CW: more explicit self-harm, suicidal ideation, references to eating disorders.
xx
He feels utterly stupid a few hours later when Nick finally texts him back. Of course Nick's not going to drop everything he's doing to get back to Charlie every time he sends Nick a message. He's got his own life, and if Charlie isn't pathetic, he'll respect Nick's boundaries and take a damn hint.
He's playing his drum kit when he gets the message. He drops his drumsticks with a clatter as he seizes his phone. Are you doing okay?
Yeah, I'm really fine, thanks for asking :)
You sure?
Charlie's not sure he's fine, of course: he's actually not fine at all. But where does he even begin to explain that to Nick? Charlie hasn't even told his best friends about Ben—can't even bring himself to admit to his own sister the way he feels fuzzy and scared around the boys he gets too attached to, not even when she notices him acting withdrawn and tries to pry. Nobody knows that Charlie can't eat, and nobody knows that he had a boyfriend at all, let alone that he's gone and gotten his heart broken in the space of a short few months.
And just because Nick is here right now doesn't mean that he's prepared for Charlie to saddle him with that burden. Nick's got no idea what forces he's messing with when he goes out of his way to be nice to Charlie. If he had any idea what a sick freak Charlie really is—
Charlie is beyond believing that his patterns of attraction and depression are anything but disordered. He knows that there's something deeply, innately wrong with him, and if he admits that to Nick—if it becomes real outside the confines of Charlie's own mind—
He doesn't answer, not until ten minutes later when he gets a small barrage of additional texts from Nick. If you want to talk about it you can. What I saw seemed pretty serious. I know you know he was my friend but he's definitely not anymore! You don't have to tell me anything if you don't want to but I'll listen if you do. I am your friend and I do care.
And it's just—he knows he shouldn't. He does know that. But Charlie's kept it all bottled up for so long that he—
He starts tapping it out, then deletes it. Does it again. Does it a third time. By the time he's finished his fourth attempt at a message, twenty minutes have passed, and Charlie's finger hovers over the Send button for an age before he squeezes his eyes shut and sucks in a breath and taps it.
Well it started in September. I'd been outed not long before and he told me it was really brave of me to come out and he kissed me. At first I was just happy for the attention you know, like I didn't think anybody would ever want me like that and there he was and I just was weak for it. I didn't tell anybody. You're the only other person who knows. By October I was pretty much completely in love with him but it was always on his terms, we only ever saw each other or made out when he wanted to and whenever we ran into each other he just pretended like he didn't even know me. It's not like I wanted to force him to come out or anything, I know better than anyone what it feels like to be pushed into that before you're ready and I would have given him time, but he never cared about my feelings at all and then I found out he had a girlfriend and I just. Couldn't. I broke things off over Christmas and what you saw was the first time since then that we've talked. The stupidest part is that I still love him, I can't just switch it off as much as I want to, it's been killing me trying not to text him and apologize and beg him to take me back every minute of every day and I hate myself so much for it but I…
The second he sends it, he wishes he could take it back. He stares at the screen, his breath shortening, and his stomach lurches unpleasantly with every second that passes that Nick isn't typing—then again when Nick finally does.
The texts come fast in sequence again. Okay so. Please don't EVER talk to him again! I'm sorry it's so hard still. If you ever feel like you want to text him and can't stop can you promise me you'll text me instead? I won't be weird I promise I just want to help you through this. Also I swear he's not going to be the only boy who ever loves you. Anybody who can see what I see in you could.
Charlie feels like his brain is short-circuiting, like he definitely can't get enough oxygen. He rereads Nick's messages a dozen times, convinced he's read them wrong, that he's imagining everything Nick said. Text me instead. Anybody who can see what I see in you could—he's probably reading it all wrong because there's no way Nick just told Charlie he loves him, not when they've barely known each other two weeks and Charlie is—
It's okay you don't have to say that just to make me feel better. I know I'm nothing special.
Nick's responses arrive immediately. You ARE special Charlie. You're so funny. And sweet. And smart. And you can run really fast and you know more maths than I do even though you're a year below me. And I have no idea why you even hang out with me.
And Charlie—Charlie feels that rush again, stronger than he's ever gotten from Nick, so reminiscent of the way Ben used to make him feel. Are you joking? You're the cool popular one and I have no idea why YOU hang out with ME. If you knew ANYTHING about how messed up I am you'd run the other direction.
How are you messed up though? If you're talking about Ben HE'S the one who screwed up. You didn't do anything wrong.
Charlie is halfway through typing out a long-ass return message when he deletes the whole thing and flings his phone away from him onto the floor. What is he doing? He doesn't even know this boy, and just because Nick is cute and nice and apparently wants to be his friend doesn't mean that Charlie wouldn't ruin everything if he were totally honest with him. He's already said way, way too much. What if Nick tells somebody any of what Charlie's already admitted—what he was about to admit if he hadn't stopped himself?
Thing is, it feels good—better than good—to admit everything he's admitted to someone, especially when that someone is Nick. For Charlie to come clean and be told that he isn't broken, that Nick will still stay, even that Nick wants Charlie to depend on him…
xx
So he does. Depend on Nick, that is. He doesn't reveal everything, doesn't tell Nick that there's something wrong with him and he doesn't know if he's ever even felt real love before—if the things he feels qualify as love—but he does as Nick asks and texts him every time Charlie is tempted to text Ben instead. Within a few weeks, he's texting Nick so much not because he wants to distract himself from Ben, but because he needs Nick all the time. Within a month, he's waking up each day to a good morning :) message from Nick, and they're carrying on conversations via text throughout the backdrop of every day, as if nothing in Charlie's life is real until he tells Nick about it.
It's nothing like what Charlie had with Ben—Ben never gave Charlie all of his time they way that Nick has been doing—and yet it's exactly the same. Worse, even. It makes Charlie feel sort of drunk, drunk and underwater, as if Nick were literally a drug and shooting up with him were giving Charlie some kind of biochemical high. It's getting to the point that he can't lie to himself anymore: Nick is Ben's replacement, and he's starting to attach all the same things to Nick as he used to to Ben.
No, scratch that. He's not just starting to. He already has.
His friends, of course, notice and disapprove. "Charlie," says Tao at lunch one day, slowly and loudly as if Charlie is thick or something, "you can't let yourself fall in love with a straight boy, no matter how hot you think he is. You're setting yourself up to get hurt, and none of us wants to see that."
"I don't like him because he's hot—or I don't like him just because he's hot. Anyway, I'm not in love with him. I've known him for, what, two months?"
He's lying through his teeth, obviously. Two months is more than enough time for Charlie to fall for somebody: it took him less time than that with Ben, and it's taking him—has taken him—less time than that now with Nick.
When he's not busy getting a hit off of talking to Nick, he steps back and looks at what he's doing and just—panics. He promised himself after Ben that he'd never do this again, not with anybody, and now look: he's doing the exact thing he swore not to. What happens when Nick's had enough of him? What happens when Charlie's gay boy crush is too much to tolerate and Nick finds out and their friendship falls apart? What's Charlie going to do to pick up the pieces then?
It's not even about Nick being straight, because Charlie's starting to slowly convince himself that maybe Nick isn't as straight as they both thought. It's about Charlie's feelings for Nick being warped beyond recognition, because when Nick figures that out—
His phone buzzes. Mostly because he doesn't want to see the look on Tao's face if he answered it, Charlie ignores it.
It's not until mid-March that Charlie and Nick actually hang out outside of school. "I'm glad you came," Nick tells him, narrowing his grin onto Charlie as Charlie comes off the porch inside Nick's house. "This seems long overdue."
"It really does," Charlie laughs. "I can't believe I've never seen your house before when you lived ten minutes from me all along."
"I can't believe we haven't been friends for longer. It feels like I've known you forever."
Charlie's glance lingers a little too long, but, then, so does Nick's. To break the moment, Charlie bends down to scratch Nellie's fur and kiss the top of her head. "She's adorable."
"Thanks! Isn't she? Come on, Nellie. Upstairs."
Within minutes—no, seconds—Charlie gets his fix. It's hard to describe the exact way Nick makes him feel. It's kind of like Nick's figure glows orange when Charlie sees him, like everything inside Charlie feels fuzzy and warm. With the despair that had come to grip him every time he saw or thought about Ben near the end of it, Charlie had half forgotten how good it can feel to be in love.
Of course, it's not all good, and that's because, as far as Charlie knows, Nick is straight. Besides, even if he weren't—even if something did happen between them—it wouldn't last, not with Charlie being Charlie, and he's just… counting the days before it all implodes in his face.
They've just finished their sixth round of Mario Kart when it starts really getting him down. Nick can tell: Nick can always tell, even over text. "Hey. Talk to me. Ben stuff?"
Charlie swallows hard. This is Nick: if there's anyone Charlie can be honest with without fear of judgment, it's Nick, isn't it? Then again, Nick doesn't know the extent of Charlie's sickness—thinks Charlie is a normal gay boy who got his heart broken in a normal way. He doesn't know about the rest of it. How can Charlie explain it to him when he can't even put a label on what's wrong with him? Sure, some parts he can label—he's pretty sure he's got anorexia, for one thing—but he doesn't have the words to describe what it's like to be a person who gets addicted to other people. Charlie's never heard of anybody else having that problem, and it makes it feel like he's the only one in the world who's like this.
"No," whispers Charlie. He clears his throat. "Not Ben."
"Then what?"
Nick gently lays his controller down on the mattress, takes Charlie's out of his hands, and lays that one down, too. After he does, his hands go back up to grab Charlie's. "Your hands are freezing, you know."
"It's okay. I'm always cold."
Nick presses Charlie's hands together until they're palm to palm, then starts rubbing Nick's own hands back and forth along the backs of Charlie's. "What are you doing?" asks Charlie with a chuckle.
"There's that laugh I love," says Nick, smiling. "I'm warming you up. Friction's supposed to do that, right?"
He sits there for a long time allowing Nick to rub their hands together. If he closes his eyes, Charlie can almost pretend that this is Nick's way of holding his hands.
"Thanks for putting up with me," Charlie mutters. "You don't have to, you know."
Nick's hands stop moving, lingering there on the outside of Charlie's for a long moment. "I want to," he says. "Actually, scratch that. There's nothing to put up with. I love spending time with you."
I love spending time with you. If you cut out the three words in the middle, it's almost like Nick just said—
xx
The bubble comes crashing down around him when Tao informs him that Nick's got a crush on a girl.
His friends can tell that he's upset by this piece of information, but they think he's, like, normal levels of upset, which obviously he isn't. All Charlie can think is how stupid he's been to allow himself to fall in so deep with Nick when there was never any chance of Nick returning his feelings. Even if Charlie's crush on Nick were normal, he wouldn't return it, but as it stands—
Nick, of course, goes and texts him not even twenty minutes after Tao, Elle, and Isaac all come over. Everything okay? Nick asks, as if it's abnormal for Charlie to go even half an hour without texting him. Of course, frankly, it is abnormal for them not to text for half an hour, not unless one of them is in the middle of taking a test or something.
And Charlie's so, so tempted to spill everything—the way he feels, the way he's not normal—but it's not the time, not with his friends watching his every move and Nick probably head over heels for this Tara Jones character. Yeah all good hanging with my friends talk more in a few hours? he sends back, and he resolutely turns off his phone for the rest of the night.
Only he doesn't turn it back on when his friends leave, at least not right away. He locks himself in the bathroom and turns on the shower, and he sits there naked beside the drain with his razor, making shallow cuts and watching the water wash away streams of blood. He always does it on his inner thigh where nobody will see; he always daydreams about getting up the courage to cut deeper, along his carotid this time, so that he can put a stop to all this, but he already knows he's not going to get up the nerve to do it, at least not tonight. Instead, he goes just deep enough to hurt—just enough to scar—so that he can feel the crusty scabs chafing as he walks the whole next day and feel like he's got control over his body, if not his mind.
He's not doing it to punish himself, not really, even though Charlie knows he deserves punishment. He's doing it to punish Ben—to punish Harry—even a little bit to punish Tao for not understanding him. That last one, of course, isn't really Tao's fault: nobody understands Charlie, not least because he doesn't allow them to. The person who's come the closest is Nick, and Nick—
He sort of wants to punish Nick too, you know, for liking Tara Jones instead of Charlie. But he'll never, ever admit that to Nick, not if he wants to maintain the illusion that he's a halfway decent human being.
Tori bangs on the door, breaking him abruptly out of his thoughts. "Charlie, we all know that you're a teenage boy and you have needs, but some of us really need to change our tampons and shower before bed."
"Shut up," Charlie calls back. "Just—hang on a minute."
Shit: the blood hasn't clotted yet. If he gets out and gets dressed now, he's going to get bloodstains all over his pajama pants.
He pulls himself out from underneath the stream of water and reaches over to ball up some toilet paper and press it against the cuts until they stop bleeding. He can flush it afterward, and nobody will be any the wiser.
It's hard to explain how it works—you know, the punishment. He knows it doesn't quite make sense, that the only person Charlie's really committing any violence against is himself. But it's almost like, this way, he can say, even if only in secret—look what you made me do. Are you bloody pleased with yourself?
Back in his bedroom, he turns his phone back on. It's late—Nick sent a goodnight text ten minutes ago. Charlie sighs.
Hey I'm really sorry I know you're in bed already but are you still awake?
It doesn't take long for Nick to answer. Hey! I'm still up, I didn't think I was gonna hear from you til tomorrow though. How did it go with your friends?
It was fine but I feel kind of
What is it?
Can you come over? Sorry I know it's late.
His finger hovers over the Send button for a full two minutes before he screws up all his courage and taps it. Mercifully, Nick's reply comes right away. I can be there in fifteen minutes. Hang in there okay? Do you want to text while I'm walking over?
Yes please. Sorry.
Charlie what did we say about the S word?
The corners of Charlie's lips turn up. Already, he's starting to feel better—and worse.
Mum and Dad have already gone to bed by the time Nick gets to the house, which is just as well: he's not in the mood to deal with a lecture from them about boundaries. Nick doesn't ring the doorbell, just texts Charlie when he gets to the house; his forehead is knitted with concern as Charlie opens the door. "Talk to me," says Nick.
"In here," Charlie whispers.
They pad as quietly as they can up the stairs and into Charlie's bedroom. Nick wavers in the doorway for a second before making a decision and dropping to the floor, propping his back against the wall. After grabbing a blanket off the bed and draping it around his own shoulders, Charlie toes the door closed and joins him on the ground. Their shoulders brush. Charlie's breath hitches.
Nick looks at him then, and how could Nick have feelings for somebody else when he's looking at Charlie like this? "Do you want to talk about it?"
"I don't know," Charlie mutters, and painstakingly, he tips his head onto Nick's shoulder.
Nick stiffens, but he doesn't shove Charlie away, at least. Charlie has decided that this impulse was a terrible idea and is about to propel himself as far away from Nick as he can get when Nick laces their fingers together and rests his own head on top of Charlie's.
Charlie fidgets, and the cuts on his leg chafe and burn. Suddenly, he feels the most powerful surge of guilt he's felt in a long time, and that is saying something.
"I screwed up."
"What?"
"I screwed up. I cut. I hadn't since January, and then I went and did it tonight."
Thankfully, Nick doesn't move off of Charlie—doesn't look at him at all. "When you say you cut—"
"On my leg. With my razor. I do it there so that nobody will see."
Nick pauses. "Like a self-harm thing?"
Charlie can feel himself blushing dark and prays that Nick can't feel the heat on his shoulder. "Yeah, like a self-harm thing."
"Does anybody else know?"
"No."
"And this has been going on for… for how long?"
"Since the bullying. I wanted to…" But he can't tell Nick he was trying to get revenge, not if he wants Nick not to hate him for it. "I wanted control, and this was the only way I knew how to get it."
Finally, Nick adjusts their positions—but not to push Charlie away. Instead, he tucks his arms snugly around Charlie's shoulders and pulls until Charlie's whole body is slumped against Nick's. With his other hand, he strokes his fingers through Charlie's hair. "Next time, text me before, okay? I don't want… I don't want…"
"Sorry. I know it's not right for me to burden you with this."
"I don't care what's right. I only care about you."
And Charlie—Charlie wishes it were that simple. For a moment, he allows himself to pretend that it is.
xx
A/N: Okay, so I had only had one additional chapter after this one planned, and I've finished writing it, but it doesn't feel like a very good stopping point/like the fic is finished, even though I've covered all the plot points I wanted to hit. So if you have any suggestions of things you'd like to see happen, my ears are open!
