorframe, features twisted into his traditional lopsided grin.
“Fuck, it’s so cold,” Nick sighs, plopping down into his chair beside Charlie. His panting breaths suggest that the redness on his cheeks and the tip of his nose is from exertion as well as the freezing wind outside.
His hair is painfully, adorably messy. It would be so easy to just reach over and —
“Nellie escaped just as I was leaving this morning and she got halfway down the street before I caught her in poor Mrs Edgeworth’s rose bush and then I missed the bus so I ran all the way here and God, it’s so fucking cold…”
Eventually he runs out of breath and collapses with his head on Charlie’s shoulder.
Charlie can’t believe the contact and almost forgets to draw breath for a few seconds.
It’s a tragedy when Nick sits up again. “And I got a scratch on my hand from the roses, look!”
Quite distractingly, his left hand is hovering roughly thirty centimetres from Charlie’s face. There’s a long, thin scratch from halfway down his pointer finger all the way to the back of his wrist; a deep red, winding trail. Charlie thinks privately that it doesn’t look that painful, but Nick is liable to be a bit of a baby about things like this.
And he’s allowed to, because it’s so endearing.
More concerning than the scratch, however, is the general state of Nick’s hands.
“Nick!” cries Charlie, wrapping Nick’s left fingers in both of his own hands. “What happened to your hands?”
“Oh,” says Nick, brow furrowed. “Just the cold, I guess. This winter’s been so long! Like, I can’t believe we’ve had a whole week below zero in March, it’s completely bizarre…”
He keeps talking for a while, rambling about climate change, but Charlie is zeroed in on Nick’s left hand. Firstly, he’s focused on the fact that he’s just intertwined his own fingers with Nick’s, and it’s sending little gold buzzing sparks up his arms and all the way down to his toes and Nick hasn’t even moved his hand from Charlie’s grip. And secondly, Nick’s hand is so dry it feels almost like sandpaper.
His knuckles, usually faintly pink, are deep red and cracked, bleeding in places. It’s by no means unheard of for Nick to chew his fingernails, but now the skin around them is desiccated and flaky.
Nick has fallen silent and the edges of the room go a little bit fuzzy, like the two of them have entered a dimension that’s just for them, and rainbows dance on the corners of his vision. Charlie turns his hand over and traces a finger over the fissured heart line, and Nick slowly, steadily offers his right hand as well, palm turned upwards.
There’s a small, raw wound where it looks like he’s picked off a callous. Charlie gets the totally ridiculous and inexplicable urge to press a tiny kiss to that spot.
Somehow despite the freezing temperature outside, his hands are warm. Like a space heater. Though it’s entirely possible that’s just Charlie’s crush-addled imagination.
Either way, he dares to shift his gaze to Nick’s face.
Nick’s eyes are wide, pupils a little blown, brow creased slightly. He blinks and licks his lower lip. It’s almost imperceptible, but it’s there.
“They’re so dry,” manages Charlie eventually. The rainbows swim around Nick’s face. Charlie wants to laugh from how silly and cliché that would look written down.
Nick gives a small, nervous chuckle. “Yeah.”
Charlie runs his fingers over Nick’s palms for a few seconds longer, just feeling them. Nick’s hands. He feels Nick give a tiny shiver beside him.
It’s not even like they haven’t touched before. Come to think of it, Nick touches him all the time. Just light, casual brushes; a hand on his shoulder, his waist… Once, a hand cupping his cheek as Nick brushed a curl off his forehead. All of them gave Charlie a tingly, fizzing, sparkly feeling somewhere deep in his chest.
He feels it now, stronger than ever, crackling up his spine. If he doesn’t stop staring at Nick’s face it’s going to go to his head like champagne on an empty stomach and then he’ll really start making strange decisions.
With great effort, he shifts his gaze down to the table and drops Nick’s hands. They hit the table with a quiet thud.
“Supposed to warm up a bit tomorrow,” mumbles Nick after a few moments.
Charlie chances a look back at him. His hands are still on the table where Charlie dropped them, and he’s staring at them, eyelids lowered, mouth twisted to one side. Befuddled is perhaps the best word for his expression.
What the ever-living fuck just happened?
Nick spends the rest of the day trying to shake the feeling that he’s in a dream. Everyone moves too slowly around him in the hallway, and too fast, all at once. The tiled floor of the bathroom does not feel solid.
He splashes his face with water, just in case it does something to rinse the melty feeling from his face. All he gets is the sting of the water on his dry hands, a damp fringe, and the shock of freezing droplets running down the inside of his sleeves.
This leads to a wholesale removal of every piece of clothing he can reasonably take off, because the sensation of damp skin under clothing makes him feel like his teeth are turning inside out, and he just really can’t deal with that right now on top of whatever that little incident in form is doing to his head. He’s left trembling in his shirt, tie, and trousers — it can’t be more than five degrees in this building — and he’s late for Geography, and he hasn’t done his homework, and all he wants to do is curl up somewhere quiet and warm with Charlie and ideally several blankets and a cup of tea.
In Geography, he can’t possibly think about longshore drift because his brain is full of star-shaped glitter: stubbornly adherent no matter his efforts with his mental vacuum cleaner; mildly irritating, impossible to fully clean up, yet somehow so joyful.
He wants Charlie to hold his hands again.
Realistically, this is not a thought that should surprise him. He thinks about holding hands with Charlie a lot. And spends a truly inordinate amount of time thinking about his lips, and his shoulders, and how smart and funny he is, and… just Charlie, really.
“Nelson!”
Nick looks up from the desk. Mr Lange is looking at him expectantly.
“Sorry, sir…?”
Mr Lange sighs. “I was asking if you could define saltation for us.”
“Oh.”
Get it together, Nick. Jesus.
“Would you prefer to daydream outside?”
Nick blinks. “Um… yes?”
Muffled laughter ripples across the room.
Mr Lange folds his arms, leaning on his desk. “That wasn’t a serious offer, Nick. Now, saltation, if you wouldn’t mind.”
Nick flushes and stumbles through a clumsy definition, only to be told he’s just actually defined suspension. He sighs down at the blank lined page of his exercise book in defeat while Mr Lange says something about wanting them all to do well on their GCSEs but not being able to help anyone who’s not willing to focus in class.
He wonders if Charlie might want to come around to his after rugby practice this afternoon. Thankfully, before he actually goes to do it, he realises that pulling out his phone to message him is a terrible idea while he’s still under Lange’s watchful eye.
Finally — finally — the bell rings for lunch.
Nick is one of the last to finish packing up. Between the Saltation Incident and the end of the lesson he’s managed to write a weedy-looking handful of notes. They seem unlikely to make any sense when he reads over them tonight — BBC Bitesize to the rescue, hopefully.
“Nick, would you mind staying behind for a moment?” Mr Lange is seated behind his desk. His expression is concerned, not antagonistic.
Nick makes his way warily to the front of the room, satchel slung across his chest, aware of a few soft oohs and a Nelson’s in trouble behind him. He rolls his eyes and fights not to scowl at the motley collection of football boys now trailing out of the room. “What’s up, sir?”
Lange chuckles. “I was rather wondering what’s up with you.”
If there’s one thing Nick knows about himself, it’s that he is a fucking awful liar. But how exactly is he supposed to explain to his slightly scary GCSE Geography teacher that he’s having some kind of crisis because a boy held his hands — oh God, Charlie touched his hands — and that it’s all his fault for seating him next to said boy in form in the first place?
He settles for a half-truth. “Just having a bit of a weird day, sir.”
“Hmm.” Mr Lange nods and folds his arms, eyes appraising. “Sorry if I was harsh earlier, but I found your inattention surprising. You’re usually very focused in this class.”
“Yeah.” Nick does not inform him that it generally takes all of his energy to appear to be paying attention, or that right now that energy is very much otherwise occupied.
“If you’re feeling unwell, you’re welcome to go to the nurse’s office. I can email your next teacher for you and let them know — you’ve got P.E. after lunch, haven’t you?”
Nick nods dumbly. “Thank you, sir.”
A nap sounds good.
He wanders down the corridor and across the yard, dodging the makeshift five-a-side rugby match taking place far too close to the picnic tables, and mutters something about a headache to the nurse. Soon he’s dosed up on paracetamol and installed on the squeaky cot. The room is warmer than the rest of the school, thanks to a radiator that rattles every so often against the painted cinderblock wall.
He sleeps fitfully and wakes to the sound of howling wind. It’s snowing heavily outside. His eyes feel crusty.
There’s some kind of commotion on the other side of the wall, doors opening and closing, an oh, dear, look at you from the nurse. The door to the sickroom swings open, and there’s Charlie, looking like an angel in his P.E. kit, utterly covered in mud with blood streaming from his nose.
Nick sits up. “Are you okay? Did you get tackled?”
Charlie laughs while the nurse puts some paper down on the other bed so he can sit on it. “No, we’re doing cricket at the moment.” He gestures out of the window. “God knows why when it’s like that out there. Pitch is a bloody mess.”
“So what happened?”
“Slipped on the grass and somehow ended up with Tao’s elbow in my face right as the storm was coming in.”
“Right.”
Wind whistles through the window, long-ago cracked in a spiderweb pattern by a wayward tennis ball.
Soon the nurse leaves Charlie sitting on the bed with a box of tissues and a bucket to put them in. Nick gets up to sit next to him.
“Why are you here?” Charlie asks. His curiosity is poorly disguised.
“Headache,” says Nick, unconvincingly.
“Mmm.”
It’s quiet for a while. Nick is aware of how close they’re sitting, and the way his hand lingers on the bed behind Charlie as if hesitating to wrap around his waist. He can’t do that.
“You’ve got some mud on your face,” says Nick eventually, almost under his breath.
Before he can retrieve a tissue to dab at the streak of dirt on Charlie’s cheek, Charlie is doing it himself.
“Did I get it?”
Nick nods, disappointed it wasn’t his hands.
“Practice is cancelled because of the storm,” says Charlie.
“Do you want to come ‘round mine, then?” Nick asks hopefully.
Charlie looks regretful. “I’d better go home. It’s family dinner tonight and it’s always such a big deal.”
“Oh.”
“You seem tired.”
A few seconds pass, dragging and slurred, as Nick flips through a list of his options.
The first: lie and say he’s fine. Guaranteed to be unsuccessful. He is, after all, in the sickroom, probably looking awful — and, as established, terrible at lying.
The second: say what he’s thinking. Impossible. He couldn’t put it into words if he tried.
Finally: call his mum and go home to stare at the ceiling.
In the end, he does none of these. Just sighs, “Yeah,” lies back on the paper-covered bed, and pats the mattress next to him for Charlie to lie down, too.
Charlie hesitates, laughing. “I’ll get you all muddy!”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Aren’t you cold without your jumper?” Charlie motions to his warm things, still on a pile on the floor.
Nick nods. “Am a bit.”
Charlie hunts in the laminate cupboards, eventually pulling out a heavy tartan blanket. He holds it aloft. “I used to hang out in here when I couldn’t be in the art room.”
Nick smiles. “Thanks.”
Charlie drapes the blanket over him and tucks him in so, so gently. All he can hear is the rushing of blood in his ears as Charlie lies beside him, careful not to get mud on the blanket. One of his legs hangs off the edge of the bed.
“Have a sleep, yeah?” says Charlie, patting his shoulder.
Quiet and warm — check. Charlie, and blankets — check and check. All that’s missing is tea. Despite the unsettled churning of pelicans in his stomach, he sighs contentedly.
Charlie really does have to go home, so he wakes Nick gently when the bell goes.
“C’mon. You’d better go home.”
Nick sighs. “Yep.” He gets up, shrugs on his coat. Charlie passes him his jumper and blazer. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”
Charlie nods. His eyes are drawn back down to Nick’s hands, which are just as cracked as they had been that morning. “See you tomorrow.”
He’s tempted to ask Nick what’s really going on, but he doesn’t seem up to being pushed. He watches Nick leave.
The door swings shut behind him as Charlie folds the blanket and places it back in the cupboard. He needs to shower and change, and then he needs to go past Boots on his way home.
It’s late, and Nick is flat on his back in his pyjamas, still on top of the covers, staring into space.
He reaches for his phone and stares at the Google search bar for a few minutes.
Not tonight.
He opens Instagram to try to distract himself. The first photo in his feed is of him, with the rugby team, posted by Otis. It was taken after a match — one they lost, but that’s not mentioned in the caption — and Nick looks every bit the lad’s lad in a one-armed bro-hug with Sai.
Frowning slightly, he scrolls further. There’s a similar post from Marcus, one of the other boys.
And then there’s a photo from Charlie’s friend Tao, of him and Charlie with Tao’s cat. Nick just looks at it for a while.
He types the words into Google, but he doesn’t hit Enter.
He lists constellations in his head to get himself to sleep.
The next morning, Charlie arrives at school armed with hand cream.
He feels so silly. In his backpack rests a small blue tube of moisturiser. It’s not fragranced, because offering Nick something rose-scented just seemed like way too much.
Still, once he’s seated in form, he pulls it out of his bag.
“What’s that?” asks Nick, face open and curious despite the shadows beneath his eyes.
“Give me your hands?”
Nick obliges; both of his hands hover above the table, palms upturned.
Charlie squeezes a dollop of moisturiser onto one. “Since they’re so dry, and it doesn’t look like warming up any time soon.”
They both laugh and glance out the window. It stopped snowing during the night, but the sky is deep grey and the wind is still biting, the oval waterlogged with slush.
Nick has not moved. The little blob of cream sits melting on his hand.
Deep breath.
He takes his own hands, uses his thumb to swipe the moisturiser over one of Nick’s palms, then the other. He’s never been more glad that nobody else sits at their table, or that everyone else in the room is too busy talking loudly and rough-housing or frantically catching up on homework to take notice of them.
Nick’s arms tense, then relax into the touch. He allows Charlie to rub it into his fingers, across the backs of his hands.
He hisses softly.
“What’s wrong?” asks Charlie.
“Stings a bit.”
“Sorry.”
Nick shakes his head. “Don’t be sorry.”
The classroom seems to still around them. Regretfully, Charlie lets go of Nick’s hands and puts the tube back in his backpack. The most logical thing to do would be to just give it to Nick; after all, he’s just a friend, doing a normal platonic thing like buying his friend a tube of moisturiser and, oh, God, proceeding to tenderly rub said moisturiser into his platonic friend’s hands.
He is in far too deep.
Nick’s cheeks are bright pink. “Thanks.”
“S’okay.” Charlie shifts in his seat slightly, unsure what to do with himself. “Does that feel any better?”
“Yeah,” says Nick softly, and then he pulls out a notebook full of clumsy astronomy doodles and he’s telling Charlie in earnest about the new James Webb Space Telescope photo of the Pillars of Creation and how much sharper it is than the Hubble image.
“It kind of looks like a hand. See, I’ll show you,” Nick continues, laughing, pulling out his phone and opening Safari.
And…
Oh.
It’s just for a split second, but Charlie catches a glimpse of the words ‘Am I gay?’ in the search bar.
Oh.
He hears Nick suck in a breath like it’s taking all the effort in the world, and sees him rapidly hit the button to clear the search.
As far as he can tell, Nick doesn’t know he’s seen it. He’s not sure if this is a good thing or not.
Because what the hell is he supposed to do?
And then Nick’s showing him the images, comparing the two, and he’s right; it is shaped like a three-fingered alien hand, so Charlie laughs too.
They eat lunch together, and talk easily in afternoon form, but the look of fear in Nick’s eyes is unmissable for the rest of the day.
Charlie doesn’t say anything.
Shit.
Shit shit shit, shit fucking shit. Bollocks.
And in the immortal words of Billy Mack in Love Actually, arse head and hole.
Charlie’s breath hitches. He’s definitely, absolutely seen it.
It’s taking every ounce of willpower Nick has not to vibrate in his seat with anxiety. He folds his arms tightly around his chest to stop its contents spilling out onto the floor, relieved only that he managed to delete it so quickly.
By some miracle he manages to keep talking — thankfully talking about space comes easily to him — and manages to act relatively normal until the end of the day.
It’s exhausting.
He’s uncharacteristically quiet in the car ride home with his mum, staring out the window and offering minimal quips in response to his mum’s stream of chatter.
“You okay, Nicky?”
The dreaded question.
“Yeah.” He swallows. He knows his voice sounds strangled. “Normal.”
“Okay.” Her eyes turn back to the road. “Curry for dinner tonight, how does that sound?”
“Sounds good. Thanks, Mum.”
Up in his room, he pulls out his Maths textbook and settles at his desk. It’s surds; he still can’t do them, no matter how many times he’s had it explained to him.
He resolves to give it a go — he needs a distraction — and promptly texts Charlie five minutes later, asking if he wants to come over. Charlie says yes: a relief, and a new source of anxiety. Nick changes his jumper three times, and decides on the blue one he put on when he got home.
The moment Charlie arrives, Nick suggests Mario Kart.
“I thought you needed help with Maths!” laughs Charlie, hanging his coat on a hook.
Nick grins. “Can’t focus. I need a brain break.”
“A brain break?” Charlie deadpans, incredulous, but soon he’s giggling, burying his face in the side of Nick’s arm.
“Come on!” Nick takes his wrist and pulls him upstairs, Nellie bounding up behind them.
His room is still, peaceful; the wind remains rough outside. The only lights he has on are his fairy lights, and Charlie’s face in the dim light increases his heart rate by factors of ten until he can feel it fluttering in his fingers.
They play for a while, and then play-fight, and suddenly he’s got Charlie pinned to the floor and he’s blushing uncontrollably and giggling beneath him.
Shit.
Nick flops down onto the floor next to him, panting.
“How are your hands feeling?” asks Charlie softly. He reaches over and picks one up, and Nick’s soul just about leaves his body.
“Bit better,” he manages.
Charlie hums. “They still feel dry. Do you want more of the stuff?”
“Please.”
And he’s doing it again, strong, steady thumbs running over Nick’s raw knuckles, the moisturiser cool and soothing.
Charlie swipes a little onto Nick’s nose, snickering when Nick goes cross-eyed to look at it.
“Better?”
Nick nods.
“Okay. Good.” Charlie pulls away and stands up, shoulders pushing inward like he wants to hide. “I should get home.”
Nick whines from the floor. “Stay for dinner?”
Charlie’s resolve visibly melts. “Let me check with Mum.”
He does stay for dinner. Sarah just smiles and serves him a plate of rice and butter chicken, and starts recounting a story about her colleague’s sister-in-law who eloped to France with a man from Human Resources.
Nick watches Charlie beside him and thinks that even though this is the least normal he’s felt, possibly ever, it’s also right, too.
That night, once Charlie has gone home, Nick searches the words for real.
So the glow-in-the-dark stars plan must have worked, because here Charlie is, back in Nick’s room, on a Saturday a few weeks later. It’s warmer outside.
Nick has drawn up a map on a sheet of paper of where he wants to put all the stars, and he’s gesturing animatedly while searching in his desk drawer for a pencil.
“So obviously we need to do Cassiopeia, because she’s the first one you told me about so she’s my favourite, and Draco and Pegasus and Orion and I thought we could do Ursa Major over here if we don’t run out of stars — are you even listening? Pay attention, Charlie! Because I need your help to map it all out on the ceiling and — stop laughing! Stop!”
Charlie can’t help but giggle at him because the way his eyes sparkle and his hair flops around as he speaks is so fucking cute. Also, the fact that Cassiopeia is Nick’s favourite constellation because of that magic night in the park is sending little floods of sparks circling around and around his chest.
Nick lunges at him, tickling his sides until Charlie’s breathless.
Oh, fuck.
Nick’s smile drops slightly as their faces inch closer, eyes moving to Charlie’s mouth, hands resting on his waist.
Charlie’s eyes flutter closed.
Nothing.
When he opens his eyes, Nick is a safe, God-fearing, heterosexual six feet away, unfolding the stepladder. He coughs awkwardly.
“Okay, so Orion up here next to the window, I think. Could you pass me the pencil so I can mark it out?”
Charlie shakes his head slightly to unstick his thoughts. “Yeah. Yes. I’ll grab it.” He tries not to be upset. Clearly, Nick is trying to work something out here. He deserves patience.
The sliver of lightly freckled skin that’s visible below the hem of Nick’s t-shirt as he reaches up to place a star on the ceiling is at once this side of heaven and all nine circles of hell.
The afternoon passes normally — as normally as it possibly could, considering Nick just nearly kissed Charlie and then sprang away like a frightened antelope, heart beating up into his mouth and threatening to escape. He’s pleased with the stars on the ceiling, though, and that he’s managed to convince Charlie to stay the night so he can see them when it’s properly dark.
It did not appear to take much convincing, which makes Nick feel warm in a way he can’t define.
Eventually they both tire and curl up on Nick’s bed to watch Thor: Ragnarok. They’re not touching, but they may as well be because Charlie’s body heat next to him is impossible to ignore.
About halfway through the film Charlie takes his hand.
He feels his breath stutter. He should be used to how this feels by now. He’s not.
Charlie’s been fiddling with a pen, clicking the button on the end, doodling absently in a small notebook.
“Your hands are healing,” says Charlie softly.
“Yeah,” Nick breathes, staring resolutely at the screen of his laptop. The Hand-Cream Thing, as his brain has taken to calling it, is now a motif in his life that accompanies feelings best classified in the ‘butterflies’ category. He’s actually a little bit sad he can now use hand sanitiser without wincing at the pain because it means soon he won’t have any pretext on which to hold Charlie’s hands.
Unless, of course, he wants to get a better pretext.
He feels something cold and slightly sharp on the back of his right hand. He glances over, and Charlie’s drawing a short line across the back of his hand in blue biro.
“What are you doing?”
Charlie’s cheeks go a bit pink. “Your freckles make constellations.” He draws for a few seconds longer, a square with three little tentacles coming off the corners. “See? Pegasus.”
Nick smiles to himself and offers both his hands, shifting his gaze back to the movie. If he pays too much attention to what Charlie’s doing he'll lose it and do something really ill-advised like try to kiss him again.
The cool tickle of the pen against his skin is actually very pleasant, but the warmth of Charlie’s fingertips does not afford him any extra nerve cells with which to pay attention to the movie. All of them are focused on the surface of his skin where it’s making contact with Charlie’s. It’s completely maddening.
He watches Charlie’s long fingers as they dance across the backs of his hands and up his arms. The shape of them is mesmerising; he wants to trace the contours, map them in his head.
“There. Done,” says Charlie, setting the pen down.
Nick admires his work for a moment. It’s so beautiful — he’s done all Nick’s favourites, and each bend and corner is connected neatly to a freckle. The lines are only slightly wobbly from the drag of cheap ballpoint ink on skin. He holds his hands out in front of him.
“You’re an artwork now.” Charlie’s voice is so soft.
Nick is going to melt. “I might get it tattooed.”
This earns a giggle. “I don’t think Headmaster Barnes would be very impressed.”
“Did you do Cassiopeia?”
“Of course I did Cassiopeia. Here, on the side of your wrist.” Charlie takes hold of his hand properly, fingers slotting in between Nick’s, and turns his arm over gently.
He really does want a tattoo of that one. So he can remember listening to Charlie tell him about Greek and Roman myths in that gentle animated voice, their bodies pressed together against the cold, for as long as he needs the memory. Unfortunately, he’s only sixteen.
He gets the sense that he could probably ask Charlie to draw it for him again in a couple of years.
“It’s perfect,” he murmurs.
Charlie is gazing over at him, lips parted slightly.
“You look like you want to say something,” says Nick. Most of him hopes he’s not going to bring up what he saw on Nick’s phone. The rest of his traitorous mind is praying he will, because one of them is really going to have to address it at some point. He cannot keep hopelessly pining like this forever.
“Seems like you want to say something, too,” Charlie replies.
Oh.
So he’s completely transparent, at least to Charlie, then. Good to know.
Once again, his options: deny, deflect, and distract. Or…
“I was going to kiss you earlier,” he whispers.
Charlie’s eyes widen, and the fairy lights reflect in them like stars. “I thought so.”
“I got scared. I’m sorry.”
Charlie nudges him in the side. “No sorry.”
Deep breath. And another one. Inhale, exhale. He’s staring. They’re both staring. “Can I try again?”
A nod; it’s tiny, but definite. “Yeah.”
A warm, soft hand cups the back of his head, fingers curling into the short hair there. The other one lands in the small of his back. Nick's own hands somehow make their way to drape around Charlie's neck.
And Nick is seeing stars.