Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

“I am a domestic animal. I do not sigh and yearn for extravagant displays of passion, for the grand affair. No, what I crave is the simplicity of routine. An evening walk, arm in arm, in fine weather. A game of cards. Time for idle talk. Preparing a meal together.”

— Anita Brookner, ‘Hotel du Lac'

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SIX WEEKS AFTER.

Nick’s first Shabbat certainly is an eventful one.

Charlie and Nick have been dating for five weeks when they finally get around to it, though not for lack of trying. Charlie hasn’t celebrated the Sabbath every week since he was living with his parents because he has manuscripts filled with drivel to edit on Fridays, and Nick has work most Saturday mornings, so doing Shabbat hasn’t been an available choice for them. About once every three or four weeks, he’ll turn off his phone on Friday night, follow (some of) the various rules and customs involved in Shabbat (no electronics (though he does use electricity, where some more devout practisers don’t), he doesn’t use the stove, write, drive, etc.) and sit with the silence for 25 hours. He’ll learn new songs on his drums, or read a book Isaac’s recommended, or—now that Charlie has him—set it up beforehand so he can take the 45 minute walk over to Nick’s and walk Lucy while Nick’s at work, which he’s done the twice he’s celebrated since he and Nick met. It’s nice. He likes it. It’s barely religious for him, despite him following the tenets set out in rabbinic scripture; it’s a break from the miasma of his reality. Comfort. Escape.

He doesn’t often go to Shabbat services or gatherings with his family since becoming independent—too anxiety-provoking to eat like that in front of all those people. Every now and then though, Bubbe will convince him, kvetching that she hasn’t seen him for a while, and he’ll hike up his bootstraps and trek out to Bexley for her. But worshipping alone is better for him; it gives him the personal connection to God he desires. Congregations can be nice — knowing you all have a common love that unites you—but it’s even nicer to sit with himself and be thankful for a day. 

And now that he has Nick in his life and his heart, etched into the lining of his soul, he’d like to share that piece of himself with his boyfriend. 

It was strange at first that after a week of being broken up with, he was suddenly dating someone new, and being asked to be someone’s boyfriend only a week after. He only finds it strange because he knows others would find it suspect—did he even ever like Ben? Shouldn’t he be more broken up about the whole thing? The casual mates he still keeps in contact with from uni were certainly very confused. But after a bit of berating himself over not caring about Ben as much as he should’ve, he gave up on that bitterness towards himself and extended a deep love towards Nick instead.

Because, yeah, Charlie loves him. He really, really does.

It’s only been five weeks since Nick asked him to officialise their relationship, six weeks since they met, but he doesn’t care. When he told Tao about the depth of his feelings, that he’d been in love from the moment they met, he accused Charlie of U-Hauling. Charlie wears that title with pride now. He doesn’t care about so soon too soon. That fear is alleviated by one look into Nick’s warm amber eyes.

He’s in love in ways he’s never experienced before. It’s in how Nick handles the washing up when they eat together, even if he’s the one who cooks, because he knows it’s hard with Charlie's OCD for him to wash dishes that other people have eaten off of, even Nick. It’s in the gentle look Nick has in his eyes when Charlie wakes up in Nick’s bed on the mornings they can find the time for Charlie to come over the night before; Nick’s an early riser but is resistant to leave the bed when Charlie ‘looks so cuddly’. It’s in the way Nick treats him with gentleness but not fragility. It’s in the delicate flush of his cheeks when Charlie calls him ‘neshome’.

It’s a pile of little things that became a hill to trek up that became a mountain too tall to climb. He doesn’t think he’ll ever reach the peak of his love for Nick Nelson. He doesn’t think it’s possible. He doesn’t want it to be possible. 

It’s in the little things—it’s been the little things—but he remembers the moment when the word love became the reality he lives in.

It started as a quiet evening two weeks ago. Nick had been having an off week, beginning to get discouraged about not being able to find work as a teacher, and Charlie was particularly swamped at work that week so he couldn’t be of as much support as he wanted to be. Nick had to work late at Frankie & Benny’s, and his boss, Lydia, was berating him about being ‘distracted’. She doesn’t know Nick has been looking for other work, and Nick can’t tell her for fear of getting fired—Lydia isn’t exactly the greatest superior on Earth. 

A few days prior, Nick had given Charlie a key to his flat. With blushing cheeks and a shy, downcast gaze, he said, so you don’t have to keep ringing me every time you want to spend time with Lucy. Charlie had smiled, taken a step forward to finger at Nick’s fringe and asked, or you? Nick shrugged and mumbled, or me. That moment almost did Charlie in—the slight, bashful upturn of his lips; the way his freckles faded into his ruddy cheeks; the eye contact he made when Charlie finally took his cheek and leaned up on his toes to be at eye level. He had to bite down hard on his bottom lip to keep from shouting his adoration for this wonderful, wonderful man, so he could instead say, why, Mister Nelson, I’m really starting to think you may like me. Nick rolled his eyes, his smile gaining confidence at Charlie’s teasing, and said, oh, really? What gave me away?

Charlie hadn’t yet used the key, but he knew he needed to when Nick texted him on his meal break to say that he’d almost broken down in tears after dropping a plate due to his shaking hands. Charlie closed his laptop, gathered his books, and said goodbye to Tao and Isaac where the two of Charlie's friends were studying and he had brought his work laptop to join them. The tube ride over was arduous—it was stiflingly hot because the ventilation in the carriage was blocked by years of dust, he was sat squished between two very strongly-scented men, and there was a baby crying the entire goddamn ride. And yet, Charlie would do it over and over again every day in hell if it meant Nick would always look at him with the same relief and adoration as he did when he walked in that night to find Charlie sitting on his sofa with Lucy taking up a large portion of his lap and Nick’s favourite takeaway from the Japanese place that’s just a little too far to spend money for the transportation of.

Nick burst into tears almost immediately upon seeing Charlie there. Charlie knew he would cry even harder when he found the unassuming key to Charlie's own flat on his bedside table that Charlie had the person at the hardware store engrave a heart into. Charlie had only laughed softly at Nick's reaction and opened his arms for Nick to come cuddle into. Nick dove as gently as he could without disturbing Lucy (he did, and she let out an excited bark when she realised it was her caretaker (Nick isn’t fond of the term ‘owner’) who came through the door). She jumped on him where he was squished as small as a 6 foot 1 inch, 90 kilo man could be between the arm of the couch and Charlie’s side. Lucy, now on top of both of them, was only adding to the weight on Charlie’s body, and God, there was no place he would’ve rather been.

He kissed Nick tenderly and then pulled back to kiss between his eyebrows, then beneath Nick’s dewy eyelashes, dabbing away the salt with his lips. Nick, full of overwhelmed emotion and brazen devotion, only said in cracks and pieces, thank you, and Charlie realised then that their brokenness is compatible in so many ways. Their sharp edges have never cut one another without an immediate bandage to soothe the skin. They haven’t caused each other to bleed since that evening at Tori’s wedding. Nick’s brokenness only made Charlie love him even more.

And, oh. Right. Love. There it was.

There it is.

It’s been 12 days since that night where Charlie and Nick fell asleep in impossible, painful angles on the couch and woke up with backaches and laughter, love, love, love dancing on Charlie’s tongue. He doesn’t know if he can keep swallowing the word any longer—it’s too massive. 

Which truly is quite mad to him.

He’s never had the problem of not wanting to keep something a secret. Charlie Spring historically loves keeping things in. The issue where he wants to say something—especially something as big as this that he doesn’t know how the other person is going to react to—is entirely foreign. He waited for Ben to say he loved him first—it took seven months, and Charlie felt it before that, but didn’t even conceive a world where he would tell him. It never crossed his mind. For months, he kept it in, and he didn’t mind the burn on the insides of his lungs.

With Nick, it’s different. Vastly so. He doesn’t quite know why. It might have something to do with the way he actually wants to tell Nick things in general. Ben didn’t even know the full extent of Charlie’s mental illness to the point that Nick does despite them having dated for far longer. He saw Charlie’s insecurities and found them… annoying? Bothersome? A hindrance? Charlie will never know, because whenever Charlie found himself brave enough to bring up his fears about it to Ben, Ben would wave them away with a plastic smile. I’m never like that. How could you think that? Why would someone who loves you act like that? Now that Charlie’s finally starting to scratch the surface of their relationship in his sessions with Geoff, he’s come to accept that he was gaslighted. Repeatedly. He knew it while they were breaking up—even used the word, despite Ben's attempt to gaslight him further when he said so—but hearing it come from someone else's lips was difficult. Is difficult.

But Nick’s never treated Charlie that way. Not even in their worst moments. It’s comforting. It’s uncomplicated, Nick’s affection for him, and it colours all of the reasons why Charlie loves him. 

Charlie’s throat is closing on all verbal affections because of all the hiding he’s doing, so he’s gotten more physical with it. Sometimes this leads to sex, but oftentimes, it’s little touches that just make Charlie want to scream because none of it is enough. He’ll lay on top of Nick while they’re lazing on the sofa scrolling on their phones before Charlie heads back to his own flat, or when they go to bed on the nights Charlie stays over; Charlie will try to melt his lips and arms and hands into Nick’s skin and make his scars mould into Nick’s freckles, be as constant and ever-present as any other part of him. He’ll cling to Nick’s side when they go grocery shopping for their stay-in date nights and wish he could merge their bodies so there’d be no room left for air to hide. He will be inside Nick and he’ll wish they could be closer than even that, that he could be buried even further within Nick than just with his fingers and tongue and cock. 

Charlie knows if he said it, the weight would be lifted; if he could find the right words, the right time, the right bravery needed to extend that part of his own feelings, he would feel that boneless relief. Despite how Nick might be the one to wrinkle his nose and say so soon too soon this time, like Charlie tried to do all those weeks ago at the wedding, the wild part of him that's scratching at the walls of his insides to be let free would be tamed. Named love is the thing that Charlie yearns for: to let Nick all the way in. He knows the need for no physical barriers between their bodies—be they distance, time, or simply each other’s clothes, each other’s skin and muscle and bone—would dissipate. Charlie is a lot of things, but he is not unaware of his own desires. He knows what he wants. He’s often afraid to assert it to anyone—though he is trying to break down that boundary every week with Geoff—but that doesn’t negate the fact that he knows what he needs.

And he needs this. He needs to say it.

So when Charlie is FaceTiming Nick on their nightly call before they sleep, Charlie decides that he’s going to. Not on call, but this weekend. On Friday night or Saturday during the day. Because—

“You have off on Friday night, right?”

“I do, and all of Saturday, fucking finally,” Nick groans, hiding his face in Lucy’s fur where he’s spooning her from behind as she takes her before-bed nap on Nick’s bed. Charlie didn’t think he could be jealous of a dog before now, but here he is. “After five weeks in a row. Lydia really hated that I took off the whole weekend for Tori’s wedding.”

“Worth it, though?” Charlie teases, though there is a hint of trepidation in his tone. Nick has been suffering and it’s Charlie’s fault.

Nick can hear it, even through his tinny phone speakers (Charlie keeps bugging him to get an upgrade so Charlie can ‘see your pretty face through all the fucking pixels’, but Nick insists he’s fine with his prehistoric iPhone 8). He levels Charlie with a serious look, eyes wide and imploring as he brings the screen closer to his face so he can see Charlie properly without his glasses (Charlie already begged Nick to put them on. No dice. He says it’s harder to cuddle Lucy with when they’re on, but Charlie is pretty sure it’s because he doesn’t think he looks good in them. Which is insane, because Charlie has never been more turned on while doing absolutely nothing than when Nick sheepishly slips them onto his face after taking out his contacts at night). 

“Of course it was, Char. I’d work every weekend from now ‘til I die, in every universe there is, so long as I always got to go to Tori’s wedding.”

Charlie warms, but then rushes out, “Right. Yeah. Of course. Sorry, sorry,” shaking his head, then cheeks flushing as he catches sight of himself in the picture-in-picture and flips the camera away from himself. “You don’t need my, you know, whatever right now.”

“Shayna, please show yourself to me again,” Nick quietly begs. Then, with a little more confidence, “Or I’ll come round in my jammies and force you to stop hiding.”

“Feh,” Charlie groans, because he knows that Nick actually would despite needing to work tomorrow morning. And because it’s very difficult for him to say no to Nick when he calls him ‘shayna’. Nick never abuses that power—Charlie thinks he must not even know the depth to which it affects him, and he's planning on keeping it that way to minimize possible teasing. He picks the phone back up and sees Nick’s face, kind and endlessly patient, and thinks, yeah, okay, maybe the being seen is worth it because that means Charlie can see him. He makes a cross face into the camera. “Satisfied?”

“Very, very,” Nick says, smiling, but then he sobers a bit. His smile is still present, though. “You know I always need your everything, love, even the hard stuff.”

Charlie flushes a little; it’s only been six weeks, he’s still unused to being treated this way. He’s learning though—Nick’s affections aren’t going anywhere. “You’re just… dealing with a lot right now. You’re having a hard time and I’m making it worse by being all weird.”

“You’re making it better just by being a string of numbers in my phone, a bunch of pixels on my screen, and a patch of home out there I can touch.” Nick sighs, enamoured, like Charlie’s somehow lovely to him, even with his insecurity when it comes to feeling like a burden. Freak. “And yes, I am stressed out right now, but every time I talk to you, I feel better. No matter what we talk about. Every time. Okay?”

Charlie didn’t realise he was smiling until he sees Nick’s own smile softening at the sight of him. He doesn’t try to wipe it off his face. “Okay.”

“Okay,” Nick confirms, nodding his head decisively. “You mentioned this weekend? Did you want to do something?”

“Do you want to do something?” Charlie asks, still unsure at how a man this wonderful could want to hang around him, despite all of Nick’s constant reassurances.

“Of course I want to do something, my love,” Nick responds, patient as ever, like he truly doesn’t mind assuaging Charlie’s worries over and over again. God, Charlie loves him. 

God, he really needs to tell him as much.

“Well, we’ve been talking about it for a while, but I was wondering if you wanted to come round and try something.”

Nick’s face lights up. “Ooh, do you mean the choking thing?”

Charlie blanches. “No, Nick, I don’t mean the choking thing.” Charlie tries to stifle his laughter. Nick hides his face in Lucy’s pelt once again and dissolves into hysterics with his face pressed into her back. “Stop getting randy, it’s half 10 at night.” He sighs, thinking about the customs involved in what he wants to propose and admits in a mumble, “Well, it’s not like it’d be disallowed, but…”

“Shayna, just tell me,” Nick laughs, shaking his head. He rests his cheek on the side of Lucy’s head, looking at Charlie adoringly, despite his teasing. Colour rises to Charlie’s own cheeks once again. “What do you want me over for where you choking me sexually is not disallowed?”

“Do you want to spend Shabbat with me?” Charlie asks in a rush, all of it slurring together.

Nick sits there for a moment, mouthing to himself and trying to untangle the mess of words Charlie dropped. When he finally does, his expression brightens immediately. “You want me to come over for Shabbat?”

Charlie sighs harshly, “Yes, Nick, I just said that.”

“Okay, in my defence, you barely said that,” he chuckles. “It was more of a speed run of a sentence—”

“Well, it’s just that I haven’t celebrated in a few weeks,” Charlie interrupts manically, not hearing what Nick had said, “since the two weeks after the wedding because I always do after seeing Bubbe—it’s like she can smell it on me or something—but I’ve been so busy with work since I've had to pick up extra weekend shifts to get all the things done I wasn't able to with planning the wedding, and you know I like to every now and then, even just for myself, and I thought it matched up well with our schedules because I finally got that damn short story edited, but if you think it will be boring, or you have other plans, or you want to do something else, or if you simply don’t want to, then—”

“Ziskayt,” Nick hushes gently. Charlie’s mouth clicks shut and he finally looks back at Nick where he’d been avoiding looking anywhere but the screen. He looks fond. “Yes. Yes, I very much want to spend Shabbat with you.”

“Oh,” Charlie breathes. He smiles slowly, his pleasure testing the waters. “Really?”

“Really, really,” Nick confirms. Charlie's smile widens to a degree it hasn’t reached in quite a while—not since the time Nick kissed him in front of the cashier on their first real, official, both-of-them-know-it’s-one date. He hadn’t known Nick was okay with public displays of quiet affection like that. It was just a chaste peck on the corner of his mouth, but it made Charlie feel deracinated. Ben wasn’t big on using touch to show affection in public—or, really, in general, outside of sex. He was more of a gifts type of guy; it sometimes felt like Ben was buying him off, but he never said that aloud. Nick will touch him quite often—calling him his pet names for Charlie in a full voice, even the English ones; insist he’s paying at the front counter because you need to let me pay for the first date considering you took me on our first, in your words, ‘fake date’. It’s a feeling of comfort, that Nick isn’t embarrassed of him like Ben made him feel. 

This was another moment of that—Nick liking Charlie enough to like him the way he needs, and Charlie liking Nick enough to be honest about how he feels. He does so by burrowing into Nick’s side and clutching onto his waist as Nick settled their bill. By calling Nick darling and angel in return. By gushing to Tao and Elle about how wonderful their first ‘real’ date was. By loving Nick in plain sight. 

Not every moment with them is the assumed, bone-deep knowledge borne from bashert. Sometimes, they do need to talk, much to Charlie’s chagrin. Once, about how Charlie needs a lot of communication during sex, especially when he's bottoming, to be told explicitly what is going to go where. Another time, when Nick admitted he wanted their friendship groups to meld and Charlie being unused to being with someone who wanted their lives to weave together in that way. Neither of them having enough confidence to admit that they need physical touch in public to remind themselves that what they have is real. But they never became spats because Nick and Charlie both are very willing to compromise to make what they have work. Neither of them have any interest in letting this ‘soulmate shit’ drift away due to lack of conversation about the important things.

Plus, it made their relationship that much stronger. Their sex has been even better than the explosively-good it had been since that first night, Nick’s friends intertwined with Charlie’s perfectly, and they hold hands when they go out which makes them both feel so much more secure. It’s those and a thousand other small things that pile taller and taller until Charlie’s not so sure he can see the ground anymore. They are the mountain too tall to climb.

They trust each other enough to be honest. 

So, bearing that in mind, Charlie hedges, “Are you sure it won’t be too much stress?”

Nick’s smile warms, and he shakes his head. “It’ll be a welcome reprieve. And I'd tell you if it wouldn't be. Promise, my love.”

“Okay,” Charlie smiles back, still a bit bashful whenever Nick uses that term. He wonders if that feeling will ever go away. He hopes not. He wonders if Nick means it the way that Charlie wants him to, that Charlie is really his love. He doubts it, but hope still springs eternal. “It’s a little boring though. You know, without your phone or anything. Lots of, um, eating and sitting around.”

Nick tilts his head fondly, half of his face obscured by Lucy’s black fur, and says, “Nothing is boring when I’m with you.”

Nick comes over Friday at 1 o’clock with Lucy underfoot and two bouquets of flowers (due to reading that part of the prep for Shabbat is ‘beautifying the home’. Charlie doesn’t feel it’d be polite to tell him the de Costa-Springs have never taken part in that particularly tenet considering how nice it is that Nick brought Charlie flowers at all). He’s over so early before sundown, when the Sabbath begins, because he wants to make the food involved in a Shabbat dinner. All of it. Not just some of it. All four courses of it. And more than enough for all three Shabbat meals. Charlie is going to be living off the leftovers for weeks.

Nick even wanted to get gefilte fish. Charlie quickly put a stop to that. Fuck gefilte fish, in his personal opinion. He’s even admitted his hatred of it to Bubbe, that’s how serious he is about his dislike of it. Nick pouted when Charlie told him that at shops yesterday afternoon when Nick went to put it in the trolley. He said he wanted to try it. Charlie said he wasn't taking part in hurting him like that. 

One day, Nick promised.

Sure, Charlie mollified, climbing up on the trolley’s lowest rung, bobbing up and down as he went up on it, then hopping back down on the ground. He’d been able to due to how weighed down the basket was with food that Nick insisted upon paying for because Charlie will be ‘opening his home to him’. Charlie pointed out that they’re dating, of course he’s opened his home to him. Nick has a goddamn key to said home. Nick just shrugged. Charlie told him sarcastically, okay, baby, one day when you’re not with me at a Jewish gathering, you can eat gefilte fish.

You say that like it’s not an inevitability at this point, Nick said, face lowered so he looked up through his lashes at Charlie where he was now frozen up on the trolley in mid-air.

Is it? Charlie squeaked, then winced at the mouse-like quality his voice took on. Nick just smiled at him, half-teasing, half-serious, and kept walking, leaving Charlie where he was half-inside the trolley to race after him, pestering an uncharacteristically-silent Nick about his vague statement.

It’s now been almost four hours of non-stop cooking. With London in the summer and the added detriment of having the stove on for that long, Charlie is hot. Every fan in the house is pointed at the simmering kitchen, all the windows wide open, and he’s still sweating buckets even after putting his hair up in a little ponytail and getting the rest of his curls out of his face with the headband he usually saves for bedtime. Despite all of this, Charlie is still to the point of wanting to strip down to his pants. He knows Nick wouldn’t mind that, but cooking without clothes on sounds deeply unsanitary, so he doesn’t. Maybe when they’re finished. 

Nick doesn’t seem to share that same concern though, because he took off his sweat-soaked shirt an hour in. Charlie teased him about it mercilessly, cat-calling and wolf-whistling in the comfort of his own kitchen. Lucy, who’d been begging since they started chopping vegetables hours ago, let out a little woof! at the whistle, which made them both laugh. Nick’s was more abashed than Charlie’s, whining at him, it’s hot, Charlie, to which Charlie called out, yeah, you are! Nick rolled his eyes and re-tied the apron he brought over himself, horrified that Charlie admitted to not owning one, that reads, schmutz happens. Charlie saw it in the beginning of the day, gave Nick a look, and asked, am I fucking holding you hostage? How are you this into me that you bought an apron for the occasion of cooking us Shabbat dinner?  

Nick busied himself with prepping the yeast to be dissolved for the challah with cheeks so suspiciously red that it couldn’t possibly be completely blamed on the heat, and said, how do you know I didn’t already have it?  

Charlie laughed and drawled, you’re right, baby, I don’t know that. Just like I don’t know all about the pet name flashcards that you poured over long into the night before the wedding, furiously Googling, because you definitely knew all that Yiddish beforehand. Nick gasped and swore to ‘kill those traitorous so-called friends’ of his.

Charlie soon forgot to care about teasing Nick though because he began kneading the dough, and watching Nick's strong arms flex and his barrel chest tighten and his sure hands work over the bread was enough to distract Charlie from his teasing. If Charlie floated over and found every excuse to touch his arms and chest while they spoke for the ten minutes it took Nick to knead it and giggled a little too much for someone who has been dating the person for weeks at that point, that’s Charlie's business. And if Nick smirked and leaned into Charlie’s touch every time, that was simply proof that Charlie did nothing wrong in the first place.

The intense flirting-to-the-point-of-foreplay has fallen by the wayside now though in favour of Charlie needing to leave his perch where Nick had delegated him to ‘sit on the countertop and look pretty while giving me tips’ (“Aw, just the tip?” “Charlie.”). The situation has escalated to ‘okay, this man needs help, like, right now’. The challah-making went perfectly, and both loaves came out looking browned just right. Nick admitted, after Charlie wheedled it out of him, that he practised a lot beforehand and gave the bad-but-not-inedible ones to Tara and Darcy to eat because he thought they wouldn’t know any better. Apparently, Tara ate some politely but Darcy took one bite, spit it out, and demanded, you treat us this way? On the eve of our engagement? Nick said he responded, Darcy, you guys got engaged two weeks ago. Charlie could virtually hear the eye roll in Nick’s retelling.

The seemingly-very-edible challah went to the table Charlie set earlier in the day—before Nick started realising he bit off way more than he could chew—with the standard napkin over them. This was pre-The-Great-Mistake, because right now, Nick is absolutely failing at making the horseradish sauce.

“It was supposed to be finished yesterday!” Nick’s been shrieking. “How could I have made that mistake!”

“Darling, it’s really alright,” Charlie keeps placating, trying to stifle laughter. “We have the challah, you did so well on that.”

“Yeah, but the orange-glazed salmon won’t be as good without the horseradish! How did I mix up the liquid sugar and water measurements? A cup of liquid sugar? Use your head, Nelson!”

“Baby,” Charlie says, finally laughing. Teasing him, but also ensuring that Nick knows how much he means it, he turns Nick away from where he’s trying to salvage The Great Mistake by scooping out the parts he hadn’t yet mixed in entirely. It’s so endearing to a) see a grown man hunched over a counter with his tongue peeking out from the corner of his mouth as he carefully attempts to spoon out liquid sugar out of a bowl, and b) see a grown man get this out-of-sorts about horseradish sauce. It’s yet another action that proves how much Nick cares for Charlie—trying to make him a meal he’ll feel comfortable eating that also aligns with a classic Shabbat supper.

Charlie is so deeply in love with him, it makes him a little nauseous.

He could say it now. He’s got Nick’s cheeks in his palms as he works him away from the bowl. He’s got Nick’s skin on his own, sticky with lemon juice. He’s got Nick’s eyes on him, sad and suspiciously damp, like he’s close to tears. O, mayn zis mentsh, Charlie thinks with what he knows is a very wet, soppy expression on his face. He feels like the love he has for Nick can not only be seen by Vega up high in the sky, but Nick himself. He doesn’t try to tamp it down. He doesn’t care.

He opens his mouth. “I—”

He stops because when Nick looks up at him when Charlie begins to speak, he looks so sad. Not right now, he realises. Not now. But later. Later tonight or tomorrow, he’ll find the perfect time, the world-shifting, life-altering time, and he’ll say it. It has to be perfect. Right now wouldn’t be perfect.

Instead, Charlie says, “I’m so impressed by everything you’ve done today, Nick.” His smile turns teasing. “I’m so proud of you for doing what you’ve done to my kitchen.” Nick scoffs and rolls his eyes, and Charlie’s teasing drops into something heart-wrenchingly sincere. “Thank you for caring enough about me to do this. The salmon is almost done. We don’t need horseradish sauce for it. I will like it just fine how it is and so will you. I swear, Nick Nelson, you’re gonna eat this meal and you’re gonna fuckin' plotz.”  

He speaks the Yiddish with as much vigour as he can muster, just to make Nick smile. It works; Charlie feels the lines on Nick’s cheeks deepen beneath his hands, sees the crows feet Charlie loves so much appear beside his right eye. He thumbs at them, watching the crevices deepen even further the harder Nick smiles. Nick stands up straight, half-abandoning the bowl of failed horseradish. 

“Yeah?” Nick asks, a little unsure. 

Charlie adjusts one hand so it’s resting on Nick’s bare shoulder, using the leverage to rock up on his socked feet and press a soft kiss to Nick’s mouth. Charlie feels Nick’s shoulder relax a little beneath him as Nick leans into it. He hasn’t taken his hands from the bowl, but one thing at a time. They kiss for a while, gently and unhurriedly, until Charlie smiles against Nick’s mouth as he feels one arm wrap around his waist.

He pulls away and presses light kisses all over Nick’s face, and Charlie feels Nick’s smile grow beneath his lips. He pulls back when he’s satisfied, mouth tasting like lemon and sugar and everything Charlie’s ever wanted. “Nick, you could make me organic toothpaste for dinner and I’d still take a second helping.” It feels like an act of bravery to even say it—the disordered thoughts don’t even come out to darken the statement. It feels like an act of devotion.

I love you, he wants to say. He does not.

Nick must sense it’s something big to say it because his eyes soften until his eyes are liquid, swimming with adoration. He tips his head into Charlie’s hand and twists so he can kiss Charlie’s palm. “Okay.”

“Good.” Charlie rocks back down to his heels. “Now, we have—” Charlie brings Nick’s other hand from where he’s dropped the spoon into the bowl—a win—and checks Nick’s watch, “—approximately 20 minutes until I put the kibosh on cooking so we can clean before sundown. What would you like to do with those 20 minutes?”

“Well…” Nick kisses Charlie’s cheek before he pulls out of his orbit and takes the lid off the soup pot. Why Nick made matzo ball soup when it’s hot as the devil’s arsecrack outside, Charlie will never know. The steam rolls out of the pot and into Nick’s face, but he doesn’t even react—likely because he’s not wearing a shirt. Charlie’s jealousy is drowned by the enjoyment of seeing Nick’s back muscles at work as he spears a carrot. He turns to Charlie with it proffered, blowing on it. “Try this and see if the veggies are cooked enough.”

Charlie takes over blowing and watches little droplets of hot broth hit Nick’s cupped hand, trying to catch the liquid before it hits the ground. He doesn’t react to that either, too focused on what Charlie has to say about his soup. Charlie leans in close and takes a nibble out of the carrot. He smiles. “Perfect. Leave it for the rest of the 20 minutes with the lid on and put the burner on low.”

“Yes, sir,” Nick says, popping the rest of the carrot in his mouth with a wink. Charlie squirms—God, he still doesn’t even like that, why in God’s name is Nick still teasing him like he does?  

“Dick,” Charlie mutters. 

Nick flips back and shoots a charming grin at him before going back to tasting the horseradish. He puts the smallest bit on the fork he used for the carrot. The second it hits his mouth, he makes the most disgusted face Charlie has ever seen, not just on Nick but in general.

“Not good?” Charlie laughs.

“Horseradish is bad to me even with something else to mask it, but this… this is…” He gags and runs his mouth under the faucet to gargle water while Charlie continues to laugh at his expense. “Lucy can’t even eat it, what am I gonna do with it?”

“The bin is right beside you, baby,” Charlie teases, pointing at it. 

Nick turns to glare at him, mouth still pinched in sour distaste. “Even after that, I’m still not going to make you try it because I like you far too much to hurt you like that.”

“And I you with the fucking gefilte fish,” Charlie glares back.

Nick shakes his head, expression clearing to something smug. “One day, I’m gonna have gefilte fish and I’m gonna love it.”

“You’re not,” Charlie insists. “I know your palate. You’re not going to like it. This is a hill you shouldn’t want to die on.”

“Hey, we can like different things,” Nick sniffs.

“We can,” Charlie agrees, then shakes his head gravely, “but not with this.”

“I guess I’m just more Jewish than you are,” Nick shrugs with a laugh hidden in his voice. 

“Oh, I’m gonna make you regret saying that, goy.” Charlie points in his face, eyes narrowed. Nick just tips his head innocently, like he’s done nothing wrong. Dick. Such a dick. But then Nick shocks Charlie as he nips at his proffered index finger and they dissolve into laughter. 

They go back to cooking—Charlie is now allowed to help because Nick has finally admitted he needs it—and they are carefully brushing the glaze on the salmon when the stove goes off alerting them that the London Broil is ready to fork test. They take it out and close the oven door on the garlic that’s still roasting. The meat thermometer says the beef cooked at nearly the exact temperature it should be, only a bit under, and when they test it, the fork goes through like butter. Charlie claps and bounces on his toes, but Nick doesn’t look as pleased.

“It could be undercooked,” Nick points out. 

“Yes, but undercooked steak is far tastier and easier to deal with than overcooked steak,” Charlie smiles, nudging him. He grabs the carving knife and hands it to Nick, handle first. “Would you like to do the honours, chef?”

Nick sighs and begrudgingly takes the knife, slicing through the steak slowly, wincing the whole time, like it’s going to reach out and cut him. The slice looks amazing—perfectly braised on the outside and the centre is a mild pink. Charlie squeals and does a dance as Nick starts to cut into the rest of it. “Noooo, celebrate with me, Nick! You cooked a perfect steak!”

“I still have to deal with pouring on the shallot and mushroom sauce. And the roasted garlic likely isn’t done. Plus I still have the microwave the ratatouille and—”

“Nick!” Charlie cuts in, still jumping, uncaring about his downstairs neighbour, Stewy, who has had many a loud party in his day and can deal with Charlie being a bad neighbour for five minutes while he dances with his boyfriend. “Celebrate, please!”

“Well, because you asked so nicely,” Nick concedes, dropping the knife to the cutting board beside the pan and letting Charlie pull him into a tight hug.

“You did it, angel, I’m so, so proud,” Charlie says, words muffled as he presses kiss after kiss into Nick’s neck. He can feel the vibrations of Nick’s joyful laughter on his lips. “You really thought it wasn’t going to be any good, but it is. You’re the best, the best, the very, very best.”

“Oh, stop,” Nick giggles shyly, wrapping his arms around Charlie’s back and hoisting him up on the counter.

Charlie gets a good look at Nick who’s pink-cheeked and looking very kissable, so he asks, “Would you like a well-done kiss?” 

“Um, yes?” Nick laughs disbelievingly, palming the insides of Charlie’s thighs and spreading them so he can fit between them. “Is that even a question? I want any type of kiss from you all the time.”

“I know you do, baby,” Charlie drawls, drawing it out and darkening the colour in Nick’s cheeks even further. But he takes pity on Nick and presses their mouths together in a desperate sort of kiss. 

Nick’s clearly feeling pent up, so Charlie leans back against the cabinets and lets himself be kissed for all he’s worth. Because Charlie isn’t going to be seeing anyone but Nick all weekend, he allows Nick to mark his neck when he looks up at him with pleading eyes, bent over the counter to get to Charlie. He acts like it’s a huge chore when he agrees, but Nick knows better and kisses up and down his neck slowly, nipping and sucking at the skin until Charlie’s panting and clutching hard at the string of the apron, totally untied and only being held up by Charlie’s hand. Eventually, Nick pulls back to assess his work, and when he looks back up at Charlie’s face, his eyes are dark and endless.

He looks like he’s about to start begging, and Charlie feels something shaky rip through his body. “Later,” he promises, pressing a searing kiss to Nick’s mouth, the vow of it crackling between them. 

He reties Nick’s apron, slips off the counter and adjusts himself. Nick watches him closely, like he can think of nothing else but ravaging Charlie, and while Charlie would like that, he keeps Nick on track by saying, “Come on. Put the ratatouille in the microwave while I pour the sauce.”

Nick shakes himself off and forcibly tears his eyes away from Charlie’s tented shorts. “Other way around, please,” he says, voice still gravelly and thick with arousal. Charlie shivers at the sound of it and refuses to turn his back to see whatever gorgeous expression he has on his face—they don’t have time for that.

“You’re so bossy in the kitchen,” Charlie chuckles, relenting as he walks over to the fridge and pulls out the dish.

“Well, you’re bossy in bed—and most other places—so I have to make sure I get a little power somewhere.”

“Please, as if you don’t love it,” Charlie dismisses, eyelids fluttering as he discretely presses his crotch into the counter when he makes it to the microwave to find some relief. He makes sure Nick doesn't see it—it’s not like he was wrong in that Charlie likes a lot of the control in that area.

“I never said I didn’t,” Nick says, squeezing Charlie’s arse as he passes him by. 

“Hey!” Charlie squeaks, spinning around. “Handsy! I could’ve dropped the whole dish, and then what would you have done?”

“Cried, probably,” Nick admits. It makes them both laugh, the tension between them dissipating in a moment. “Come on, it goes in for three minutes.”

They finish up the last of the cooking and start cleaning up. Cleaning with Nick is easier, he finds, than cleaning with anyone else, because Nick lets himself be bossed around by Charlie easily and happily (Charlie can admit that Nick was right when he called Charlie demanding in most areas, when he feels comfortable enough with someone to let himself be). Because of this, it takes half the time it would’ve with anyone else, and soon, Charlie’s kitchen is back to its original, shining splendour. 

He looks upon his glorious sovereign with his hands on his hips and a proud smile. Nick comes up behind him and brushes the curls that don’t reach to the hair tie up off the back of his sweaty neck and presses a light kiss there. Charlie sighs, smiling softly. Butterflies line in his stomach at the gentle affection.

“Do you need another hair tie, love? There’s one on the coffee table.”

His smile fades to a frown at the idea of the state of his hair. He holds up his wrist, a hair tie wrapped around it, and sighs, “They never stay for too long. My hair’s too short to fit in them properly.”

Nick gathers the hair there in a small ponytail with his fingers and then lets it go as his hands settle on Charlie’s waist. “Even a few?”

Charlie turns back to Nick with a sour expression. “You really want to see me with three hair ties in like horns on my head and this hilariously ugly headband?”

He’s felt a little unsexy all day because of the heat and the way he must look due to it (they can’t all be Nick who apparently shines like a fucking Abercrombie model when he overheats). But Nick shakes his head and pulls him in close, hands travelling to the small of Charlie’s back, the place they always go when he wants something sexual but won’t ask for it. Charlie’s stomach swoops as he crosses his arms behind Nick's neck, where his own go when Nick touches him there. Even like this? He wants to ask. Even when I hate how I look?

“You are sexy any time and all the time,” Nick says, answering Charlie’s thoughts for not the first nor the last time, voice low, a gift just for Charlie. “Not just to me, but in general.”

Charlie swallows. “I…” 

I love you, he wants to say. He does not.

Instead, he says, “I wouldn’t mind if it was just to you. I don’t care about being sexy to anyone else.”

Nick smiles, then presses a long, soft kiss to the hinge of Charlie’s jaw. He drags his lips over the still-sensitive skin of Charlie’s throat, bruising from Nick’s insistent mouth from before. Charlie closes his eyes and lolls his head back, arms sliding down to curl around Nick’s mid-back so his shoulders aren’t scrunched up and Nick can continue unimpeded. He kisses slowly back up Charlie’s neck and his arms tighten around Charlie’s hips as he presses a kiss to the space behind Charlie’s ear that makes his legs shake. He could sense Charlie’s weakness before it came though, holding him up as he wobbles. He sucks Charlie’s earlobe into his mouth and lets his teeth drag against it. Charlie lets out a choked gasp, then releases it as a needy whine.

“Nick,” he whispers, begging for something unknown, some sort of allowance to release of the words he cannot express.

“I worship you, Charlie Spring,” Nick says, voice thick once more, like this gets him off too—like Charlie gets him off, always, “whether you think I do or not.”  

Charlie pulls back and looks up at him. Nick’s gaze is soft but unfocused, his cheeks ruddy and his red mouth wet and parted. He looks the part of a man affected. Charlie knows he looks more of the same, despite his headband and sweaty skin and sweat stains and everything else that Charlie has always finds—and will likely always find—unappealing in himself. Nick looks at it all and sees heaven. 

I love you, he wants to say. He does not.

Instead, Lucy whines at their feet. They startle a bit and peer down to her big, wide, wet eyes, looking like a puppy again, as she always does when she wants food. Charlie laughs a little, low and chastened as he leans down and out of Nick’s space to pet at the soft hairs between her ears. “C’mon, Luce, you want some steak? I’m sure your daddy won’t mind, will he?”

They both look up at Nick with twin imploring gazes, large, begging eyes, and Charlie watches Nick’s already-weak resolve break. “But she’ll get so much after supper," Nick hedges. "And she’ll never leave us alone during the kiddush.”

“She’ll be good,” says Charlie decisively, full-well knowing she won't be. He looks back to pet Lucy’s back, hard the way she likes. She arches into it and her tail wagging gets intense enough that it beats against the wooden cabinet beside her, like Charlie and Nick’s shared heartbeat. “You’ll be good, won’t you, Luceleh? I trust you, zissa kop.”

He looks up at Nick and sees the expression he adopts whenever Charlie is sweet with his dog. The look he has when Charlie knows he’s thinking about kids. It’s the same one he gets when he sees parents with their children at the dog park he takes Lucy to twice a week—the Vega Look, Charlie calls it in secret.

Whenever it’s pointed to him, even indirectly, Charlie feels woozy and full-up all at once. 

He looks up at Nick with his very own Vega Look. He knows the words he covets are as plain as day on his face. He doesn’t care. If Nick knows it before Charlie tells him, all the better. He wants Nick to know. Nick deserves to know exactly how treasured and adored he is. 

I love you, he wants to say. He does not.

Instead, he says, “Come on, you two,” shepherding them out of the kitchen, Lucy with a hand on her head, the other at the small of Nick’s back, “it’s almost time for sundown.”

They do what needs to be done for l’kavod Shabbat: they light the candles 18 minutes before sundown; at sundown exactly, they turn their phones off together and set them in Charlie’s nightstand; Nick puts on his nice blouse he brought because, in his words, he doesn't want God to think he's ‘taking it lightly’—which is adorable and a little sad because Charlie will miss Nick's bare chest greatly; they forgo singing the songs customary at Shabbat because Charlie doesn’t want to do that to themselves, though he does spin a Leonard Cohen record despite use of any electronics being very technically forbidden. It’s not a screen, Charlie reasons with himself every Shabbat, and if I only play Jewish musicians, that makes it okay.

Nick tells him Shabbat Shalom with a kiss to the forehead before they sit at the table and the words on Nick’s tongue make Charlie a little weak-kneed. 

They do the kiddush over their wine (complete with Lucy indeed whining the entire time). Nick does not read off of the paper he printed for himself with the transliterations, just watches Charlie’s mouth move around the Hebrew. When Charlie looks up from the wine in the middle and sees Nick watching him instead of reading along, he simply rolls his eyes with a smirk and keeps reciting. Nick doesn’t have the decency to look ashamed either. Slag, Charlie thinks affectionately, which pairs nicely with the words he’s saying: God blessed the seventh day and called it holy.

He never said he wasn’t above being sacrilegious in the name of love.

When they finish the blessing, Charlie tells Nick, “I usually pick and choose what I want to practise each Shabbat, with being both Ashkie and Sephardic, so this isn’t an Ashkenazi ritual, but Sephardim like to read from Song of Songs after the Blessing.”

“Okay! Let’s do that,” Nick says, eager as ever, and Charlie laughs.

“You clearly don’t know much about Song of Songs. Sit with me.”

The Song of Songs is a story about the love between a husband and a wife. It is also somewhat sexual if read the right way—and by somewhat, he means very. 'Theo-eroticism' is what some scholars have described it as. But it’s also simply, in Charlie’s literary opinion, some of the best love poetry he’s ever heard. Tori thought Song of Songs was too mushy to be read at her own wedding, but Charlie himself has never considered himself to be above mushy either. He not-so-secretly loves Song of Songs, but he’s never read it with a lover. 

So, when Nick and Charlie move to sit on the floor with a candle lit between them and Charlie starts reading in English, how right they are to adore you, it feels a little close to home. He can’t help looking up every now and then to see if Nick is enjoying the story. He’s engrossed, watching Charlie’s mouth once again, like he wants to kiss the love pouring off of his tongue. 

He has Nick read the third Canticle just to hear him slowly say the words, dragging them out like he's tasting them, by night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth. Charlie might never hear the word love come out of Nick’s mouth addressed to him, so he is taking what he can get. Nick looks so honoured to be allowed to recite part of the story, almost in tears again. God, Charlie loves this immensely, intensely sensitive man. He’s never been with a man who is so shameless and guileless with his tears. He never hides them nor uses them to his advantage. Charlie loves him and loves him and loves him.

As the story is winding down, Charlie takes a deep breath and looks up to make eye contact with Nick while he speaks the line, I am my beloved's, and his desire is toward me. It echoes cavernously throughout the small flat. Nick’s expression at the words—wanton, full of God and lovesick ardour—has Charlie wanting to get down on his knees and pray with Nick in his mouth, heavy on his tongue.

Not yet. Soon, Charlie says to himself. We haven’t even eaten yet.

When he finishes, needing to clear the tension in the air somehow, he says, “Well, that’s all she wrote,” and slaps the book shut with a sharp clack!

Nick jolts (as well as Lucy from where she was sleeping beside them, having given up on begging for food when there’s seemingly none to be had at the moment—oops). Nick laughs breathlessly. “That was nice.”

“Yeah,” Charlie smirks, looking a squirming Nick up and down, knowing full well Nick’s tells when he’s turned on, and gets up off the floor. “Nice.” 

Something shifts in Nick’s expression again—minute, but Charlie could pick up on it from a mile away—and gets to his knees, like he’s about to get up too, but stops halfway through. He just sits there, like he’s waiting for something only Charlie can give him. Charlie’s smile softens a little at the sight. He runs his fingers through Nick’s fringe, then trails it down Nick’s face and over his neck, letting his thumb catch on Nick's bottom lip on the way down. “Beautiful.” Nick's pupils expand.

But there's food to be eaten so, regrettably, he removes his hand from Nick’s skin and holds it out for him to take. “Come, angel. Let’s eat your beautiful meal.”

Nick shudders—maybe at the praise, maybe at the touch, maybe at the name. He shakes his head as he chuckles softly, winded. He shifts to get up and takes Charlie’s hand. “I thought it was your beautiful meal.”

“Shared custody,” Charlie winks, then hoists Nick up to his feet. The second Nick is standing, Charlie falls into him with his palms on Nick’s chest and leans up to kiss the hinge of his jaw gently, chastely. He pulls back and Nick’s expression is full of amour. Charlie wants to kiss him until neither of them can breathe. Instead, he reaches down to grab the candle from where it was on the floor between them and then tugs Nick over to the table. Nick pulls out Charlie’s chair for him, and Charlie rolls his eyes and shakes his head.

“No.” Nick looks briefly stricken, but Charlie smiles at him yieldingly. “Thank you, darling, but you made this meal for me. I’m pulling out your chair.”

“Oh,” Nick says, face lighting up. “Okay. I, um. That’s…” Nick continues to stutter as they go around the table and Charlie pulls out his chair for him. He’s clearly never had anyone return this favour before and is a little flustered as to how to react to it. Charlie is so in love with him. Nick sits and Charlie pushes him back in. “You’re. Wow. That’s. That’s nice.”

“Yeah,” Charlie repeats, rounding the table to sit in his own chair, still pulled out. “Nice.” He rests his chin in his palm with his elbow braced on the table and cheeses at a still-nonplussed Nick. 

“I… Well. Thank you.” Nick busies himself with taking off the lids on the food so it would all stay warm while they did the necessary rituals, cheeks flushed the entire time. 

But then Charlie sees the challah, still covered by napkins, and yelps loudly enough that both Nick and Lucy jolt. “Shit! I forgot to cut the challah, that whole thing, shit.”

He stumbles out of his chair and runs into the kitchen to begin the ritual of washing his hands. But his anxiety is starting to flood through him, and suddenly, after an indeterminate length of time, Nick’s arms come around him from behind. He lightly grasps Charlie’s wrists and drags them out from underneath the sink water. Once Charlie is out of the scalding water, having forgotten to turn the cold tap on in his haste, Nick uses one hand to blindly turn off the the sink. 

“Shayna, you’re going to chap your hands.”

“I’m— I’m fucking up your first Shabbat." Charlie says, words coming out fast and in clumps, dripping onto the kitchen floor and Lucy's fur where she followed them in. "I didn’t do it right. I’ve done this a million times, how could I have forgotten the challah?”

“Baby,” Nick says, voice low, not teasing at all, and Charlie feels warmed slightly at the endearment in his tone—being Nick’s baby is one of the most lovely things in his life. The memory of that helps him be led. Nick pulls a tea towel from over the stove handle and does his own very ritual of drying Charlie’s hands. Charlie looks down at them, watching as Nick does it gently, methodically. It does a lot to calm him down. “You are not fucking this up. Neither am I. We’re making our own Shabbat.”

“But there’s rules,” Charlie moans, but he’s coming back to himself from where the anxiety was starting to take its hold on him. He’s no longer in danger of having a panic attack—Nick can be good like that. Not always, but often. He’s so good at being calm in the face of Charlie’s anxieties, just like Charlie is good at being calm in the face of Nick’s. 

Maybe they’re both good like that.

Charlie knows for sure now that he won’t have an attack because Nick folds the damp towel, hangs it back on the arm of the stove, then cups the spot he always does when Charlie gets anxious, like he did that first night. Charlie’s eyelids flutter closed, so entirely comforted by Nick Nelson, always. “Maybe. But you said yourself that you fly fast and loose with the rituals.”

“Yeah. I do.” When Tori used to celebrate Shabbat with Charlie, she would too. They had their own order and rituals they would do together. But they were in an order, even if it wasn’t the ordained one. He knows this is an OCD Thing, but he can’t seem to make it stop despite it. His hands are shaking in Nick’s hold. He feels so small and stupid, like every time he has a flare-up of obsessive compulsive anxiety. 

Nick must see the dour shift in his expression because he brings Charlie’s clean, dry hands to his mouth and kisses his knuckles gently. “This is all so wonderful, Char.”

“What, my messed-up Shabbat?”

“Hey, it’s our messed-up Shabbat,” Nick smiles, squeezing Charlie’s hands twice. Charlie cracks a smile and squeezes three times. “The challah’s still plenty good. Do you prefer it warm? Should it go back in the oven before you cut it?”

Charlie laughs, “Angel, we can’t use the oven after sundown, remember?”

“Oh,” Nick says, eyes a little spacey. “Right.” He must be tired after cooking. Maybe we should have a nap after we eat, Charlie thinks. Sex can wait until later—they do have 25 hours to spend together. God, Charlie already can’t wait.

“C’mon,” says Charlie, mood shifted to something that leaves a pleasant buzz underneath his skin. He grabs a clean knife out of the butcher block. “Do you want to do the honours? Usually it’s the head of the house who cuts it, but you did cook most of the meal.”

Nick’s eyes widen as Charlie stands Nick in front of the challah, then hands him the knife, handle facing Nick to avoid a potential cut. “I… Me? Even though I’m a shabbos goy?”

“But you doing the work on Shabbat, even though it’s Jewish work, is technically fulfilling your duties as my sweet, sweet shabbos goy,” Charlie coos, coming in closer and cupping Nick’s cheek. Nick points the knife to the side so neither of them have the possibility of getting hurt and rests his head in Charlie’s hand as he always does. Charlie loves him so much, he feels a little sick with it. “And even if it isn’t, I don’t care—our messed-up Shabbat, as you so wonderfully put it." Charlie winks. Nick sighs, eyes warm. "You worked hard on this meal for us, and I want you to bless it. Will you?”

“Of course I will,” Nick responds, hushed, reverent, honoured. Charlie wants to kiss him, though he doesn’t know if it’s particularly against holy law to do so right before blessing the bread. He does so anyway because he’s so in love, he can barely breathe—he needs to let the love out somehow.

He goes up on one set of toes and puts his other hand on Nick’s opposite cheek to pull him down into a gentle, chaste kiss, his other leg bent slightly at the knee. They only kiss for a short while, but Charlie thinks he’s going to get butterflies every time they do for the rest of his life. Charlie does plan on this being for life—losing Nick isn’t going to happen if he can help it.

The kiss ends and Charlie opens his eyes to find Nick already smiling down at him, full of affection. Charlie smiles back and softly kisses the corner of Nick’s mouth. He gestures to the challah. “Now, come on. Do you want help?”

“I don’t want to do it wrong…” Nick mumbles, shifting from foot to foot.

“This is our Shabbat, remember? No wrong or right.” He takes the hand Nick’s holding the knife in with his own and guides it to the uncovered challah. “It’s just to break bread.”

“Okay,” Nick says, but his voice is shaking.

Charlie smiles, “Angel, you’re overthinking this. Just cut it. Nothing to do wrong.”

“But it’s a big deal,” Nick whispers. It doesn’t sound like he’s hiding the sound from God or Charlie, but from himself. “You trusting me enough to let me cut the challah. It is, right?”

Charlie swallows nervously, even though he’s stood right beside Nick who can likely hear it clearly. 

He could say it. I love you with this part of me because I trust you enough to not break it.

He doesn’t. Instead, he says, “Babe, the food’s getting cold.” He feels awful dismissing Nick’s worry for his own selfish needs, but he can’t tell him he loves him with a knife in his hand. There’s never a right time, Elle said when Charlie kvetched to her about this the third time he brought it up to her, so make any time right. But the idea of there being a knife involved in the first time he says it to a partner and means it down to his marrow makes him a little seasick. 

Nick nods sharply. “Right. Of course.” He sounds downtrodden, so Charlie guiltily kisses the back of his shoulder where he’s pressed against Nick’s back. Nick relaxes minutely.

He cuts the bread so carefully—Charlie’s precious medakdekim. He seems to have assuaged his own worries and cuts the bread with an ease and a patience only Nick Nelson can achieve. It’s beautiful. Nick is beautiful.

So he says it, because that is something he can say: “Beautiful,” Charlie murmurs from behind Nick after he’s finished quietly repeating the sung HaMotzi blessing while the bread is being cut.

Nick shoots a small smile back at him, and says, “Want me to do the steak too? I’m on a roll.” His smile turns cheeky. “A bread roll.”

“Oh, that was awful,” Charlie snorts, shaking his head. “We don’t do bread rolls here.” Nick laughs hard. “You shouldn’t be legally allowed to handle a knife when you utter a joke that bad.”

“And yet, I do,” Nick says, “and you can’t take it from me because we’ll get cut.”

Charlie groans, then glares and gestures to the food. “Do your worst, Professor Funnystuff.”

“I will,” Nick says, and works to cut slices into the steak. It’s cooked perfectly all the way through, and Charlie knows it’s going to taste just as good. He hasn’t had a Shabbat meal that looked this delicious since he was young and Auntie Rebecca was still alive, his mum’s cousin. She cooked every holiday meal they’d spend together and it was incredible every time.

Charlie has a flash of a future where Tori and Michael’s kid would come over to his for Shabbat and Uncle Nick would be their Auntie Rebecca, cooking them wonderful, beautiful meals. Charlie’s stomach lurches—he distracts himself by pulling out Nick’s chair once again to hide his face from Nick’s view, as if Nick could tell what Charlie is thinking.

God, Tori doesn't even want kids.

Charlie swallows, and has another brief flash, just a word, a name, before he’s able to smother it: 

Vega.

He shuts his eyes on the Vega Look and tries not to squint hard on himself as he fights back the idea of him and Nick’s imaginary-kid. It’s been six weeks. Jesus Christ, Charlie knows he’s a romantic, but this is bad, even for him. He can fantasise about it on his own time (and has) but Nick is right there. He’ll be able to see the flush of Charlie’s cheeks, the moony look in his eye, and he’ll wrestle it out of him. Of course he will, Charlie is too weak to say no to Nick.

Charlie puts on a face that isn’t his own and picks up the wine to pour some in each of their glasses. He takes his own glass by the stem and tips it towards Nick. “L’chaim.”

Nick picks up his own and gently clinks it against Charlie’s. “L’chaim.” There’s a lull between Lucy’s whines where there’s just silence. They use it to gaze at each other from over top of the food, and lit through the candle flame, Nick’s face is his own and that helps Charlie find his once again. Nick is illuminated, shadows dancing around his gorgeous face from the flickering candles between them. The light is low. Leonard Cohen needs to be flipped over, the needle rhythmically, nearly-imperceptibly thumping against the record. But Charlie doesn’t care about that. All he cares for is this beautiful man in his home, sharing his table, his smile reflecting Charlie’s. Charlie has never felt more in love with anyone or anything than he does right now. It feels like he’ll always be falling. 

They both sip and come away with purple lips. It's a beautiful sight on Nick. Charlie wonders if he'll ever think it's a beautiful sight on his own. He hopes he will. Maybe the beauty Nick sees in him will help get him there.

Nick insists Charlie pick whatever food he wants first, and after he does so with slightly-flushed cheeks at Nick’s bright-eyed behest, Charlie looks at his own plate, fork in hand. It doesn’t look at him like he’s evil for wanting it right now, which is good. He thinks he’s really going to be able to eat most, if not all of this dish. He closes his eyes and smiles. He thanks God for letting him have a good food day on a day where Nick has cooked him a lavish meal—that hasn’t always been the case when Nick does this. 

Suddenly, Nick lets out a loud, shocking moan. Charlie startles and looks up to find Nick with his eyes closed and his head hung low. 

“I have never heard you make that noise at your own food, Nicholas,” Charlie teases, poking him in the shin with his socked toe. “Who knew you could pleasure yourself so intensely?”

“I sure as fuck didn’t,” Nick groans, then picks up his head and Cheshire-grins. “But I did know you could.”

“Uh-huh,” Charlie laughs, shaking his head. “Sure, sure, love a little flattery.”

Nick nods distractedly, eyes alight but hazy. “That’s good food.”

“Seems it,” smiles Charlie, wanting to reach out and hold him but being unable to due to the fork and knife being in each of Nick’s hands. Instead, he hooks their ankles together underneath the table. He accidentally skates his foot over Lucy’s stomach and her whining gets more intense as she adjusts to push against them too, like that will change their minds and let her get her scraps faster. They ignore her, but only because it'll teach her bad habits if they don't—she's entirely too cute to ignore any other time. Still, they shoot a sad look at the table where Lucy sits primly beneath it, trying her hardest to fit as close to them as she can possibly be. Adorable.

“Try it, try it. The London Broil first, I promise it’ll be a worthy introduction to the meal,” Nick says, gesturing to Charlie’s plate. “If you want, of course. No pressure.” He swings their joined ankles, happy like a little kid and grinning with food still in his mouth—Nick is usually more polite than that, and it has Charlie giggling.

Nick looks at him with such unabashed joy, always so brazen in his feelings, and Charlie wonders if he’ll ever stop falling in love with him. If this feeling of every new thing he finds in and experiences with Nick being better and more lovely than the last.

Charlie picks up his cutlery and slices a moderate piece of the steak off, spearing shallot and a mushroom along with it, and dunks it in the juice from the meat—the perfect bite for Nick’s perfect meal. He levels it to his mouth, then looks up to Nick and finds him not looking up at Charlie, but petting Lucy so that Charlie doesn’t feel watched while he eats, even though that was the intention of this interaction. Charlie almost says it. I love you.

He doesn’t. Instead, he takes a bite. 

His eyelids flutter closed in ecstasy—he doesn’t remember the last time food made him feel a positive emotion. “God, Nick, this is really, really fucking good.” Charlie’s eyes open and he smirks at Nick’s delighted, proud face. “But you know what would’ve been good with this?” Nick tilts his head, and Charlie tips his head down to look at Nick through his fringe. “Horseradish sauce.”

“Oh, you’re such a dick,” Nick grumbles through a smile, unhooking their ankles. “See if I let you give Lucy’s plate to her now.” 

“Noooo,” Charlie laughs, reaching for him with both his feet and his hands. He makes contact with both, twining their fingers together over top of the table. “Baby, I swear this is amazing. Please let me still feed Lucy, please? It’s my favourite part.” Lucy's whines pick up intensity after Charlie says her name, like she knows it's usually Charlie's job to give her the plate to lick when she's over here — Lucy isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, but she has adapted to a life in Charlie's flat quicker than either of them thought she would, or could.

“I know,” Nick smirks, letting his ankle be caught by Charlie’s. “That’s why I’m taking it away. You need to learn.”

“You’re the worst,” Charlie groans. “I won’t ever make fun of you again if you let me—”

“Oh, o-kay, sure, never making fun of me again, are you?” Nick laughs. “I really, actually, very, truly, definitely believe that.”

“Would you really, actually, very, truly, definitely believe it if I said that I—” His eyes widen. Oh, he almost said it. He almost let it slip in a moment of unbridled joy, of the same teasing that leads back to their roots deep in the ground beneath them. Jesus Christ, how anticlimactic would that have been? He clears his throat at the confused tilt of Nick’s head at his obvious fear. “That I-I’ll let you eat gefilte fish at the next function if you let me feed Lucy?”

Nick’s face lights up, forgetting about Charlie's frightened expression. “Yes! We can feed her the whole damn dinner for just a bite!”

“Okay, no,” Charlie says, laughing and bowing his back over the plate to tug Nick’s hand closer to the middle of the table so Nick doesn’t have to lean. “I’m not doing all that. Not when you spent so long on it and it’s so good. Lucy eats garbage. Like, literal garbage—you have to hide the bin in the closet when you leave. She won’t care when we give her London fucking Broil. To her sweet, dim little dog-brain, food is food is food. Even wrappers.”

“Whatever you want!” Nick squirms in his chair from glee. He mutters happily to himself, “Hell yeah, gefilte fish.”

“I swear to God, your commitment to this bit will not go unpunished. But…” He shakes his head fondly, “…whatever makes you happy, neshome.”

Charlie watches as Nick melts at the little-used name that always turns him to mush. O, mayn mlakh, Charlie sighs internally at Nick's starry-eyed look that Charlie saw coming from a mile away. “Oh, you’re so easy.”

“Hey!” Nick cries, flushed. “With other people, I’m normal! This is just for you!”

“That has been discovered over the past six weeks, yes.”

“God, has it really only been six weeks?” Nick marvels, shaking his head, eyes wide in sparkling awe. “That can’t be possible.”

“I’m the man who counted the hours after we met,” Charlie points out, squeezing Nick’s hand twice. “I would know well enough.”

“You would,” Nick smiles, squeezing back thrice. “And I'm the man who asked you to be my boyfriend five days after our first kiss."

"We're both a little mad," Charlie grins.

"Just a bit." Nick sighs joyfully, like he can't think of anything better than Charlie. It's overwhelming in the best way possible. "It just doesn’t seem real that I’ve only known you for six weeks. It feels like you’ve been here all my life.”

Charlie says nothing, just squeezes four times, because if he doesn’t, he’ll scream, my love for you is written in the code of me; it has been here since the beginning of me and always will be, no matter if one of us leaves, or who dies first. You live within me. Dust to stardust, darling.

He finds enough voice to say something neutral, easy, normal. “Come, this beautiful food will get cold if we keep yapping.”

“Aw, but I love to yap with you,” Nick pouts. “It’s my favourite pastime.” Charlie just chuckles and shakes his head.

He eats; probably more than he’s eaten in one sitting in many, many moons. He puts the fork down after the last bite and stares at his empty plate. He may as well have licked it clean — there’s virtually nothing on it. His hands shake. He physically feels his pupils dialate with fear, fear of himself, fear of his stomach, fear of the numbers he never looked at. Numbers, numbers, numbers, all the way down to his core. Before he feels the panic fully set in, he scoops a bit of the things Lucy can eat on his plate. He looks up at Nick and finds him happily sitting in his seat, eyes closed, not watching Charlie, bouncing a little with the joy of eating something so good. And it is—was—good. Very good.

But there’s no way to measure how much he ate. No way to figure out the calorie count. No way to—

Fuck. He should’ve figured this out much earlier—days earlier. He should’ve vetted the recipes. He knew most of this meal wasn't safe foods; why did he still insist on eating it? He should've just eaten the challah—Nick would've understood. Or he wouldn't have, and he would've broken up with Charlie. Nick will probably break up with him anyway. He feels untethered. He should’ve planned better. He should’ve known he'd— He should’ve— He’s so fucking—

“I’ll be right back,” says Charlie, voice far away from himself. He sets Lucy’s plate down and doesn’t stop to watch her eat. He loves to do that—seeing her so happy because of a gift he’s given her warms his heart. There’s red meat tonight. She’s likely having a grand time. But Charlie just needs…

Numbers.

Numbers.

All the way down.

He goes into his bedroom and shuts the door, just in case he starts crying. He doesn’t want to alert Nick and ruin his night too. He boots up his laptop blindly, single-minded (easier for tab-switching) and pulls up the exact recipes he and Nick used. He nods as he reads through them, tapping his bottom lip anxiously before Googling calorie counts of every ingredient, one by one. Calculated in his blindness.

Maths have always been a strong suit for Charlie. He uses that skill now, trying to figure out the exact amount he ate. 

He doesn’t know how long he sits there, searching for numbers and doing the maths, but after a while, a knock comes at the door. He’s got notebook paper out now from where he stores extras for class in his closet. He’s writing down the calories for each item, separating the papers by recipe. He’s working on the sauce for the meat now; he’s gotten through three of five of the recipes, glad he already had them open from when he was doing research on FaceTime earlier in the week. He doesn’t know how long this is going to take, but he doesn’t care—he needs to know. He already feels sick at what he's gleaned through the research.

He knows he would've been sick no matter what the numbers, numbers, numbers gave him.

He doesn't care.

“Charlie?” comes Nick’s soft voice. Charlie doesn’t respond—he doesn’t know how, or what to say, so he says nothing. “Shayna? Are you in there?”

“I’ll be out in a minute,” Charlie says. He sounds distracted, a little foreign even to his own ears. Shit. That means Nick’s going to have to come in. 

Charlie’s almost done with the sauce, and the meat was relatively easy. He didn’t want to go sifting through the bin like a fucking dog because that would’ve definitely alerted Nick that something is… afoot? Nothing’s wrong, Charlie just needs to know.

“I…” Nick sounds lost. A glance over top of Charlie’s Macbook shows Nick’s shadow is still in the doorway. Fuck. Nick’s never dealt with Charlie like this. He looks around at the bed and sees papers strewn around him, multiple notebooks, the 25 tabs he’s got open. Math on some papers, scribbled out false numbers, numbers that weren't right. He just needs everything to be right. Everything in its right place. Then he'll be okay. He tells himself that over and over between each number. Right. 10 calories. Right. 4 for my serving. Right.

Right.

Right.

But Nick can't see any of this shit. He'll find the proof of his insanity. And then. Nothing, none of this will be right.

“Shit,” he whispers to himself, hoping Nick didn’t hear, and starts cleaning them up. "Shit, shit, shit." He swipes violently at his own face with the outside of his wrist, trying to dry up the tear tracks that were silently falling as he searched and searched and searched.

He’s grabbing the notebooks when he hears Nick speak up again. “Char, I’d like to come in. May I?” 

Fuck. He’s so polite, even with his voice shaking, scared. Charlie’s scaring him. He might think he’s gonna find new marks on Charlie’s skin. New scars. Jesus Christ.

He can’t let Nick live in that kind of fear, so proof be damned, he says, quietly but with enough force behind it that Nick can hear, “Yeah. Okay.”

Nick lets out a loud whoosh of breath as he immediately opens the door. He looks to Charlie first and scans over his body quickly, likely looking for… Jesus. He obviously finds nothing. He looks relieved but still tense as he comes over to the bed. “Hi, baby. May I sit?”

“Yeah, sure, sorry, let me…” He moves some papers so they’re behind them now, up where the pillows rest. “There. Sorry.”

“No, there's… There’s nothing to apologise for,” Nick says, but he sounds wary. He sits down and he doesn’t look at the papers or the laptop. Instead, he reaches for Charlie’s hand. He doesn’t make contact, looks up at Charlie for permission first as his hands hover over Charlie's. Charlie gives him a tiny nod. Nick immediately takes it, folding it between both of his own. He gently squeezes twice. Charlie doesn’t squeeze back, but he doesn’t always. That’s okay. He just… he can’t right now. Nick doesn’t look hurt at that, which is good.

Nick finally looks at the bed, the insanity around them. “What’s all this?”

“My, uh…” He looks at the computer. He’s on the last ingredient for the sauce, the mushrooms. He’s expecting something low, but he’s not sure—he doesn’t eat mushrooms all too often, so it’s not a figure he has memorised. He just… “I just need to see something, sorry.” He slips his hand from between Nick’s—it goes easily—and grabs the laptop again, hitting the keys with a little too much force.

“You’re gonna need to take your poor old gal to the Apple Store if you keep smashing her like that,” Nick chuckles, but there’s no mirth in his tone. “What’s… Can I ask what this project is all about that needed to happen right now? You didn’t even watch Lucy lick the plate. You love that. You're…" He raises his hand towards Charlie who tries his hardest not to flinch. Nick must be able to tell though, so his hand immediately drops back to his lap. "You look like you've been crying, love.”

“Yeah, sorry,” Charlie says, distractedly wiping his dewy face. “This is just… important.”

“Okay,” Nick says, voice intentionally neutral. He’s cottoning on, but Charlie just will finish this one and then he’ll save the soup (the one he’s most worried about; a lot of salt goes into soup) for later, after Nick goes to bed. He hasn’t added up all of the calories yet, but it’s not looking good already, soup or no soup. He Googles shiitake mushroom nutrition facts and winces as the page loads, even when the numbers don't immediately flash in large letters. A warning he should have already heeded. He can’t believe he didn’t think to do this until after dinner. At least it was before the bench—

“Fuck, we need to do the benching,” Charlie says, throwing his laptop to the side haphazardly and moves to get up.

“Wait, love, what’s the benching?” As soon as Nick stabilises the laptop and Charlie’s hands are free, Nick takes one again.

“It’s the after-dinner prayer, shit, it’s so long, I fucking hate it, but I— God won’t know— He—”

“Hey,” Nick says, refusing to release Charlie’s hand and let him leave. He never does that. It shocks Charlie enough that he looks back to him. Nick looks a little blurry—shit, Charlie thinks, am I fucking crying again? “God knows you love Him, benching or not. I know it’s hard to not do things in the right order, but you can say a little prayer to Him as we’re putting the food away, no?”

“I… I guess.” Charlie frowns, shifting anxiously from foot to foot. He snorts a little, “The Jews are kind of an obsessive people to begin with before adding OCD into the mix.”

Nick smiles, mollifying and acquiescing, but warm all the same. It’s moments like these more than the sticky-sweet ones that make Charlie wonder if Nick does feel the same, if he loves Charlie as much as Charlie loves him. It feels impossible, especially when he’s this pained, but he can’t help but see the affection and care written plainly on Nick’s face between the creases of his worry. Charlie still feels that preternatural fear that Nick will leave him some of the time, especially when he's like this. But the fear feels a little unfounded right now, despite its intensity, with the adoring concern in Nick's eyes.

God, Charlie wants to just say it. Obviously not right now, but soon. He needs to. It’s starting to fester within him already and he doesn’t want it to become a wound. Nick would hate that, love yet or no.

Tomorrow, he decides. Before Nick drives himself and Lucy back to his flat after they turn their phones back on and the veil of safety that covers the flat is lifted. Nick keeps him safe anyway, Shabbat or no Shabbat. Not when he’s at the door, he’ll have Lucy in hand for that. He wants it to be with Lucy resting on the couch, both of them curled up beside her, talking quietly. He’ll take Nick’s hand and look into his eyes so Nick knows he means it, and he’ll say it. Exactly what he practised. I know it’s soon. A lot of our relationship is soon. But I can’t not say it anymore. And you don’t need to say it back, please don’t if you’re not ready, but I love you. I just wanted you to know.

With the way Nick is looking at him right now, he’s not so sure it’ll go rejected. Nick gives him hope.

His expression makes Charlie sit back on the bed; his smile turns a little less vexed at that. 

If Charlie were a stronger man, he wouldn’t collapse onto Nick’s shoulder. He would continue his search—he knows he needs to. But he falls into Nick anyway, head in the crook of Nick's neck as he laces their fingers together. Nick presses a long kiss to his forehead. Charlie sighs, forlorn and in love. He presses into Nick’s clavicle.

“Sorry.”

“I’m assuming this is a needless ‘sorry’ but I’ll play along: for?”

“For being… I dunno, crazy.” He laughs. Nick makes a wounded noise. “No, sorry, I don’t mean that. It’s just…” He sighs again. He tries for honesty, and finds the bare bones of the truth is that, “Eating sucks.”

“I’m sorry it does for you, love,” Nick says, voice tender. “And I’m sorry if I made it worse by insisting I make this whole—”

“Do not,” Charlie says, voice shaking as he presses in closer. Skin to skin. If only skin in skin. Beneath him, around him, within him. A body they can take care of together. There'd be no agency in that, he knows, but right now, all he wants is for somebody else to take his body away from him. The thought immediately fades with the hold of control, but the feeling doesn't fade. “Do not apologise for making this whole beautiful meal for us. If it were a different day, I’d have been just fine. But instead, I’m just… like this. And there’s no knowing when it’s going to come up or how to prevent it or what is going to trigger it.” He picks his head up and looks into Nick’s eyes, shining in the low lamplight coming from the bedside table. “There was nothing else you could've done, and it is not your fault. Okay?”

“I’ll believe that,” Nick says, and Charlie smiles, “if you say you believe that it isn’t yours either.”

Charlie’s smile drops into a scowl. He glares. “I’m not going to— mmph!”

Nick’s hands travel up his body and come up to his face to squish his moistened cheeks. “You’re going to say you believe it, or I’m not gonna let you go, and we’ll stay on your bed forever with my hands on your face.” Charlie doesn’t think he’d mind that, in another circumstance. He raises his brows, sharply tips his side to the side and back up, shrugging, as if to say, sounds good to me. Nick rolls his eyes and chuckles. “Not like that, you animal. I meant as punishment.” Charlie raises his eyebrows again, pumping them a few times. Nick is fully laughing now, and even though it’s difficult to with Nick’s hands still squeezing him, Charlie smiles too. “Good grief! Who knew you’d take everything so filthily when you’re not doing well.”

Through his squished lips, Charlie garbles out, “It’th the thrauma.”

Nick laughs a little and tips his head, then brings Charlie’s head closer and kisses his hairline. “Will you say it?”

Charlie shakes his head. Muffled, he replies, “But I will thay tha— leggo a’me! I’ll be good! Promith!” Charlie struggles and Nick releases him immediately the second he starts squirming. Charlie loves him so much that it breaks his heart. Finally released, he shakes his head off like a dog and leans back on his palms. He hadn't realised it, but he'd unconsciously taken his hair down, body temperature cooling in his frenzied state — he always gets cold when he's like this. It was a warning sign, back when he—

Fuck. It is a warning sign.

“I think it’s just… It’s hard. To do that," Charlie admits. He looks through the open door and into the small dining room with his tiny, Marketplace table, the candle blown out. Food is going cold, left alone on the counter so Lucy can't get to it, petrified in time. A time before Charlie broke open. He can't see Lucy. He wishes he could; even just seeing her is always a help to his mental state. "But I want you to know that I’m not just, you know, letting it fester. I talk about it with Geoff all the time. Most weeks, honestly. My tendency to hate myself is a long and winding road, and it’s not going to get any clearer for a while. But… I hope it does. I genuinely want it to. And I’m actively working towards that future. And I hope you — you're—”

He almost says, and I hope you’re in it, but he's sure the unsaid is just as loud. His cheeks go pink at the idea that Nick might know what he was going to finish with anyway. He lets out a lame, “Yeah,” and looks down at the floor and away. He looks back at his notebooks—their importance feels further away now, but he can still see it in his mind’s eye, even though the picture is blurry. 

The control he needs over his actions, over his food, hasn’t gotten better since he was admitted to hospital in Year 11, or his relapse when he was 20—he’s just learned new coping skills to mitigate the symptoms. Even with intense therapy, there's still this pervasive need to control it. He hardly even knows what ‘it’ is anymore. He’s not being actively bullied. He’s not in school anymore. He has a decent job. He's trying to undo the stitches of trauma that Ben laced into his skin. He likes his job well enough and it pays enough to keep his flat. He has a wonderful support system of lovely friends, always ready and willing to come to his rescue—as they've needed to do on more than one occasion; his family is whole and safe; Ben is gone now; he has a lovely, supportive boyfriend sitting on his bed, looking at him like Charlie holds up the ground he walks on, despite the possible relapse currently looming. Hell, he even manages to have sex with his clothes off now, which he has never been able to do before. 

That was a point of contention with Ben, the idea that Charlie ‘didn’t trust him enough' to take off his shirt in bed. There are things Ben did, looking back, that Charlie chose to omit to Geoff. He didn’t know why back then. He knows why now, though he's still gun-shy to admit it. He's called it what it was to Tori and Geoff, but he can't say it to Nick quite yet. Still, the word is calling for him just beyond the horizon line, and it will continue to until Charlie finds the strength to listen.

Charlie’s inability to fully strip most of the time is never a problem with Nick. Charlie’s even let Nick undress him entirely twice now, feeling safer to do so knowing Nick wouldn’t care either way, still finds him sexy regardless. Nick looked honoured to hell and back when Charlie told him to take his shirt off, has sworn up and down that it’s not important to him if Charlie keeps his top on or not, because that means he’s comfortable. He seemed so grateful then at the idea that Charlie wanted to give him that. 

He does. He wants to give Nick everything he has to his name, even his chest, his stomach, his arms. 

And yet still, with his life mostly wonderful, despite lingering despair about how Ben treated him while they were together and as they broke up, he’s still like this.

“I’m sorry that you have to deal with it too," Charlie sighs, thoughts getting dark and murky. "I wanted to… I dunno, shield you from the intensity of it.”

He told Nick about the depth of his illnesses two weeks ago, a few days before Charlie realised he loved him. Nick was so earnest and supportive and didn’t make it about himself and how he feels about it at all, until Charlie asked him to. 

“Are you…” Charlie starts, trying not to freak out about the immense load he just dropped onto Nick’s shoulders. He's trying not to feel like a burden. His own admissions echo back in his head about the bullying, the trauma it caused, the obsessive actions, fuck, the cutting, all of it. He’s so afraid of how Nick will react, but he needed to say it. It needed to be done. “I mean, it’s a lot. The-the scars and the— Are you okay with it?”

“Am I okay with it?” Nick asked, puzzled. He tips his head and squeezes the hands he’s already holding twice in such quick succession, they almost blend together. The two of them. Blended. “Of course I am.”

Charlie groans, feeling the weight of the situation, feeling anxious in a way he hadn’t been even when he was talking about the details. “No, I mean, like…”

He and Nick are facing each other on Charlie’s shitty pull-out sofa, both of Charlie’s hands in Nick’s. Charlie couldn’t look at him while he was talking, and he still can’t afterwards. But whenever he sneaks a peek, Nick is still sitting exactly where he was when Charlie told him he was ready to 'talk about it'. His expression open, waiting for Charlie to gather his thoughts. Charlie thinks, he is way too good for me. “You can have feelings about this. I… It would help me gauge, I think, you know, how to move forward, if you talked about how this makes you feel.”

“Okay,” Nick agrees, nodding. He doesn’t ask if Charlie is sure; he trusts Charlie to know what he needs. Charlie doesn’t think he’s ever had a partner do that before—he’s used to being infantilised. He doesn’t know what to do with the agency Nick gives him. He hopes it’s something good. “Well, first of all, I want to thank you for being honest and trusting me with this. I’m sorry if this sounds patronising, but I’m so proud of you for that.” 

Charlie smiles. He wants to say, I don’t think you have the ability to be patronising, but Nick continues before Charlie has the chance. 

“The bullying aspect makes me feel incredibly sad because you felt you had to hide it from Tao, Elle and Isaac. You deserved better. You still do. The path your disordered eating went on makes sense with the trauma that was occurring at the time, and still does with how it could echo into your adult life, and I'll do anything to help that where I can. Your scars don't bother me because they're a part of you, and I am with all parts of you, even the darker ones. And as for the depression, the reason for the scars… God, Charlie, I just, I-I wish I could’ve been there.” Nick shakes his head slowly, hurting—not because of Charlie, but because of the circumstances. Charlie reminds himself of that. It’s hard to make it stick. “I know that likely wouldn’t have helped all too much and I know that it’s probably unhelpful to hear now, but—”

“It’s not,” Charlie says, tears welling up in his eyes the way tears are welling up in Nick’s. “It’s not unhelpful at all, it’s… it’s comforting, actually.”

Nick looks a little shy now, ducking his head, but he never breaks their watery eye contact. “I’m glad. It’s the truth.”

Charlie leans back on the couch, back propped up on the uncomfortable arm, half sat up. He uses Nick’s hands to pull Nick down with him. Nick faceplants into Charlie’s belly and they both laugh. Charlie feels grateful for the dispelled tension. Nick adjusts so he’s between the ‘v’ of Charlie’s legs and uses Charlie’s stomach and chest as his backrest. Charlie wraps his arms around Nick’s chest and Nick hooks his hands onto them. 

“What do you think it would’ve been like?” Nick murmurs, voice quiet. “If we met when we were younger?”

“Oh,” Charlie breathes, squeezing Nick’s shoulders. Nick squeezes back. The only sounds to be heard are the fans around them whirring (the stupid, bloody, dingy fans that Charlie had to buy himself that his equally-as-stupid landlord said he would provide but never did in Charlie’s equally-as-dingy flat), Lucy's light snoring on the other side of the couch, and their soft breathing coming out in time. Blended. The street below them is surprisingly quiet. The world, it seems, has slowed for them, just as it did at the wedding. “I think we would’ve been playground sweethearts.” 

There’s a smile in his voice when Nick asks, “Yeah? I… I didn’t realise I was bi until I was 18. But…”

“You think I would’ve turned you?” Charlie simpers, putting on a silly, seductive voice.

He waits for Nick’s laugh, but he pauses and then quietly says, “Essentially, yes. Or, at least you would’ve made me realise it.” 

Charlie’s eyes widen and he blushes furiously. “Oh.” The word sounds embarrassed, even to his own ears. He can’t imagine being alluring enough to ‘turn’ anyone, let alone Nick Nelson. “I don’t think you’ve seen enough photos of me in primary and secondary school, then.”

“Mmm, I think I have,” Nick says, voice teasing, but there’s an undercurrent of seriousness in his words. “Tori has posted many on her Insta. I've peeked."

"Dick."

Nick snorts and continues, "I don’t quite think what you looked like would’ve mattered too much to me though, at the time. Sure, it sure would’ve helped that I would’ve thought you were hot, but it’s… it’s more about you. The way you are, the way you act. It… God, it’s so wet, but it puts me at ease, assuages my worried nature. It captivates me, and I know it would’ve then too, and—” Nick can likely feel Charlie’s stifled laughter because he shoots up and flips around to stare incredulously at Charlie. “Hey! Stop laughing! I’m trying to be serious over here and you’re taking the piss out of me!”

“Oh, but who would I be without a little teasing? What, with how I’m so captivating and all.” Charlie smiles, though it’s warmer than it was at the sight of Nick’s ruddy cheeks. He feels confident. He used to feel that confidence all the time. Even through his illness and his poor self-esteem, he knew who he was and how to be who he was, hard things and all, from a young age. But since Ben, it's been harder to reach for. Nick helps bring it back out into the light. “Aw, come here, baby.” Charlie opens his arms, and Nick glares at him, but it loses steam rather quickly. Nick climbs up and squishes himself between Charlie’s side and the back of the couch. It’s quite a tight fit, and Charlie almost rolls off onto the floor twice, but they manage. “See? Isn’t that better, darling?”

“Stop it,” Nick mumbles into Charlie’s hoodie, stolen from Nick; Charlie is starting to wonder if he even has any of his own. “You’re making me want to kiss you.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t exactly mind that,” Charlie grins. “But it does say a lot about you that you want to kiss me when I’m teasing you.”

“No, it says a lot about you, that you’re so allurrrring,” Nick says, turning the tables on Charlie—he hates the way Nick can do that so easily. “Bewiiitching. Enchaaanting. Beguiiiling.”

“Now you need to stop it,” Charlie groans, covering his face. “Stop teasing about me being ‘allurrrring’ when I’ve just finished divulging about my deepest, darkest traumas!”

“Well, first of all, I know you like it. You’ve told me as much.” 

Charlie whines from behind his hands. “That was mid-coital! You can’t use anything I say mid-coital against me!”

Nick chuckles, then gently takes Charlie’s hands off his face by the wrists, and presses a kiss to each palm, not breaking eye contact. “And second of all, I’m not joking. You are all of those things to me and more. More than more.”

Charlie squints at Nick, unsure, but Nick’s face looks open and honest, as it almost always is. Nick does obfuscate his feelings sometimes. He tries to be strong and protective and perfectly kind and polite at all times. Which is a noble goal, but not realistic. Everyone has ugly feelings. They're unavoidable. Charlie had told Nick as much last week when Nick started pretending like he was fine after a text from his awful brother came through when Nick posted some photos from the wedding on Instagram with a sappy caption about how glad he is to know the Springs. Charlie was either in or the star of every picture, and David said something homophobic about it in his DMs that Nick wouldn’t repeat. All Charlie saw was that 'Footy.King.David' commented, Lol, on the grid post, and nothing else. Charlie can only imagine.

You don’t have to lie to protect me, Charlie said then. I’m here for you too, you know. Nick had frowned and said, You are, Charlie. Charlie smiled, tucked Nick’s hair out of his eyes the way he likes—the way they both like—and said, Then let me be. 

Nick obscures the truth, but never about something related to Charlie. Charlie has been waiting for the other shoe to drop all month, but it never has. He is starting to think that, even if the shoe does drop, it will fall with grace and be pillowed by their affection, their care, their bashert. There’s tiffs and confusion and hurt feelings once or twice, but it’s never bad like it had been with Ben.

Charlie just needs to keep reminding himself: Nick’s not Ben. He wouldn’t hurt me on purpose. 

Charlie almost checks it with Nick, an are you sure? But he doesn’t. For once in his life, he trusts someone. It’s hard to believe it’s only been a month.

And it’s still shocking now, after six weeks. This level of trust so soon is unheard of for Charlie. He doesn’t think he’s ever trusted someone this much who wasn’t Tao, and it took him months for even that. 

Nick responded exactly how Charlie would hope anyone react: letting him speak without interrupting, not making it about himself until Charlie asked for that explicitly, holding him and kissing him and continuing to care for him through it and after it, despite it. Because of it, Nick said, because it put Charlie in full technicolour, no shadows or mile-high walls. He wants to see every side of Charlie and knows he will like them all. Looking back on it and seeing how Nick is treating him now cements Charlie's love for him, his named love, made it impossible to hide from. He hardly even wants to. It’s shocking how much loving Nick has changed him for the better.

Nick looks sad at Charlie’s apology, that Nick has to, as Charlie put it, ‘deal with it’. He seems pained but not hurt. 

“Love, you don’t have to shield me from anything. I want to be there for you, where I can, if you’d let me. I know it’s hard for you to let people in, but I’m here in your doorway waiting to be invited inside whenever you feel ready.”

“I do,” Charlie insists. He scrambles over to climb into Nick’s lap, knees on either side of Nick’s hips. “The door is open, you’re inside. I… The things I’ve done with you, emotionally, sexually, spiritually, all of it, these things are huge for me. Especially because it’s only been a little over a month. I don’t… I don’t do this. It’s hard to explain, but… I didn't think I knew how."

“I think I get it,” Nick whispers with reverence, his hands travelling to the backs of Charlie’s hips to reel him in closer. They’re stomach-to-stomach, but Charlie arches his back so he can look at Nick properly. “Charlie… Is… When we talked about your illnesses two weeks ago, you didn’t mention… Ben.” 

Charlie winces, pulling back, but Nick brings his arms up so his forearms are braced over Charlie’s back entirely. Charlie can’t figure out if it makes him feel trapped or not. He decides it probably doesn’t because Nick would let him leave if Charlie wanted to. Ben wouldn’t. Ben, whose mistreatment he has yet to fully unpack, not even with Geoff. Ben, who Charlie is unsure is out of his life for good or not, despite Ben blocking him. He is in Charlie's psyche, colouring all of his movements, searching for clues, looking for motive that people aren't going to stay, that they'll leave and take the rest of Charlie with them.

Ben, who Charlie can't think clearly about right now. But Nick asked, so:

“Um… What do you want to know?” Charlie asks. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to answer right now, but—”

“I don’t need you to,” Nick insists, shaking his head. He raises his knees so his heels are braced on the footboard, giving Charlie someplace to lean back on if he wants. It’s such a sweet gesture that Charlie feels nauseous with it; he doesn’t deserve this. “I just want you to know that I’m thinking about it and I'm here if and when you decide one day, you can.”

Charlie swallows and averts his eyes, leaning back on Nick’s offered legs and trapping the arm Nick had around his back, unsure if he’s trying to pull away. He doesn’t know much of anything right now. “Okay. Sorry, I… just. Can't. Right now.” He chuckles ruefully. “Sorry.”

“Ziskayt,” Nick murmurs, bringing one arm around to cup Charlie’s cheek. Nick meets his eyes, and he looks so split-open that Charlie feels his eyes water. “No sorries, right? You don’t have to be sorry you drew a boundary. I’m glad you did. I’m grateful you did.”

Charlie’s eyes well up even further, threatening to spill over. He didn't need to say it right now. Nick didn't make him. Nick doesn't make him do anything Charlie doesn't want to do. He hadn't even realised he'd set a boundary at all. He might not have, had he called it that by name in his head. “I— Ben didn’t. Feel that way.” 

Nick frowns, but nods. “I see.” He scratches Charlie’s spine and slides his other hand from Charlie’s cheek to the spot on his neck. Charlie breathes deeply instinctively, likely Pavlovian at this point. Nick smiles a little. “Well, I’m not Ben. I will never treat you like that. I will only ever be grateful for the lines you draw and the things you feel comfortable enough to share. I will never push you more than you think you can handle being pushed. Do you believe me, Char?”

Charlie swallows. He can't see through the haze of anxiety; he doesn't know the meaning of Nick's words, how he feels about them, if Nick really means them or not. Maybe he's lying. Maybe he is obfuscating something regarding Charlie. Charlie's so used to being lied to, and after thinking so hard about Ben, it's hard to see beyond that.

But— No. Nick is not Ben and Ben was not Nick. “I don’t know much right now. Everything feels kind of… illusionary. My thoughts and feelings are kind of far away. I can’t grasp anything very well. But I think so. I… I usually believe you, so.”

“Are you dissociating?” Nick asks. He doesn’t look scared, but he could be. Like he was waiting at the bedroom door, begging for Charlie to let him in. Charlie scares Nick.

Charlie shakes his head and looks down, bearing all the world's guilt on his shoulders. He deserves to be locked away. He is an arsonist, a killer, stealing into Nick's house and robbing him of everything precious he is. “Don’t think so. Just… self-conscious. Untrusting.” He whips his head back to Nick who looks neutral. “Not of you, of-of… me. Ben, the notebooks, the stuff that just happened, the stuff that’s still happening in my head, I…”

When Charlie can't continue, Nick softly adds, “I think that’d lead anybody to not trust themselves, my love.”

“Can…” Charlie frowns, remembering the heat in the kitchen, the… food that’s still out. Hopefully, Lucy hasn't pulled a Houdini and gotten into it. He's not brave enough to look anywhere but the floor and, every now and then, Nick's eyes. He remembers the unfocused look in Nick's eyes before dinner when he was washing Charlie's hands. He cooked all day for Charlie. He's exhausted. And Charlie couldn't even shut his fucking mouth and be grateful for once. Charlie starts stuttering, “You should sleep, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I've been keeping you up." Charlie glances at the clock on the wall, barely visible in the cover of night, and sees how late it's gotten, how long Charlie has forced Nick to stay up and not even give him what he wants. Charlie winces, "Fuck, we don't have time to—" He swallows. "I-I know I said we’d have sex, but—”

“Hey,” Nick interrupts softly. He cups both of Charlie’s cheeks now, looking startled. “No sorries. And sex should never be an obligation. I don’t want it to be. I… If I’m being honest, I think it would screw me up really, really badly if you thought of it that way.” Nick chuckles ruefully, looks down and away. "Ever."

“Oh, Nick, no,” Charlie refutes, shaking his head and wrapping his arms around the breadth of Nick’s shoulders. “I don’t. Not with you. It’s never been that way with you. I'm just… untrusting right now, but not of you. Ben stuff, you know?”

Nick swallows and nods, looking back to Charlie. He looks sick at the implication that sex was transactional with Ben. A means to an end—the end being Ben’s mollification. But one of the only things he knows concretely is that aspect of his and Ben’s relationship will never be part of the one he has with Nick.

Charlie goes up on his knees instead of where he’s leaned back on Nick’s thighs. Nick’s gaze follows him up, head tipped back to watch him. Charlie drags his hands, one to the back of Nick’s neck, the other to his cheek, and kisses his hairline. He wants to say it. He feels like it would help right now if he did—even if only to Charlie’s selfish ends. But not for the first time. Not right now. The time has to be right. It has to be perfect. 

So, he doesn't say it.

Instead, he pulls back enough to look Nick in the eye and says something just as deeply-rooted within him, “I always trust you, though.”

“You don’t have to,” Nick insists, looking more clear-headed. “Sometimes, it’s okay to feel badly enough to not trust anyone. I won’t be hurt by that. Just… just as long as you come back. And not with sex. Please.”

“Nick, I need you to know that I don’t see you as Ben,” Charlie says. He leans back in and kisses Nick’s forehead, then pulls back to see a fleeting smile on Nick's face. “You are so lovely. You are nothing like him. I know that. I see it every day. It’s just…” He frowns and shrugs. “It’s what I got used to. I was with him for 16 months, you know? It’s only been six weeks for us. We’re already stronger than Ben and I ever were, I want you to know how deeply I mean that when I say it. But time does damage. And it was a long time for something to hurt that badly for so long.” Charlie's frown fades into something sweeter, and that seems to soothe Nick, his wounded expression starting to ease. “But I’m getting used to us.”

Nick smiles a little. “Yeah?”

Charlie nods, sure. “Yeah.”

“Good, baby.” His smile grows into something normal, natural for him. It’s a comfort for Charlie to see. “I want you to always feel safe with me. And that safety includes saying no. Anytime, any place, to anything. I want you to be real with me. I like you. The you that you’ve shown me, at the wedding, at our flats, with our friends, with Tori. Even here, like this.” Nick swallows. “I… Can I tell you my favourite memory of you? I think it might help you to see where I'm coming from.”

Charlie collapses back onto Nick’s lap and nods, eyes wide as Nick cups Charlie’s hips. Hushed, Charlie responds, “Of course.”

“It’s… when we were at Frankie’s with everyone a few days ago and you were nearly falling out of the booth with how squished we all were, and we were all chatting shit and having fun.”

“But… I freaked out that day.” Charlie frowns, awkward and squirrelly at the reminder, old impulses making him want to escape. He won't because Nick deserves better than cowardice in the face of kindness. But it's a close call. “I got scared at all the food on the table and was having a bad day, and it was probably a predecessor to this, and—”

“Charlie,” Nick says, sweeping his thumb underneath Charlie’s cheekbone, cutting him off before he can work himself up. He's grateful. “I know. That’s the memory. You went to the loo and then texted me to meet you in there. We talked about your control issues that were cropping up more than they had in a while, and I told you that you showed some good control by asking me to come get you. You asked how that was control and I said—”

“‘Because it shows that you have enough control of yourself to know when you need to ask for help.’ I remember.” Charlie swallows. “You told me that was brave.”

“It was.” Nick smiles. “It is. It’s my favourite memory because of the way you held me after, steadfast and strong, like you always are. The way you let me hold you back. It’s my favourite memory because you reached out to me. You could’ve texted Tao or Elle or Isaac, or called Tori, but you texted me. I cried to Lucy about it all night.”

Charlie cracks a smile despite the tears finally flowing forth that Nick is wiping away with his thumbs every time one drops. Charlie is doing the same for him. “You did? And what did my little zissa kop have to say about my delightful mix of trauma and brain chemistry?”

“Well, why don’t you ask her yourself?” Nick turns to the door, putting on his sweet Lucy Voice. “Luceleh! C’mere, honey!” Charlie sniffs harshly, clearing his face of any stray tears Nick may have missed. He swings his leg back around so he can sit beside Nick now instead of on top of him, waiting for Lucy.

He doesn't have to wait long. There’s the skittering of nails on hardwood, and then there is Lucy, bounding through the open door and leaping onto the bed. She knocks Nick over, but instead of getting mad, he just laughs. Nick's endless, boundless patience. The Vega Look has returned as Charlie watches Nick begin to firmly scratch behind her ears. He's so— Nick is so— “Hi, babygirl. Hi, little love. Your favourite friend wants to have a conversation with you! Are you up for the task— eugh, Luce! Off, off!” Lucy is licking Nick’s face incessantly, not listening to Nick's command at all, and the sight of it makes Charlie laugh. The Vega Look clears before Nick can catch it on him, thank God. “You laugh at my misfortune, Charlie Spring! She got her saliva in my mouth!” 

“Oy,” Charlie cringes, still smiling. “Well, sorry, but I can’t kiss you ever again.”

“Noooo,” Nick moans, flapping his arms, unable to find a way to push Lucy off without hurting her. Whenever Nick moves, she manages to wiggle in closer, completely boxing Nick onto the bed. Lucy isn't too big, but she's certainly not small either. “I need to kiss you! I haven’t since I came in here! I miss it! Crime against nature!”

Charlie rolls his eyes at the dramatics, a grin now wide across his face. “Okay, needy, maybe if you brush your teeth. With two rounds of mouthwash.”

Nick’s finally able to roll his head out of Lucy’s wrath and he smiles warmly at Charlie. “Anything for you, my darling.”

Charlie blushes and looks at Lucy, needing a distraction from the strangeness of having a man as wonderful as Nick see him. He puts a hand on Lucy’s back and her head springs up from where she was just assaulting Nick. When she starts panting and wiggling as he pets her, Charlie drags her front legs off of Nick’s chest and places her decently-large body halfway onto his lap, the rest of her on the bed between them. Her tail is whipping against Nick’s thighs in a way that must not be comfortable. “Zissa kop, did your silly daddy soil your beautiful fur with his manly tears?”

“First of all, I’m ‘Papa’ to her,” Nick sniffs haughtily. “And second of all, you joke, but crying is very manly!”

“I don’t disagree,” Charlie grins over at Nick who’s propped up, braced on his elbows, watching Charlie and Lucy with some wondrous expression Charlie can’t let himself decipher after the stress of the evening, despite his teasing. It's something akin to the Vega Look though, and it blinds Charlie enough that he has to glance away for a moment to compose himself and get back on the teasing train. It only takes a few seconds before Charlie's mischievous smirk is back in full-force. “After all, that’s why I said it.” Nick rolls his eyes, smiling too.

Charlie turns back to Lucy. “Well, what do you have to say, zissa? Update me on all your papa’s hot goss.” Charlie leans in close to her mouth, ear turned toward her snout and pauses. Lucy begins incessantly licking Charlie’s cheek now. He pulls back and gasps dramatically at her, wiping off her slobber with the hem of his t-shirt. He doesn't even think about how Nick could see his belly from his angle until after he's done it. He tries not to let the idea of it become pervasive. It's sort of working. He manages to shake off the feeling with minimal damage. A quick, nervous glance at Nick, still looking thunderstruck and so full of affection for them both, does a lot to quell his nerves.

He goes back to the familiar ground of teasing as he holds Lucy's jaw between both hands, swinging it back and forth gently. “You’re kidding! He said that I’m the most wonderful man in the world and he wants to be with me forever and ever and ever and ever? Wait, five evers? Wow, he must be pretty gone on me, huh.”

Charlie looks over at Nick, smirking. Nick scoffs, high in his throat, offended. “I said no such thing! And even if I did say that, it was meant to be in confidence, Lucy!”

Without looking away from Nick, Charlie asks, “I suppose your papa’s crush on me is just too embarrassing for you to keep to yourself, huh, Luce? Gotta be a good samaritan and spread the good news.”

“Cruel,” Nick says, shaking his head, but his voice is quiet and his gaze falls softly on Charlie’s skin, warming him where he’s started to feel cold. “But I think I’d call it much more than a crush.”

“Oh, yeah?” Charlie asks, a mere breath in the air. Nick sits up and turns to face Charlie, tucking himself cross-legged. His knees brush against Charlie's thighs where his shorts have ridden up naturally as his legs hanging off of the bed, feet brushing the floor. The closer Nick gets, the warmer Charlie feels, stoking coals and burning him up from the inside. Nick, the sunlight. Nick, the dawn. Nick, the light waking up from a long time spent dormant. “What would you call it, then?”

Nick smiles softly and tips his head. He shakes it, then leans over and kisses Charlie’s forehead. Charlie can feel Nick’s smile against his skin, an inconceivable intimacy. “Nothing you need to worry about, shayna.”

Charlie wants to say something back, maybe a smart quip that will leave Nick thinking he’s way cooler than he actually is, or an eyeroll, or a way to needle the secrecy out of him. But he can’t. Instead, he wants to beg him for every detail of Nick’s life that got him here: every memory, every stumble, every person he ever loved—romantically or otherwise. Charlie has sometimes found himself a little jealous in past relationships—though Ben has very much turned that part of him on its head and made him more anxious rather than jealous. Charlie knows vague things—never been in a relationship longer than a year, never chosen to break up with anybody, three guys and one girl, all in uni, none particularly serious, cheated on once by a guy he'd only been official with for a month, but other than that, nothing particularly awful to write home about. But despite his past with stifled jealousy, he doesn’t think he’d mind Nick telling him all about his past traipses because it’d make Charlie understand him better, see him better. It helps to know already that Nick would never cheat on him. He doesn’t know how he knows that; maybe it's knowing that Nick was cheated on—however low-stakes that cheating was—or maybe it's in the way that Nick has already printed out pictures of Charlie to hang in his house and his portion of the photo strips they had taken stuck up on his wall and refrigerator. The way he has a silly little sticky-note Charlie stuck on his forehead during their first week of dating, before they even called each other boyfriends, that read totally whipped tucked safely in his wallet so he can, as Nick put it, always have Charlie with him.

The way Nick is proud to know Charlie. To care for him.

Charlie looks around them, at the mess he’s made of his bed, the bed they were going to sleep in tonight, and is reminded sharply once again of his utter lunacy. He feels small and silly and trite. He made such a big deal out of something that should've been nothing—that would’ve been nothing as recently as a month ago. All of Nick’s actions are something Charlie tries to keep in mind, the small affections amounting into something bigger, something stronger, when he tenderly and vulnerably asks, “Did I… Am I relapsing? If I did this? I was making so much progress, Nick, and it's all just ruined now.”

Nick hums thoughtfully, but in dissent. He looks at the papers too, briefly, then back up at Charlie. "Your progress is not ruined, my love." He puts his hand over top of Charlie’s where it’s combing anxiously through Lucy’s fur. It immediately stills. “You've worked long and hard for it, and one night of your obsessive habits coming back to you does not erase that. And I don't think this has to be a full-blown relapse if we monitor it—you, me, Geoff, Tori, our gaggle of friends,” Nick says, voice pensive and quiet, but it always cuts through the din in Charlie’s head. “You have support. You don't have to go through what you're feeling right now alone. I don’t know for sure, because I’m not Geoff—or, more importantly, you—but it could be just a bit of a backslide. A blip.”

“A blip,” Charlie repeats. His voice sounds unsure, even to himself. 

“Maybe. But one to watch.” Nick doesn’t look back at the papers. Charlie expected him to, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t need to—he’s already seen the product of Charlie’s insanity, and he's patiently focused on Charlie instead of it. His ugliness in the form of numbers and numbers and numbers. He cares, but he doesn't look. He keeps looking at Charlie. He will continue to, Charlie knows, until Charlie is ready for him to. 

Nick validated the feeling without validating the thought. Charlie doesn’t know the last time someone who wasn’t Geoff did that; even Tori has occasionally had trouble with that in the past. He wonders how much research Nick did after they talked two weeks ago—he thinks of the flashcards prior to the wedding and thinks that maybe he doesn’t have to wonder all that hard.

Charlie swallows, nods faintly, then frowns. He closes his eyes and shakes his head in frustration. “I’m just… I’m sick of watching myself all the fucking time. I’m going to have to for the rest of my life and I’m tired, Nick. I’m tired of forcing myself not to look at every plate like it’s going to hurt me, and avoid looking at the knife block when I’m stressed, and a thousand other things that make me want to crawl inside myself and just rot there.” Charlie feels Nick squeeze his hand once, and he who he is with, where he is, the situation at hand. His eyes widen and he quickly looks away from Nick, disbelieving he just shared with Nick something only Geoff knows. Tori doesn’t even know the depth of his bone-deep exhaustion, not in so many words. “Sorry, sorry.”

“Hey,” Nick says quietly, tangling their fingers together on top of Lucy who’s starting to doze off on Charlie’s legs, trying valiantly to keep her eyes open so she can be involved. Nick runs the pad of his thumb against Charlie’s knuckles; the callus catches on Charlie’s cold skin—it’s always a comfort, against any and every part of him. “I thought we banned ‘sorry’.” Nick says it so kindly, but Charlie just shrugs. Nick squeezes Charlie’s hand three times, gentle as water. He imparts something deep-seated into Charlie with that touch: You. Are. Safe. With Nick, he is safe. “Baby, I…” Nick looks at him, eyes wet and supplicating. “I’m so fucking proud of you.”

That was the last thing Charlie expected Nick to say. “You— What? You are?” 

Nick gives him a watery smile. “I can’t imagine a world where I wouldn’t be. You’ve been through more than any one person deserves to have sloughed at them, and you’re still here, still functioning—”

“Barely.”

“—Still functioning,” Nick repeats, his smile patient and kind and not something Charlie’s ever going to think he deserves. “You still try. You wouldn’t be so justifiably tired if you weren’t trying. Well worth anyone’s pride. I love that about you—how hard you try.”

Charlie’s brain short-circuits. Love. Love. Love. He tells himself that doesn’t mean Nick loves him, just an aspect of him, so he doesn’t completely pass the fuck out.

He tries to refocus and plays back the words he said around the word love, and frowns. “You say that like it’s brave or something. It’s not. It’s exhausting just to stay alive some days. That’s not brave.”

“I think you’re wrong. Do you want to know why that is?” Charlie shrugs, expecting to refute whatever claim he purports. “Because you’re still here to be exhausted at all.”

Charlie smiles—just slightly, but enough for Nick to see it. It hurts to admit, because oh, how he loves to be right, but he has nothing to refute; it is a bit of a miracle that he's survived himself for this long. His survival is a mitzvah. He ungracefully reaches over Lucy to pull Nick into a hug. Charlie’s arms are around Nick’s shoulders. He presses his cheek into Nick’s pulse point, feeling Nick’s blood pump against his skin. Nick’s arms go around Charlie’s waist and make a home there. It’s an awkward angle because of Lucy, but neither of them care. Charlie cuddles in as closely as he can get, thighs pressed tightly together. The physical and mental tiredness suddenly hits him like a freight train now that he’s resting on Nick, but he still needs to say into the shell of Nick’s throat, “Thank you.”

“For what, my love?” Nick whispers it quietly into Charlie’s curls.

“For cooking. It really was so amazing.” Charlie admits carefully and quietly, “I’m grateful you care for me that way.”

“Oh, mayn gat,” Nick breathes, a little shaky. Charlie isn't sure which God he means—but then he presses a kiss to the shell of Charlie’s ear, responds into his temple, “it’s my life’s greatest pleasure,” and Charlie feels like he already knows.

Charlie feels tears well up in his eyes from the endearment Nick only pulled out at the wedding. It might not even be an endearment, for all Charlie knows. From the sentiment, from the stress of the night, he’s not sure. But Charlie's voice is very thick when he requests, “I’d like to go to sleep now, if that’s okay.”

“It’s more than okay, ziskayt.” Nick pulls back and doesn’t look at the rest of the bed, only has eyes for Charlie when he asks, “Do you want to quickly take Lucy out while I clean everything up?”

Charlie had been so worried about looking at the food and seeing the numbers again. The love he has for Nick spills over onto his cheeks.“You’d do that?”

Nick’s brow furrows in confusion as he reaches up to swipe them away with his thumbs, cupping Charlie’s cheeks gently. “Do what?”

Charlie gives him a watery smile. He leans over and kisses Nick’s forehead, long and grateful and trusting. He. Is. Safe. “Nothing you need to worry about, shayna.”

“Oi, no teasing me,” Nick whinges, squirming, which Charlie loves. He's starting to come back to himself a little, hoping that means he'll be able to sleep through the night. “That threat to stop calling you that is still on the table if you continue to take the piss out of me about it.”

Charlie smirks and raises a brow. “No, it’s not.”

Nick pouts. “How do you know? I could be strong as an ox.” 

“Maybe physically, but emotionally? Soft as butter.” Charlie leans in and kisses the pout off of Nick’s lips. It’s chaste—Lucy did have her tongue in Nick’s mouth less than fifteen minutes ago—but he pours every ounce of the unspoken into it. It works—Nick’s pout melts beneath Charlie’s mouth. Charlie pulls back a little, their lips still just-barely dragging together when Nick’s eyelashes flutter open, a little drugged like they always are when Charlie kisses him. Charlie smiles. He pretends he says he loves him when he says instead, “And I like you so much that way.”