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Charlie was on top of Nick and it felt so incredibly good to have him there, in his bed, finally. Until it didn’t. Nick could feel himself getting turned on by Charlie’s body moving on top of him. Charlie had never sat on his lap like this before, straddling him. With just his sweatpants on, there was nowhere to hide just how interested Nick’s body was becoming. The boys were pressed together and Charlie’s lips were on his neck, sending shocks through his body. Nick had never felt this turned on, this desperate for another person. Then Charlie told him to “lay back,” and suddenly, it was like everything stopped and all the air was sucked out of the room. Nick froze.
Charlie poked his head up from the spot where it had been nuzzled against Nick’s neck. “Is this okay?” he asked. Nick managed to push the word “yeah” past his lips, knowing Charlie would think he’d done something wrong. “That didn’t sound very sure,” Charlie asked.
Nick sighed, his mind racing to find the right thing to say. “I’m just not sure I’m ready to do anything more than kissing,” he replied, frantically hoping it would stop whatever had made him feel so claustrophobic without hurting Charlie’s feelings.
Charlie moved quickly to get off Nick’s lap like he’d been stung, and stammered, “Oh, no … I didn’t think we’d do … that.”
The sexual energy drained from the room, leaving two confused, awkward boys. Nick rushed to reassure Charlie, “I do want to,” and Charlie returned the sentiment, “Same … eventually.” Nick tried to shake off the uneasiness, reached out to reconnect with his boyfriend. They shared a chaste kiss without the urgency of just moments ago. Nick wanted the closeness and familiarity of the smaller boy, wanted to bury his face in his soft curls, but the room was still swimming. Feeling aroused and having Charlie know he was erect made him feel sick, like he’d done something wrong.
Earlier that day, Charlie had told Nick about his eating thing and Nick had shared with Charlie about his crap relationship with his Dad. They were closer than ever, letting out pieces of themselves that no one else got to see. Why did this have to happen now, when they finally had the hotel room to themselves?
Part of Nick wanted to be with Charlie, he really, really did. This gorgeous boy was all he had thought about for months. Every touch felt like happy little bolts of electricity running through his body. How could he not want more? He’d imagined what it would be like, all the things he wanted to do to Charlie, all the places he wanted to touch and be touched.
But another part of Nick was screaming that he couldn’t; it would destroy him to be touched like that. He knew why it felt so impossible, and he knew that Charlie didn’t have a clue and would spiral with worry that he had done something wrong. It suddenly felt urgent to help Charlie understand. “Can I tell you something?” he asked in a rush.
“What?” Charlie asked, all big eyes and curious voice. But just like that, Nick lost his nerve. What was he thinking? He couldn’t talk about it. He felt like he was trapped under a wall, weight pressing down on his chest, on his throat. “Actually, ahhh, nevermind. We’ve had such a long day and I’ve already ranted to you about my Dad. Let’s just cuddle.” Nick’s determination to share had seeped out just as quickly as it arrived.
“Oh no you don’t,” Charlie teased gently, “we said we’d tell each other things, Nicholas Nelson. So, come on now. Let’s hear it.” Charlie could always make him smile, even now. Just the sound of his voice, playful and sweet. Nick knew his heart was safe with his boyfriend. But that didn’t make the words come easily.
Nick’s mind groped for something easier to say than the whole truth, a way out of what he’d almost said. “It’s not that I don’t want you. I really do. But do you think we could just hit pause, and not try anything new for like, awhile?”
He watched Charlie shrink away and tilt his head down to hide behind his curls. “Yes, of course. I shouldn’t have pushed you, I don’t know what I was thinking. I won’t do anything like that again,” a small voice whispered. “That was really stupid of me.”
“No, Char, stop. God I’m messing this all up. It’s not you,” Nick said, anxious to let him know his reaction had nothing to do with him at all. “It’s … actually, it’s something that happened a long time ago, someone else…” Nick shook his head, not sure what to say next.
Nick let the words hang, unsure where to go from there, hoping he’d said enough. He pressed his tongue tight to the roof of his mouth, his lips closed, and swallowed hard. He couldn’t say more. He couldn’t meet Charlie’s gaze, didn’t want to see the disgust he knew would be in his eyes when he figured it out. It felt like he had let go something meant to be kept hidden, like he was naked in the middle of the school corridor and any minute Charlie was going to ask him why he had taken his own clothes off like a complete fool. Didn’t he know you weren’t meant to let people see certain parts of yourself? Things that were meant to stay hidden?
“What do you mean, ‘someone else’?,” Charlie asked. “Someone you dated before me?”
Fuck, Nick thought. He needed to say more, but what could he even say?
“No. Not like that. Um, my uncle, actually? My father’s brother.”
His face flashed in Nick’s head. His loud laugh and how he would put his arm around him and call him his best mate. He had actually liked when his uncle put his arm around him, and he felt like shit for it still.
“Your uncle?” Charlie sounded confused.
“Yeah. He started coming round more after my dad went to Paris, just you know, to see me and David.”
Nick was getting lost in the memories. He remembered his brother, David, 13 and pissed off all the time. Mum had said that it was hard becoming a teenager so they shouldn’t take it personally. She told him to give David his space, but he should have known. A part of Nick must have known why David became a sullen prick overnight, but he’d done nothing to stop it.
“It was worse for David. It really wasn’t that bad for me. There was just this one time, well, sort of two...” Nick trailed off as he got lost in his thoughts.
The first didn’t count, Nick thought. He remembered thinking back then that his uncle didn’t know nine was too old to have someone help him in the shower. Nick knew now that it wasn’t really true. He had figured it out long ago that it was all part of the set up, getting him to trust him, breaking down his boundaries so he would think it was normal … Nick could remember how confused he felt when his uncle stayed in the bathroom. How he told him to face the water and maneuvered his body without asking. He could still feel the soap sliding all around his body and could still picture the water hitting his toes while he stood there, quiet and still, letting it happen. Nick hadn’t wanted to make his uncle feel bad so he'd gone along with it, like it was normal.
Nick hoped he’d said enough, couldn’t say more, had nothing else in his head to say. Nick felt small and sick, like he did years ago, nothing like the strong boyfriend he wanted to be. His mind went blank.
“Nick…” He heard the sympathy in Charlie’s voice, bringing him back to the room and the boy in front of him. “It’s fine, really it’s fine," Nick spit out. "I just didn’t want you to think it was you ... the going slow part. That’s all. But we can definitely still kiss. I like the kissing.” Nick laughed to lighten the mood, hoping it would change everything back to normal.
“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” Nick turned his head away, this was so hard to get through, putting it to words, letting it be real.
“Yes. Yeah, he did some fucked up shit. It wasn’t all bad though, I got to go to a lot of fun places actually. He took us to rugby matches, the arcade, the beach. He was a better dad than my dad ever was. Or, I mean, I thought he was.”
“Nick,” Charlie said it so softly, like his voice was a blanket that Nick could wrap around himself. “You can tell me anything.”
Charlie waited and time stretched out between them. Every second Nick didn’t answer felt like a growing silence that he would never be able to fill. What if he never spoke again? His brain scrambled for something to say but nothing came.
“You don’t have to tell me,” a soft voice and a gentle touch on his hand steadied his shakiness just enough.
“Yes, I mean, it’s what you probably think it is? He … did things to me, but it wasn’t that bad,” vague, right. Way to go Nelson. That clears everything up, I’m sure. His mind pictured some of the worst of what his uncle did to him, and his stomach flipped. “I mean, it wasn’t all bad?” Lighten the mood, please, please, he thought. He would give anything to say something normal.
“He took me to Thorpe Park that last time. Just me. David was away at rugby camp. We went on all these huge rides and ate junk food all day. It was a great day, until we left to go home.”
Everything in the room felt far away, like maybe Nick wasn’t real or the hotel room wasn’t. He looked up at Charlie to find something real to latch onto and some way to hold onto the present. None of the revulsion or disgust he expected to see was present. He found only kindness in Charlie’s eyes.
Nick continued, “He had parked in the back of the carpark. We walked forever and it was so dark. I think he planned it that way? To park far away from everyone. Or he just got lucky, I don’t know. He was so fun, always joking, always telling me how great I was at sport and at school, telling me to go for it – ride the big rides, buy the big ice cream, live it up, Nicky! Like I said, it wasn’t that bad .. it was just … He just… When we were in the car … I don’t think I can say it.”
“God, you don’t have to,” Charlie whispered and he pulled Nick onto his chest. “You never have to do anything at all with me that you don’t want to.” Nick exhaled, resting the side of his face against Charlie’s warm body. He rested there, with Charlie’s cheek against the top of his head, recharging until he felt a little stronger. He realized he might have made it sound worse than it was.
“It wasn’t sex,” Nick blurted out. “It didn’t go that far, I don’t want you to think I’m saying it was that because it wasn’t.” He sat up, looking at Charlie’s face, trying to read his expression to see if he’d said too much. Charlie’s eyes were soft, worried, but calm.
Nick looked down at his hands, clasping each other, squeezing one hand between the fingers of the other. Charlie reached out his own hands, face up between them, not touching him, just there. Charlie was always there when he needed a safe place. He stopped crushing his own fingers and placed his rough palms in Charlie’s soft ones. Charlie smiled his sweet smile and Nick felt some of the tightness loosen in his chest.
He knew he was being vague and that Charlie would have questions if he didn't keep going. “It was just touching… touching and he used his mouth. There, I said it,” Nick let out a gasp, finally breathing again. “That was it, that was all. He tried to get me to do that to him as well, but I couldn’t move. I just curled up in a ball and he left me alone.” Nick felt like he was going to throw up. He swallowed and forced himself to keep talking.
“After, when he was driving me home, I remember he said ‘don’t worry that you didn’t return the favor this time’, and then he asked me to keep it a secret. Well, he told me really, he didn’t ask. And I said I would, but I didn’t. I think Mum knew something was wrong straight away and when she asked, I told her. Thank God for Mum. I don’t know how, but she got David to say what had happened to him too. I still don’t even know what he did to David. I remember he would bring him into his room when we stayed there on the weekend and I would just be out in the living room, playing videogames. He took him in his bedroom, Charlie, and I didn’t go check on him even once.” Nick was rambling now. He needed to fill the room with words, less scary ones, to block out the other ones he had said earlier.
“Nick, what do you think you could have done? You were a kid,” Charlie insisted. “Of course, you were playing videogames. How old were you?”
“Nine. It was a long time ago. Look, I just wanted you to know. Please, I really do want to be with you, I swear. Just … I’m sorry I messed up our night alone. I know how much you were looking forward to this trip.”
“Uh-uhn. No sorries, not for any of this,” Charlie said. “You were so little.”
“It was a long time ago,” Nick shrugged and forced a smile. “I don’t know what was up tonight, long day I guess. I really do want you, so much.”
“Listen to me, we are never going to do anything you don’t want to do,” Charlie reassured him. “At all. We can go slow. We can do nothing at all. I just want to be with you, however, feels right, but only if it feels right.”
Nick collapsed into him, burying his face against Charlie’s chest, breathing the familiar smell of him. “This feels right.”
“Yes it does,” Charlie said, tightening his arms around the larger boy.
Charlie
Charlie pulled Nick to his chest, squeezing the larger boy, trying to envelop him in safe arms like Nick always did for him. They lay there in peaceful silence and Charlie hoped it was soothing to Nick after such a raw conversation. He felt a wash of anger flow through him, like he’d been punched in the stomach and he wanted to punch back. Who was this man who hurt Nick? And when Nick was just a child? Charlie pictured Nick when he was younger. He’d seen a few pictures at his house, freckles and missing teeth and a cheesy grin in his little rugby uniform. How could this have happened to his sweet golden retriever boy?
Charlie ran his fingers through the larger boy’s soft hair and felt him bury his face tighter to Charlie’s chest. His hair was damp with sweat around his temples. It must have been so hard to talk about it. His strong rugby lad had sounded like someone was half strangling him when he choked the words out. He’d spoken in fits and starts with little gasps for air, like it was so hard to talk that he couldn’t even breathe.
Charlie wanted to cry, but he stuffed it down. Right now, was about Nick. He would be strong for Nick, just like Nick had been so strong for Charlie. Ben’s face popped into Charlie’s mind. Nick, pulling Ben off of him and telling him to piss off. He wished he could go back and pull Nick’s uncle off. Tell him to go fuck himself and leave little boys alone. His stomach roiled at the thought of a grown man putting his mouth on Nick in such an invasive way. Charlie remembered how it felt to have Ben on him, to want him to get off, to be powerless to stop him, panicked and cornered like a frightened animal. Nick must have felt that and worse. His selfless Nick, who was kind to everyone and put everyone else’s needs above his own. Nick always stepped in when someone else was in pain. When Charlie wasn’t eating, when Imogen ran away from dinner after Ben called her a nasty word, Nick was always the first one there to help other people.
He remembered the things Nick had said to him after Ben. How he immediately told Charlie that he had nothing to be sorry for. Nick had reached out over text that night, telling Charlie that he could talk about it, but reassuring him that he didn’t have to if he didn’t want to. Saying that it was serious and begging Charlie to stay away from Ben. Of course, Nick knew the right things to say. He had known too well what that felt like. It had devastated Charlie to lose all control to Ben. What must Nick have felt as a frightened little boy? And with a grown adult that he trusted abusing him?
He wanted to say more, to find the right words to take it all away, but what if he said the wrong thing and made it worse somehow? Nick shifted and looked up at Charlie with heavy eyes. Charlie kissed his forehead, “Why don’t you get some sleep? Let me hold you while you rest.” Nick relaxed a little, let out a breath that sounded closer to a sigh rather than his earlier gasps for air. The boys rearranged themselves in the hotel bed, Charlie curled behind Nick, pressing his chest up against him, wrapping one arm over Nick’s arm to hold him close, but being careful to keep his hips back so only their upper halves were touching. He would be careful from now on, never letting Nick get hurt by anything he did again.
“Thank you,” Nick whispered after a yawn. “Can we stay like this all night?”
“Yes, yes. Absolutely yes.” Charlie pressed his lips behind Nick’s ear and whispered a breath, “sleep now.”