Chapter Text
Nick – Major Nelson, to people who have to care about these things, which Charlie doesn't – has been super weird with him ever since they got back from P2X-892. It's not like he doesn't know why, but it kind of stings a little anyway; he'd thought Nick was different from the other grunts. He'd thought they were friends.
(And yes, maybe Charlie has a tiny crush on the leader of their team that looks a lot like love from the right angle, but that doesn't matter because he's so normal about it. He's done absolutely nothing to deserve this. Well, nothing that was his fault, anyway – he’s not responsible for checking the pollen count on every planet they visit. He’s not that kind of scientist.)
“You look like you've eaten a lemon,” Tara says to him, interrupting his thoughts with a nudge to his ribs. “Anything you'd like to share with the class?”
“That's classified,” he says flatly, like they don’t have exactly the same level of security clearance in this distant galaxy billions of lightyears away from where they were born. Tara opens her mouth – presumably to say as much – at which point Darcy materialises in the room like a ghost and makes them both shriek.
“Don't do that,” Tara admonishes her, hand pressed over her heart. “Just because you can, that doesn't mean you should.”
“What's the point of being all enlightened and ascended if I can't scare the shit out of my girlfriend and our sad, pining pet scientist?" She grins, even though Charlie’s never met anyone less enlightened in twenty-six years of life. “Great work on P2X-892, by the way, Charlie boy. I read the mission report over Sheppard's shoulder and it almost sounds like you didn't bone your superior officer.”
“I'm not military, there’s nothing ‘superior’ about him,” Charlie says automatically, so used to arguing with that bit that he does that first on instinct. “Also – that isn't what happened.”
“Oh,” Darcy says, nodding wisely. “He boned you then. Thank you for clarifying.”
Charlie puts his face in his hands. “Nothing happened. Stop it. We didn't—”
Hands on his stomach, underneath his shirt, pulling at his clothes like they have their own, independent anger about him being dressed. A hot mouth on his throat, his collar bones, his own fingers sliding through fine, soft hair and pulling—
His head snaps up and he grits his teeth so hard his jaw hurts. “Can we please just get on with testing these materials? If we don't get at least something out of this mission, I might throw myself off a balcony later.”
“I was under the impression you got quite a lot out of that mission,” Darcy says pointedly, and promptly opts to become incorporeal when Tara makes the move to shove her away. “Oop. Gotta go. I think if I pop up enough times in Major Greene's quarters, he'll eventually shit himself and it's important to set yourself achievable goals. You know – for morale.”
Darcy disappears and Tara lets out a long sigh. “Sorry about her. She’ll get over all the new abilities and stuff once she gets used to it. At least she’s not dead?”
In spite of the question mark, they’re both glad she’s not dead, obviously. “It's fine.”
“But we really can talk about—”
“Materials!” Charlie interrupts her, waving a hand at the rocks, minerals, and other planet paraphernalia they have sitting on the bench in front of them. “We can talk about these materials. Because that is literally our job.”
Tara takes pity on him. “Right. Do you want rocks or weird blue thing?”
“Weird blue thing, always.”
And the topic is, thankfully, dropped – though that doesn't stop Charlie from thinking about it. Constantly.
When they'd got back from the planet Charlie has been privately calling 'Hell', Colonel Sheppard had walked them through writing the mission report with the weary look of a man who's had to have this conversation with those under him just one too many times. However, that doesn't make Charlie feel any better about it.
Nick had barely looked at him throughout the entire debrief.
“Don't let this affect your work,” Sheppard had said, but it hadn't sounded like he'd meant it as an admonishment. “The Pegasus galaxy will throw stuff like this at you sometimes, but just remember – at least it wasn't the space vampires this time. And I can't believe that's something I say regularly now.”
Sheppard has a habit of refusing to call the Wraith by their name. Charlie's not sure if he finds it endearing or not.
“Yes, sir,” Nick had replied levelly, and when Charlie looked at him, his expression had been completely normal – unless, like Charlie, you've made a fun hobby of sneaking obsessive glances at your team leader for the last year, in which case the tension in his jaw had been impossible to miss.
So: no more going to P2X-892. Because of the pollen. The address is still in their database, but it's flagged now, which means nobody else will end up… compromised. By the aforementioned pollen.
And it's too late, really, because Charlie's already lost one of his best friends.
Still, he has a job to do, even if he feels a little hollow and Nick has managed to successfully avoid him for the entire week of downtime they've had since their last mission. This is probably because Atlantis fucking loves him, and quite possibly created a whole special, secret Nick Nelson wing where his pathetic friend Charlie Spring can't find him.
But… Job. Blue thing. All the necessary checks have been done and it's probably not going to kill him, so he snaps on gloves and goes to move it to the next machine in their line-up, when—
Gasping breaths, his name jumbled up with curse words and incoherent snatches of devotion, strong arms pulling him in and pressing him down. A mouth on his chest now – on the scars on his arms, which feels so good he thinks he might sob – and on his stomach, his thighs, his—
“Blue thing is bad,” Charlie says loudly, pulling his gloved hand away from it like he's been burned. It has no discernible outputs – no radiation or anything else they can pick up with their equipment – but apparently touching it had still been a monumentally bad idea. Charlie's face feels embarrassingly warm.
“Are you okay?” Tara asks immediately, sounding concerned. She starts to get up from her work station but Charlie stops her with a raised hand and clears his throat.
“Not bad bad,” he clarifies. “Just… maybe don't touch it?” He's still breathing hard, and he's aware that his clothes feel tight and uncomfortable in a way that's horribly familiar.
She still looks worried. “Has it burned you or something? Do you need to go to—”
“It has done absolutely nothing to me physically,” he says flatly. “All the damage was mental, and I’m used to that. This galaxy is out to get me.”
This doesn’t make Tara any less worried, apparently. “Go see Beckett. Now. I’m not taking any chances with my best scientist, Charlie.”
Unfortunately, she does technically have the authority to do this to him, but she’s never actually used it before. Is Charlie going to be betrayed by every friend he has in Pegasus before the month is out? The determined look in Tara’s eyes says ‘yes’.
“I’m—”
“If you say you’re fine, I’m going to push you the wrong way through an event horizon,” she says flatly. “Go.”
Charlie goes. At least Beckett won’t give him shit for this, given that he has a harrowing amount of knowledge about Charlie’s mental health already, as his primary care provider on the base; he is, however, going to look at him with way too much softness in his eyes, which isn’t quite as bad, but still sucks.
“Charlie Spring,” Dr Beckett says when he enters the infirmary, looking surprised to see him. “You’ve been cleared for duty after PX2-892, haven’t you? Don’t tell me I didnae submit the paperwork for that, because I absolutely did. If Colonel Sheppard’s lost it again—”
“No, it’s… Blue thing. In the lab,” Charlie interrupts him, grimacing. “I’m fine, but Doctor Jones insisted.”
“And she’s right to,” Beckett says immediately. “We take blue things in labs very seriously. Let’s get you checked out, shall we? What are the symptoms?”
Large, warm hands on his shoulders, moving up to his face and neck, clinging with a fierce, fiery desperation. A thigh between his, a sound like distant thunder that will soon be overhead, teeth on his lower lip—
“Nothing physical,” Charlie says, trying to ground himself as he sits down on an examination table by gripping the edge of it so hard his knuckles go white. “It gave me… flashbacks. From our last mission. More vivid ones, I mean.”
Beckett raises his eyebrows. “More vivid?”
“Please don’t ask me what happened on P2X-892,” Charlie says firmly, his ears pink. “Everybody who needs to know already has that information, and you cleared me yourself. The blue thing just… didn’t give me a choice when it came to thinking about it.”
Beckett is now looking at him with way too much understanding. “Ah, I see. One of those missions, aye?”
“Yes.”
Thankfully, the doctor takes pity on him. “Well, we can do a couple of wee scans, but hopefully that’ll all stop now you’re no longer touching it. Better to be safe than sorry though.”
Charlie is actually sorry about a lot of things, a lot of the time – it’s kind of his thing. Sometimes he’s sorry for things he shouldn’t be – like being born (very bad days) – but other times he’s sorry for coming to work on this strange secret project (the days where space vampires try to eat him), and falling in love with a straight man (every day, actually, but also Nick looks like that and he’s secretly a golden retriever, so it’s probably not his fault).
He is, currently, very sorry for touching the blue thing in the lab. Next time, he’ll take the rocks – Tara can have the blue thing. She’ll probably discover the cure for every disease ever, whereas he’s just getting more trauma every time he picks the interesting option. It doesn't really seem fair.
“The scanner says you're fine,” Beckett says with a small smile, after running an Ancient device over him from just about every possible angle while it makes strange humming noises and glows. “You're a bit low on Vitamin D, but I'm sure that's unrelated.”
There's definitely a joke in there somewhere, but Charlie isn't about to be the one to make it. “Great – thank you. So can I go back to work now?”
“No,” Beckett says. “You can go and see Geoff.”
Charlie pulls a face. “I don't need to see Geoff, okay? I'm fine.”
“Doctor's orders,” Beckett insists, because he's determined to make Charlie's weird week even worse, apparently. “I’ll sign you off once you’ve seen him – as long as he agrees. I happen to know he doesn’t have any appointments today, so he’s free as a bird.”
Charlie groans. “Why does the Pegasus galaxy dislike me so much?”
“I’ll let you know when I’ve figured it out for myself,” Beckett says sympathetically, and then shoos him off to see Geoff.
There’s nothing wrong with Geoff, really – he’s very nice. Very understanding. Being a therapist, that’s sort of his job, but every time Charlie goes to see him, it always circles back round to the things he doesn’t want to talk about: how he feels about leaving his family behind, his borderline debilitating feelings for a man who doesn’t love him back, and the fact that he blames himself for both of those things (as well as everything else). Geoff makes him talk about his achievements and says things like, “I know you’re being sarcastic, but that’s actually a really lovely idea,” whenever Charlie’s humour gets a little sharp and self-depracating.
His sessions have been whittled down to monthly, so this feels like a monumental setback.
Still, if he doesn’t get signed off then he won’t be able to rejoin the team, and that seems to be the only way he’s going to get to see Nick again, so it’s kind of a no-brainer.
He knocks on Geoff’s door.
“Come in.” The voice is warm and familiar, and when the door slides open in front of him, he’s met with an equally warm and familiar smile. “Charlie! I wasn’t expecting to see you for another couple of weeks – come in, I just put the kettle on.”
That’s one really good thing about Geoff – he’s also English, and that means he understands the importance of a proper cup of tea. The stuff they have in the mess hall is awful, but Geoff gets his in bulk whenever the Daedalus does a supply run, and he makes Charlie’s cup perfectly every single time.
“Thanks,” Charlie says, taking his usual chair without waiting to be told. When he’d first come here, he’d been seeing Geoff every week; nothing compounds mental health issues like removing every single crutch a person has, which is what happens when you forcibly enlist a specialist and send them to a distant galaxy. Unfortunately, Charlie is a specialist, and he’s been told he’s ‘unsettlingly good’ at picking things up from other fields, which is why he’s in this mess in the first place.
“So,” Geoff says eventually, handing Charlie a mug of tea made in familiar, companionable quiet. “I assume you’re not here of your own volition?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Clearly, I missed you.”
Geoff laughs. “While I would be flattered if that were true, your eyebrows tell a different story.”
Charlie tries very hard not to scowl. “Pretty sure they have a life of their own.”
“Indeed. So – why don’t you tell me why you’re here?”
Charlie stares down at his cup of tea while Geoff gets comfortable on the sofa opposite, then lets out a long, frustrated sigh. “A week ago, something happened on a mission. With… with Nick.” Geoff knows all about Nick, so he simply hums and nods encouragingly. “It was bad. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, but it was… Yeah. Bad. And he’s been avoiding me since then, and then I touched something in the lab that made the flashbacks more vivid for a bit, and Beckett won’t sign me off without your agreement. Basically.”
Geoff hums again, thoughtfully this time. “I see. Charlie, you know everything you say in this room is completely confidential, unless it poses a threat to the security of this base. Which – if you don’t mind me saying so – seems unlikely to be something you’re capable of.”
“I’m sure I could be really threatening if I tried,” Charlie argues pointlessly, and Geoff just smiles and continues.
“I have no doubt. What I’m trying to say is that perhaps talking about what happened on your last mission might help to give me an insight into exactly what’s troubling you? I can’t very well sign you off if I don’t know what the problem is. And I know you said it wasn’t anyone’s fault, but I know you, Charlie – I strongly suspect you’re blaming yourself anyway.”
This is the problem with Geoff – he’s a very good therapist. It’s terrible.
Charlie sighs and looks somewhere over Geoff’s shoulder, face heating. “There was an incident with some pollen.”
Geoff raises his eyebrows in a way that somehow manages to come across as encouraging rather than judgmental. “Pollen?”
“Yeah, it was, um…” Charlie knows his face is already red, but he feels like if he says the words ‘sex’ and ‘pollen’ together, he’s going to actually burst into flames. “Pollen that made you do things you wouldn’t do? Normally?”
“I assume,” Geoff says slowly, “that you’re not referring to a sudden desire to eat something you’re allergic to, or to learn how to swing dance.”
“Nick and I had sex,” Charlie blurts out, then raises his eyes to the ceiling in the hopes that maybe, finally, the aliens he saw in cartoons when he was a kid will come and abduct him so he doesn’t have to sit here with the aftermath of that sentence.
Geoff, thankfully, doesn’t let the silence sit around unaccompanied for long. “So, this pollen on whatever planet you were on lowered your inhibitions—”
“I think it did a bit more than that,” Charlie interrupts him, and is horrified when he realises there’s a lump in his throat. “Nick wouldn’t… He would never have done that. With me. I’m worried that somehow, the pollen reacted to me, specifically. Reacted to… to what I wanted.”
And there it is: the real reason all of this hurts so much. He loves Nick – wants him – and there’s something so desperate and grasping and broken inside Charlie that something on an alien planet latched onto it and made everything one hundred times worse. Because now he’s had something he should never have had in the first place, and he can barely remember it in anything but heated fragments, and Nick’s never going to speak to him again.
“You didn’t agree to this either,” Geoff reminds him gently. “You have a deep admiration and respect for Nick, and vice versa. You didn’t do anything wrong, and this certainly isn’t your fault – and I’m sure Nick would say exactly the same, if you’d spoken to him about it. Which I suspect you haven’t?”
Charlie sets his jaw. “He’s avoiding me.”
“Ah,” Geoff says. “Do you think that, perhaps, he might be struggling with his own feelings of guilt?”
“What?” Charlie says flatly, his mind grinding to a halt. “He hasn’t done anything wrong, why would he feel guilty?”
“Charlie, neither of you did anything wrong, but if you can feel guilty for something that wasn’t your fault, then I assure you other people can too. We’re all human – well, most of us, anyway – and that means we’re fallible. Nick is your commanding officer when you’re in the field, even though you’re not military, and you are his responsibility – when something goes wrong, I suspect he takes it quite hard.”
While Charlie is processing this, there’s a knock at the door. At Geoff’s questioning look, Charlie just nods distractedly – they all have to come here at some time or another, so it’s not like he’s an unusual case or anything – and Geoff calls out for the newcomer to come in.
“Oh,” a familiar voice says, and Charlie snaps his head up to stare at Nick, who’s standing in the open doorway looking confused and slightly distressed. It’s only for a moment though, and when he straightens up with his hands behind his back, his face clears into something more neutral. Charlie wishes he wouldn’t stand like that, actually, because it makes his shoulders look ridiculous and it’s reminding him of things he’s trying to forget. “Sorry – I can come back later.”
“When I’m not here, you mean?” Charlie says bitterly, then bites the inside of his cheek against inflicting any further damage when Nick looks a bit like he’s been kicked in the stomach.
“Um,” Nick says, swallowing and looking away. There’s colour high up on his cheeks and his non-regulation hair is rumpled, like he’s been running his hands through it. Things are a bit more relaxed on Pegasus, and Charlie is embarrassingly glad, because Nick’s hair looks so good like this, all swoopy and touchable and—
Soft hair between his fingers, desperate, broken sounds sending fissures of heat cracking through his body when he pulls just right. Broad shoulders covering him, hot skin beneath his tongue, salt, the jump of muscles—
Charlie stands up abruptly and puts his half-full cup of tea on the coffee table before he can spill it with how much he’s shaking. “I can go.”
“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” Nick says, still looking just about anywhere but at Charlie – it shouldn’t hurt still, but it does.
“You didn’t,” Charlie says flatly. “Doctor Beckett made me come here, it was just a brief visit.”
Suddenly, Nick’s eyes are on him, and this might actually be worse. He looks so intense, and he takes a step forward into the room like he can’t help himself. “Beckett? Charlie, are you okay, did something—”
“Lab, blue thing, all fine now,” Charlie says quickly, because if Nick keeps looking at him like that he’s going to cry or combust. “I’m just… I’m leaving.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Charlie,” Geoff says ominously, given that they do not have a session scheduled, and Charlie makes what he hopes is a noise of acquiescence before fleeing the room without allowing himself another second of gazing into Nick’s concerned, honey-brown eyes.
It never occurs to him to wonder why Nick turned up at Geoff’s door in the first place.
Geoff, perhaps unsurprisingly, schedules a formal appointment with Charlie for the next day. It comes through before he goes to bed, which means he lies there thinking about the whole fucking mess for hours before he finally manages to go to sleep. He is, at least, being seen first thing in the morning, which means it doesn’t matter when he turns up at Geoff’s door again looking like death warmed over.
“I’ll make tea,” Geoff says gravely, beckoning him inside, and Charlie just sort of hums and curls up in the same chair as before, legs tucked up underneath him even though he knows they’ll eventually go dead. It’s a comfort thing. He can deal with pins and needles for a bit.
Once they both have their cups of tea and Geoff has wordlessly handed him a breakfast pastry that Charlie knows he won’t be able to leave here without eating, Geoff clears his throat.
“I am willing to sign you off for active duty,” he begins, and Charlie stares at him, gratitude mingling with quite a lot of confusion.
“Um, okay?”
“On one condition,” Geoff continues, which Charlie probably should’ve expected. “I don’t mind how you do it – though I’d strongly recommend you try it in person – but you need to speak to Nick and clear the air. The two of you are good friends, and you need to be able to work together going forward. I don’t think you want to move teams, and I know Nick would feel the loss of your skills and friendship very keenly – so you need to find a way to move past this, and stop blaming yourself for events that were completely out of your control.”
Charlie blinks at him. “Wait. So, if I don’t speak to him…?”
“Then I’m not signing you off for anything more strenuous than paperwork,” Geoff confirms. “You won’t be going out in the field until I can be absolutely sure that this isn’t going to hit you full on during a mission and put you in danger – as well as the other people on your team. I’m asking you to do this because it’s necessary for your wellbeing, Charlie. Alright?”
Charlie feels utterly betrayed, but that might be because he’s horribly aware that Geoff’s right. As usual.
“Yes. Yeah, I understand. I hate it though.”
“I know you do,” Geoff says reasonably. “Do you want to talk about what you might want to say to him, or can I trust that you’re able to do that without my help?”
Charlie picks at the skin on his left thumb and pulls a face. “I can do it.”
“I know you can. You’re a very strong person, Charlie – and I say that as someone who knows what hardships you’ve overcome in your life, and the work it’s taken for you to be sitting in front of me here today. So, I really do mean that.”
Charlie feels choked up again. “Yeah, I know. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” Geoff checks his watch. “Now, we have another thirty minutes, but you haven’t touched that pastry yet, so I think we both know how the remaining time’s going to go.”
Charlie begrudgingly picks up the plate. “There’d better be chocolate in this.”
“I’m sure I could be accused of many things,” Geoff says as he gets to his feet and goes back over to the kettle, “but I would never dare to deny you your chocolate fix.”
Geoff gives Charlie a week to speak to Nick about what’s going on, otherwise his agreement regarding active duty will be quickly and unrepentantly rescinded.
On day one, he doesn’t even try – he just does his work in the lab, gets the shit scared out of him by Darcy at least twice, and ignores Tara’s concerned glances from the other side of the room. She has his best interests at heart, he knows that, but in this instance there really isn’t anything she can do for him.
On day two, he’s planning on doing much the same, but unfortunately this doesn’t go to plan.
Instead, Charlie quite literally bumps into Nick in the mess hall when he goes there to grab a sandwich, and it almost sends him sprawling to the floor. This is bad for a number of reasons, the first of which is that he doesn’t need any further negative associations with food, thanks, and the second of which becomes apparent mere moments later.
What ultimately stops his rapid downward descent is one of Nick’s strong arms around his waist, but it’s too much contact – way too much contact – and Charlie is hit with a memory so fierce he almost collapses anyway.
The word ‘please’ said with low, aching desperation, the word pressed into his neck with blunt teeth and gasped into his mouth. ‘Please’ over and over again, with mounting urgency, an arm around him, fingers splayed, palm slick with sweat where it finds a home at the base of his spine—
“You okay?” Nick murmurs, and Charlie can’t think, he can’t look at this man, because if he does he’s going to cry or worse. He tears himself out of Nick’s grip and clears his throat, begging his voice not to waver.
“Yeah, fine. Just… sandwich?” God. He’s a mess.
He sees Nick nod out the corner of his eye. “Good. That’s… good. Charlie, can we—”
“Bye, Nick,” Charlie blurts out, ducking around him to peruse the sad selection of sandwiches sitting behind a plastic screen, seeing absolutely none of them, his heart beating double time in his chest. When he finally makes a blind decision and turns around to leave with his random choice, Nick’s already gone; he feels both relieved and deeply, desperately sad.
On day three, he realises he’s running out of time, but he doesn’t know what to do about it. His encounter with Nick yesterday threw him into panic mode, which has only made it more clear to him that Geoff was right – he really can’t live like this. He wants to be out in the field again, laughing and joking with Sai and Otis and Christian, pretending he’s not staring at Nick’s arse when they’re traversing difficult terrain, and doing his actual job, in spite of it all. He’s good at that. He’d like to continue being good at it.
(At his job. He’s good at his job. He’s also good at staring at Nick’s arse, but he’s not sure he could – or should – monetise that.)
So, basically – he needs to do something. Soon.
Which turns out to be completely out of his hands.
On day four, he’s brushing his teeth in the slightly depressed way you do when your entire life is collapsing around your ears, when someone starts knocking pretty insistently at his door. This is mostly just weird because he’d have been paged if there’d been an emergency – or every alarm in Atlantis would have been blaring like the world was about to end – so he’s not sure for a moment that they haven’t got the wrong door. What, does someone need some really specific knowledge about rocks or megafauna? Do they need an equation solving? Is there a trivia morning going on that he doesn’t know about?
The moment he lets the door slide open, he has about five hundred regrets, but the first three are as follows:
- He’s still wearing his pyjamas, which are an old t-shirt and a pair of ratty shorts he got when he was still a – slightly more lanky – teenager, and are therefore somehow both shapeless and way too revealing.
- He hasn’t done anything with his hair, so he probably looks like he’s stuck his fingers in a plug socket.
- Nick is standing in the corridor looking sad, and he’s not in uniform, which means he’s wearing grey joggers and a clinging black t-shirt that make him look approachable and soft, yet somehow also insanely hot. It’s terrible. Charlie doesn’t know where to look.
“Oh,” he says, probably a little breathlessly. “You’re – wait, why are you wet?”
Nick looks down at his damp shirt like he’s seeing it for the first time. “Um. I was just out on the east pier?”
Charlie takes a deep breath and steps back into his quarters, gesturing for Nick to come inside. “There’s a storm warning.”
“Yeah,” Nick says, giving him a weak smile as he steps inside that makes Charlie’s heart flutter pathetically in his chest. “I sort of… forgot.”
“Idiot,” Charlie says sincerely. The door shushes closed behind them and suddenly they’re alone in a room together for the first time since P2X-892. Right… Okay. Now’s probably a really good time to figure things out.
“Charlie—”
“I’m sorry,” Charlie interrupts him quickly, and suddenly it’s like a dam’s broken; the words spill out of him without pause, barely a breath between them. “I didn’t – I know everything’s been really weird since last week, and you’ve been avoiding me, which is… Well, it’s shit, actually. I kind of thought you were better than the marines? But that’s… That’s not the point.”
“Charlie,” Nick says, but Charlie’s in full flow now and he’s not sure he can stop.
“But it was probably my fault, wasn’t it? Because of how I feel about you – and I know it’s made things weird between us and it’s going to absolutely ruin the team dynamic, but was it really that bad? Anyway, I just need to know what I have to do to fix this, because I really don’t want to lose you as a friend—”
“Charlie,” Nick says, louder this time, and there are hands on his face now, tilting his head up with a gentle insistence until Charlie’s forced to look into Nick’s eyes. They look warm and especially gold right now.
“Yeah?”
A split second later, Nick’s kissing him, mouth warm and sure against Charlie’s, and all he can do is steady himself on Nick’s broad, beautiful shoulders and kiss him back. What other choice does he have? What other choice would make sense?
Without the haze of whatever mind-altering substance led to what happened on P2X-892, Charlie hears every hitch in Nick’s breath as he crowds closer, forcing Charlie up onto his tiptoes so that he can keep contact with as much of Nick’s body as possible. He feels the warmth of Nick’s skin through his damp t-shirt and the tightness of his control; he’s being so, so careful, and Charlie loves him so much it makes his knees feel unforgivably weak.
Eventually, Nick pulls away, hands still on either side of Charlie’s face, breathing hard as his eyes flick between Charlie’s.
“So,” Charlie says hoarsely. “It wasn’t that bad.”
Nick smiles crookedly at him. “I think the only bad things were not being able to remember most of it, and not having the opportunity to take you on a date first.”
“A date?” Charlie repeats. He feels like he’s been winded.
“Yeah,” Nick says, frowning suddenly. “I didn’t mean to avoid you, I was just… I had a whole plan, actually? I was going to take you out in one of the jumpers for a picnic on the mainland. In my head you were going to be very impressed by my flying abilities and maybe, if I was lucky, you might let me kiss you.”
Charlie’s heart feels too big for his chest. “And then P2X-892 happened.”
“Yeah,” Nick says with a sigh. One of his hands has moved round to the back of Charlie’s neck and he’s playing with the hair there almost absentmindedly. It should be soothing, but instead Charlie’s body is associating it with other things that he barely remembers. “And I thought it must have been my fault, because I was already so in love with you, and I don’t really know anything about alien pollen? So it could have—”
“What?” Charlie says, fingers suddenly digging into Nick’s shoulders. “You’re – what?”
Nick looks at him like he’s stupid. “I’m in love with you. Wasn’t that obvious?”
“No,” Charlie says emphatically, then kisses him again because Nick is very, very stupid, and maybe he is too. Nick kisses him back for a glorious thirty seconds, before pulling back with a thunderous expression on his face.
“I make sure all your safe foods are ordered on every Daedalus supply run so you don’t run out on bad days,” he says incredulously. “I learned your meal plans off by heart. I remember your sister’s birthday—”
“I just thought you were really nice,” Charlie laughs, unable to help himself.
“Charlie, I’ve never even met Tori,” Nick says, bewildered. “I don’t think I’ve even spoken to her.”
“I thought you were really, really nice, then? Also I’ve been in love with you for months, so I was probably a bit blinkered. I couldn’t really see anything other than what I felt.”
Nick’s smile is slow and completely radiant. “You love me?”
“I’m kind of worried about you watching my six now,” Charlie says with a smile he can’t bite back. “You’re really unobser—”
This kiss lasts significantly longer, and this time Nick isn’t holding back. He has one hand underneath Charlie’s shirt, fingers spread possessively across the small of his back, and the other threaded through Charlie’s curls; it’s like he can’t get close enough. Charlie’s inclined to agree.
However—
“I’m in literally the worst pyjamas I own,” he says, pulling away and trying very hard to get his breathing back under control. “Couldn’t you have done this on a day when I was wearing something… I don’t know. Matching, at least? I feel disgusting compared to you.”
“I mean, I think you look great, but you could… Um. Take them off?” Nick suggests, a blush appearing high on his cheeks. His expression is, however, unrepentant, and it’s making Charlie’s stomach do somersaults.
“I thought you wanted to take me on a picnic?” he points out. “That’s very much not a picnic conversation.”
“There’s a storm warning, remember?” Nick says, still pink. “I don’t think we should go anywhere today anyway. I mean, you obviously don’t have to do that, that was—”
“Nick,” Charlie interrupts him, wrapping his arms around Nick’s neck. “I’d like to remember it all this time.”
Nick’s smile, when it comes, is like sunlight.
“Me too.”