A/N: I got triggered by the innocent love story in the most heartwarming show on the Internet, so I'm dealing with it by projecting all of my crap onto the main character. I should definitely be working on my other borderline AU (Stranger Things) instead of starting a new WIP, but I have no control over what I choose to write, clearly. I feel like I should be apologizing for this fic, but hopefully it can serve as representation for someone 3
At the moment, I'm only planning on writing as far as the first few episodes of the TV series, but like I said, I have no control, so maybe that will change. There will also be some elements from the webcomic in this that haven't yet been introduced in the TV series. (At the time of this writing, only Season 1 of the show has been released.)
CW: self-harm, eating disorders.
xx
He breaks up with Ben in a text message on Christmas Eve.
He's pretty sure the only reason he manages to do it is that they're on break and he hasn't got to deal with the temptation of seeing Ben around school five days a week. It's ironic, really, because the holidays have got Charlie in full-on withdrawal from—was Ben ever really his boyfriend? He doesn't think he was, but it feels like lying to say that Charlie wasn't in a relationship for all of last term. He fell in love, or something like it, anyway. Charlie can't really say if the things he felt for Ben would count to normal people as love, but he can't imagine love feeling like anything but this—the heady rush he got from being around him; the restlessness that would set in with every minute, hour, day a text went unanswered; the way his mind would jump back to Ben, back to Ben, back to Ben, like every moment's respite had to be punished.
He doesn't want to break up with Ben, but this thing between them—it's not sustainable. Ben's got a girlfriend, and he doesn't even care about Charlie, not at all and certainly not enough to put up with Charlie's bullshit for much longer. Charlie doesn't know how he's going to survive even an hour without him, but he thinks about how he's already not really surviving just on stolen minutes between classes to tide him over—how Ben's never going to be willing to give Charlie what Charlie has come to need so badly from him. He needs Ben every second of every day, but if his only options are a few minutes a week during school terms or nothing, he'd rather take nothing. If he takes nothing, at least he'll have to break the addiction; the sooner he ends it, the sooner he'll feel like he can breathe again.
Ben, of course, doesn't react well—slams Charlie with a thousand texts back about how ffs we're not going to get caught and you know nobody but me will ever be willing to put up with you, and you can forget about love, you're unlovable. For his part, Charlie isn't all too concerned about the lifetime of singleness and celibacy he's got to look forward to. He doesn't know if he can call it love in good faith, but whatever it is that he's got for Ben, once he gets past it, he doesn't want to feel it for anybody ever again.
Because it's not good for him. He knows he's not normal with his obsessions and his compulsions and his calorie restriction, but he doesn't need to have ever felt normal to recognize that what he does feel doesn't match anything he's ever seen in his friends or between his parents or on TV. He thinks the worst part of all is when the people writing the TV scripts so clearly don't get how dangerous it is to be addicted to somebody—when his friends romanticize the idea of needing somebody. Take it from someone who actually can't function without a specific other person: it's not pretty, and it's not anything that anybody would ever want if they knew what it was really like.
Only—that's not entirely true, is it? In early days, he liked the way being with Ben made him feel. Before it all went to shit, he—
He knows he still loves Ben. He's not denying that. But the love used to feel good, and it doesn't anymore. Even kissing Ben doesn't give him a rush anymore; it just makes Charlie feel used up and sad, like he's already counting the minutes before he can get Ben back again, like Ben's already walked away like Charlie knows he will just minutes later.
Well, screw it. This time, Charlie will be the one to walk away, and he'll grit his teeth for as long as it takes to survive it.
xx
The last thing Charlie is expecting is to get a crush on his new desk mate in form group in January, but, well. He should have known that "never feeling this way about anybody ever again" would be too much for him to ask.
It's confusing, because it's not like all the shit between him and Ben just goes away immediately. No: there's overlap. He feels like a skeeze and a tramp, even though Ben never loved him and isn't seeing Charlie anymore—even though Nick's obviously straight and nothing between him and Charlie is ever going to happen. Charlie already hates himself for a lot of things—for the heavy feeling he gets in his gut every time he tries to eat, for being an annoying waste of space who doesn't deserve kindness or friendship, for being gay, for being outed, for being bullied—so what's one more thing to add to the list? Turns out that Charlie isn't just addicted: he's disloyal, too. You'd think those two things couldn't coexist, but apparently, they do.
The thing is—the real kicker is—it feels good to be around Nick in a way it hasn't with Ben in a very long time. It feels so good to be around Nick that it makes Charlie feel actually, properly angry. It pisses him off that he feels this way, and it pisses him off that he can't have it, not just because there's no way Nick will ever reciprocate but because… because Charlie isn't allowed. After Ben, Charlie made rules for himself, remember? No more love—no more addiction—no more boyfriends. But Nick—
It's stupid. For one thing, by Wednesday, they've been sitting together for a full hour every day and still haven't said more than "hi" to each other, not in form group and not when they cross paths in the corridors (which seems to be suddenly happening a lot lately). What would they have to tell each other if they wanted to talk, anyway? He doesn't even know why Nick even bothers to greet him so cheerfully at the beginning of form each day, looking at Charlie and smiling like Charlie's the only person in his whole universe. It occurs to Charlie that he's probably nothing special, that Nick probably looks at everybody he says hello to like that—but that doesn't make sense, either, not when Charlie is a rugby lad and everybody knows the rugby lads haven't got any time for anybody but each other and especially not for a nerd like Charlie who's got jacked-up mental health and no social skills.
Whatever the reason, the way Nick looks at him—beaming like Charlie's just made his life complete, sneaking glances at him across their homework throughout the period and smiling—it makes Charlie feel the way Ben used to make him feel: faint and exhilarated, like it's somehow both too much and not enough. He wants more of Nick. He needs all of Nick.
It's Thursday when Nick's exploding fountain pen gives them something to talk about. Charlie's already sitting at their desk when Nick walks up, holds out his blue hands, and asks Charlie if he's got a tissue. "I think you're going to need more than a tissue for that," Charlie chokes out. "Come on—I'll hold the doors open for you on the way to the loo."
"You know," Nick remarks when they've made it out to the corridor and rounded the corner, "I think this is the most I've ever heard you say out loud before. You're not much of a talker, are you, Charlie Spring?"
Shit, Charlie thinks. Nick already thinks Charlie's abnormal without even having heard him say more than a sentence. On one hand, that isn't really such a bad thing: if Charlie weirds Nick out, then there's no risk that Nick will ever give Charlie the time of day, which means there's also no risk that Charlie will ever get attached to him the way he got attached to Ben. On the other, he thinks about the way Nick makes Charlie's stomach bellyflop, and he thinks about giving up that feeling—about Nick never looking at Charlie like he has been ever again—and Charlie wants to cry.
Bloody hell, he tells himself. He's got to pull himself together. This is exactly how it started with Ben, and he's not going to allow that to happen again. He can't. He doesn't think he could survive it.
"Charlie? Are you still with me?"
Nick is looking at him with furrowed eyebrows, and that's when Charlie realizes that he's completely zoned out. They've reached the loo; Nick is leaning against the door, his hands held comically out in front of him so that he doesn't smear ink on his pants.
"Yeah," Charlie mumbles. "Sorry."
"What have you got to be sorry for?"
Everything. "Nothing. I'm sorry. I'm being dumb."
"You're not dumb," says Nick patiently. "Why would you even think that? You're probably the smartest person I know."
"How? You don't even know anything about me."
Nick ducks his head and grins. "I might have asked around a little about you after we got seated together in form."
Charlie sees white. To spare himself from having to answer, he reaches around Nick for the door handle and gently tugs on it, giving Nick a second to get out of the way before opening it properly.
It doesn't mean anything, he tells himself firmly. Nick probably just wanted to know if Charlie acts as weird and antisocial with everybody else as he apparently has been acting with Nick all week. This cannot mean what Charlie wants it to mean, not if he wants to recover—to come out on the other side of whatever crap is happening in his brain these days.
The ink doesn't come off, no matter how hard Nick scrubs or how much soap he lathers on. Charlie tries and fails not to see this as a metaphor.
xx
By the following Wednesday, Nick's hands are white again, but Charlie's got a smiley face the color of Nick's pen ink scribbled on one of his own. He manages to tamp down his fear when he focuses on how much his crush on Nick is helping with his addiction to Ben. When he's obsessing about whether he and Nick are friends and what it means when Nick's face lights up every day in form group, it gives Charlie something to hold onto, even to look forward to.
After all, unlike with Ben, Charlie hasn't made any promises to himself never to see Nick again. He couldn't even if he wanted to, not when they've got to sit next to each other for an hour every weekday. It doesn't matter that Charlie counts the minutes until form because he gets to have it a whole five days a week for the rest of the year. After surviving on scraps of minutes from Ben since September, a whole five hours a week—plus all the times they bump into each other in the corridors—feel like more than Charlie could have ever dreamt of.
Of course, the more Charlie gets, the more he wants. But it's okay. He's known Nick for a week and a half; that's not nearly enough time to fall in love with him.
When Nick asks Charlie to join the rugby team as a reserve, it's all Charlie can do not to jump too eagerly at the opportunity to spend more time with Nick. Nick offers to teach him to play, and that ends up meaning long afternoons on the field watching Nick sweat. The first time Charlie tackles Nick, it's all he can do to pull himself away from him a not-creepy amount of time after they land on the ground, but the more he does it, the easier it is to manage.
The more he falls, the more he forgets.
He starts using it as a little bit of a crutch—okay, maybe a lot of a crutch. He relapsed with cutting over Christmas, you know, because of the Ben thing, and he manages to stop himself he doesn't even know how many times in January just by thinking about Nick's smile, by remembering that he's just got to hold on another few hours before they'll see each other again and Charlie can finally, finally take something he needs.
It disturbs him a little. It's always bothered him so much that Ben was just using him—didn't really care at all about him—but isn't he doing the same thing with Nick, getting greedy for his attention just because of the way it makes Charlie feel? But he dismisses this thought with as much conviction as he can every time it occurs to him. If he didn't care about Nick, then he wouldn't want to spend time with him so badly. If Charlie were just being selfish—well, he is being selfish, but that's not the whole picture, is it? It's more than that. It's Nick's friendliness, his laugh, the way he's patient and kind and smarter than he gives himself credit for.
He's not expecting to hear from Ben basically ever again, not after the way they left things on Christmas Eve, so it seems to come out of nowhere when Ben texts him during rugby asking him to come by the music room to talk after. God damn it, he can't help thinking. He was making so much progress—eating whole meals and going whole minutes without thinking about Ben—and he's sure this is going to relapse with the anorexia, with the cutting, with everything, but he says "fine" anyway because Charlie's under no illusions: he knows he's not the one in control. His depression or addiction or whatever the hell you want to call it is running the show, and Charlie's just—here, underwater, trying to breathe.
All he wants is to breathe, but he can't seem to do it anymore, not without crutches, and Ben is—or at least used to be—one of them.
It's the first time he's seen Ben more than incidentally since before break, and an ache rises up in Charlie's chest before he can help himself. It hurts him more than Ben could ever, ever realize when Ben says the shit he says—because nobody, not even Ben, knows about how sick Charlie's fascination with him really is. He's sure Ben has picked up on bits and pieces of Charlie's desperation, and Ben takes the opportunity to throw them back in Charlie's face today—but when Ben tells him nobody else could ever love him, Charlie just thinks, at least this way nobody will do to him what Ben's managed to accomplish. When Ben kisses him, Charlie wants it as much as he doesn't.
The absolute last thing he's expecting is for Nick Nelson to come to his rescue and drag Ben off of him. "Piss off," he spits at Ben, and Ben does without a backward glance.
Nick turns his entire focus—all his golden retriever energy—onto Charlie. "You all right?"
"Yeah." His voice sounds phlegmmy and weird, so he tries again. "Yeah, I'm all right. How much of that did you hear?"
"Most of it. I'm sorry I followed you, but I'm glad I was here to… to get rid of him, obviously."
"Sorry."
"Charlie, you have nothing to apologize for."
"Right. Sorry."
"Charlie—"
"Why did you follow me?" asks Charlie, too curious to help himself.
Nick allows it. "Something seemed off with you when we were changing in the locker room," he says with a shrug. "I wanted to make sure you were okay."
And Charlie doesn't understand the first thing about what Nick could possibly see in him that makes him want to protect Charlie, of all things. He knows his love is warped, knows it's not supposed to look the way it looks on him, but he feels what he feels, and why does that have to be such a bad thing? Why can't Charlie just have this?
He feels disgusted by Ben—disgusted by himself for ever having feelings for somebody capable of what Ben just tried to do to him—but the warm, blurry, tingly sensation of Nick is almost enough to push it out of Charlie's mind, at least for now. Almost.
He's at the bus stop when he texts Nick a thank-you. Nick doesn't reply, at least not then. When Charlie gets home, he skips dinner to lock himself in the bathroom and cut.
