Chapter Text
“Dickhead,” Charlie mutters under his breath as he smacks the button next to the door with unnecessary force and slips into the building before it’s even fully opened. He swipes his thumb upwards, removing his ex-boyfriend and whoever the fuck his new partner is from his phone screen. He’s not sure who he’s actually calling a dickhead, because right now, he feels like the world’s biggest one.
Tommy was perfect in every way for him. Attractive, giving, understanding of his needs and his mental health. So what if there’d been “room for improvement” in their sex life? Sex isn’t everything. They had a connection outside of the bedroom and that mattered too, didn’t it?
Well, apparently not, because Tommy dumped him a month ago and Charlie hasn’t heard from him since. He’s plastered his new beau all over his Instagram and keeps posting about their open relationship and how sexy and freeing it is, blah blah blah. Well, good for him. Charlie could’ve been into that too, if only Tommy had asked.
Dickhead.
“Morning Charlie,” Nick Nelson greets him from behind the reception desk after Charlie swipes his name badge and lets himself into the swanky office on the fourth floor. “How was your weekend?”
“Shit,” Charlie replies, popping a piece of Wrigley’s extra strength peppermint chewing gum into his mouth to disguise the smell of cigarette smoke. “Yours?”
“Oh,” Nick says, momentarily thrown by his bluntness. “It… it was good, thanks. Went out for dinner on Friday, chilled on Saturday, then a nice early dog walk on Sunday followed by a lovely roast with my mum -”
“Hi Nick,” Samantha interrupts Nick’s weird rendition of Craig David’s 7 Days as she breezes past Charlie in a cloud of expensive perfume. She’s dressed impeccably as always, in a grey pencil skirt and pristine white blouse devoid of a single crease or mark. Charlie knows it’s because she thinks she can pass as a fancy lawyer even though she’s only a paralegal, which is basically the equivalent of a slave. She will be a lawyer one day though, so props to her for starting how she means to go on.
“Sam,” Nick responds, the corners of his mouth lifting flirtatiously. No one calls her Sam. It’s Samantha. She’s only reminded Charlie about sixty five thousand fucking times. “Fancy seeing you here.”
She looks like she’s trying not to return his smile. “Have you got that coffee brand I asked for? The Amsterdam partners are due in the office at lunchtime.”
Charlie eavesdrops while he takes off his coat, making a fuss of hanging it on the hook by the door and trying to look nonchalant.
“Have I ever let you down before?”
Samantha places two perfectly manicured hands on the desk and leans over it slightly, lowering her voice. “In a business capacity, or intimately?”
Nick chuckles at her boldness. “The conference room is already set up. Everything you asked for is in there.”
She retreats, all work-mode again. “I’ll need you to print out and laminate some stuff for me too. I’ll email it over.”
“You’re the boss.”
She smirks and flicks her perfectly slicked back ponytail over her shoulder. “I certainly was on Friday.” And then she’s gone, and Charlie makes haste too before Nick realises what a nosy git he is.
He likes Nick. There’s nothing wrong with him. He says a chirpy hello every morning and always gets Charlie everything he needs. He’s just a raging slut and has no issue shitting where he eats, which can be extremely irritating. Half the girls in Charlie’s team have fucked him and he’s sick of hearing them talk about how great he is in bed. He can literally feel himself getting gayer the more they talk, in graphic detail, about Nick’s intimate knowledge of a vagina. Turns out a lot of cishet men don’t know where the clitoris is? Apparently Nick does, and that's something to celebrate around here.
Fucking hell, it can be grating when he’s trying to do his monthly reports though.
He’s here a little early so he can prep for this morning’s huddle, so he grabs a flat white from the machine in the kitchen before making himself comfortable at his desk. The marketing department is pretty intense; he manages a team of all women and although they’re lovely, he assumes they’d all kill for his job and are waiting for the day he fucks up so they can step on his neck with their four-inch stilettos. That seems to be the consensus around here. Law firms tend to be pretty dog-eat-dog and this one is no exception.
He snaps his headphones over his messy curls and gets to work, zoning out for 45 minutes while he works through his to-do list and sets up his calendar for the week. In his peripheral vision Nick saunters around the office, greeting people, setting up new starters with lanyards and handing out iPhones and tablets to the solicitors. Charlie resists the urge to roll his eyes. Nick is such a flirt. He’s so overtly frisky that can’t even wipe that smile off his face around the men. It’s crazy how it bleeds into every action he does, every task he completes. Charlie wonders if he’s ever had a dry spell, sexually speaking. Probably not. There are enough gorgeous, confident and ambitious women here to last him until the next ice age.
At lunchtime he slips out for a well-overdue cigarette. It’s a dirty habit he picked up at uni but it keeps him sane in a place like this. It’s a high-stress office but everyone abides by the work hard, play hard rule, meaning long days and even longer nights. Honestly, Charlie’s probably the only person not constantly boning someone from the office. Every fucker else seems to be doing it. It’s the equivalent of squeezing a stress ball, he supposes.
He was always more interested in finding love. And look where that got him. Dickhead.
“Got a lighter?”
Startled out of his huffy stupor, Charlie looks up and into pretty brown eyes. Ugh, him, again.
“Yeah, here.” He hands his lighter to Nick, who also sparks up. “Didn’t know you smoked.”
“It’s a recent thing,” Nick replies through a grimace. “Don’t tell on me.”
Charlie raises an eyebrow at his shit joke. “Right.”
They smoke in silence. It’s awkward as fuck and Charlie knows it’s his fault. He feels a rush of guilt and clears his throat.
“Samantha, eh?”
Nick shoots him a sideways look as he blows out a lungful of smoke. “What about her?”
“She’s just a bit out of your league, isn’t she?” Charlie turns and rests one shoulder on the brick wall, giving him the once over. “How do you do it?”
“I dunno what you mean.”
Charlie rolls his eyes again. That’s another thing that infuriates him about Nick Nelson. He doesn’t kiss and tell, so Charlie has to find out from everybody fucking else instead of hearing it from his mouth.
“Don’t play dumb, I know you took her out on Friday.”
Nick’s lips twitch. “Were you listening in this morning?”
“You weren’t exactly being subtle.”
Nick grins around the cig in his mouth. “Wow. I’ll add nosy to the list of things I know about you.”
Charlie tilts his head. “You have a list?”
“I do now.” His eyes crinkle when he smirks playfully. “It has one thing on it.”
Charlie bites the inside of his cheek so he doesn’t smile and give away how intrigued he is by their back and forth. He refuses to be drawn in by Nick’s charm. Just because he’s attracted to men doesn’t mean he intends to flap around Nick like the girls in this office. He has a little thing called dignity, thanks very much.
“So why are you so moody today?” Nick asks, then lifts the cig to his mouth and takes another drag.
Charlie scoffs out a laugh. “I’ve been moody for a while now. You’ve only just noticed?”
“Humour me.”
“I got dumped.”
“Jesus,” Nick sighs, smoke leaving his mouth. “Sorry.”
”It’s fine. Apparently I’m too fucking boring for him.”
“He said that?”
“No,” Charlie says, “but he’s already got himself into a new, open relationship, and he never once mentioned his preferences to me, so I guess that means he assumes I’m too vanilla for it.”
Nick shakes his head. “There’s nothing wrong with vanilla. I love vanilla ice cream. Vanilla candles. Vanilla body butter -”
“I’m not vanilla,” Charlie snaps. Nick holds his hands up in a gesture of surrender.
“Alright. You strike me as more of a mint choc chip man, to be honest.” He grins again. Infuriating.
“Whatever that means.” Charlie rolls his eyes and stubs out his cigarette in the metal box on the wall.
Nick laughs. “You’re a bit of a mean twat, you know that?”
“Get used to it.” He sighs and pushes off from the wall. “It’s just so annoying, because how am I supposed to know what I’m into if he doesn’t give me a chance?” Nick is still listening to him but he’s mostly talking to himself at this point. “I could be into it. I could go to swingers parties. Why does he think I’m not interested in that sort of thing?”
“Maybe he thinks you’d be jealous,” Nick offers. Charlie looks at him, surprised to find him still standing there. He sort of wants him to piss off so he can rant to himself in peace.
“I probably would be if it was, like, a polyamory thing. But it looks like it’s just an open relationship. Sex is different, isn’t it? Sex is just sex.”
“For some people.”
“Well, you’d know.”
Nick doesn’t respond to that. He simply smiles again, that cocky smile that says nothing and everything at the same time. He takes his cigarette packet out of his back pocket and offers Charlie another. He shouldn’t, really, he’s got to get back to work. But this is good for him, talking it out over a good lung destroying.
He accepts one because he left his at his desk and lets Nick light it for him before taking the cheap plastic lighter back. He’s glad Nick doesn’t vape. It’s such a Gen Z thing. Despite how much of a hypocrite it makes him, it gets on his nerves watching the 20-year-old paralegals with their giant multicoloured sticks in their hands, vaping away right next to the no vaping inside signs. When did that become cool? He’s so glad he’s not in his early twenties anymore. It looks exhausting.
“Sounds fun, to be honest,” Nick says eventually, once they’re puffing away again. “Casual sex with other couples.”
Charlie shrugs. “I’ve never really thought about it before. I’m down to try everything at least once though.” He looks at Nick, surprised at the direction their conversation has gone in. He wouldn’t call Nick a friend; they talk every day but in a work capacity, nothing else. It’s a bit odd, how easily they’ve slipped into a casual chat about fucking. For Nick it’s second nature though, so that tracks.
“Are you gonna go then?”
“What?” Charlie asks, his cig perched precariously between his lips while he digs around for his phone with both hands.
“To the parties.” Nick gestures loosely. “To try it?”
“I got dumped, remember?” Charlie deadpans, both eyebrows raised now. “Pretty sure it’s couples only at those things. The ones he goes to, anyway.”
Nick grimaces. “Oh, right.”
“I might just have to shag about like you instead.”
“Hey! I don’t shag about.”
“Well, what would you call it then? Tripping and falling inside them?”
Nick chokes out a laugh. “I’d call it dinner, Charlie.”
Charlie rolls his eyes. “Right. Dinner.” And dessert, he adds in his head. He checks his phone. “Fuck, I have so much work to do.” He hasn’t finished his cigarette but he stubs it out anyway. Something about their chat, the way Nick brings out this weirdly honest, oversharing side of himself, is making him nervous. “Thanks for the smoke, Nick.”
“No probs. Good luck with your shagging about!” he calls after him right as a gaggle of hot young solicitors walk out of the building in their crisp suits. Charlie swivels around to glare at him, flipping him off. Fucking dickhead. Nick smiles in response, all innocent and golden-retriever like. He doesn’t fool Charlie, not one bit.
As soon as he’s back at his desk, chewing more gum and slathering his hands in sanitiser, he opens Instagram again for a couple more minutes of stalking. Tommy has posted even more photos from the weekend, all pretty young couples who look like they have more money than sense. He looks suave and handsome, his dark waves slicked back a bit, his long eyelashes highlighting the vivid green of his eyes. Charlie feels a rush of devastation at the sight of him. He can’t believe it’s over. What they had was so good and now he’s alone all over again while his gorgeous ex gallivants around London drinking martinis and fucking other people.
God, he wants him back. He wants him so much.
In a momentary lapse in sanity he wonders what Tommy would do if he turned up at one of these things. They ended amicably, mainly because Charlie kept his mouth shut and agreed with everything Tommy said. At the time it had felt like some sort of weird power battle and he’d wanted to hold onto his pride. He didn’t want Tommy to know how gutted he was. Blame his romantic track record for that.
So maybe Tommy would be happy to see him. Excited, even. Are exes off the table? He’s not familiar with the rules. Maybe if they shared a moment together Tommy would remember all the ways they were perfect for each other. That wasn’t a completely unhinged way to think, right? Right?!
He opens an incognito tab on his phone and googles swinger parties, conducting a cheeky ten-minute bit of research. This is not insane. It’s perfectly normal to have thoughts about getting your ex back when he’s with someone else and not monogamous. He just needs one night, just one night, to convince him the grass was already green…
Yeah, so he’s a bit crazy. But love makes people crazy, okay? Shut up. He knows he’s pathetic but he has to do something because he’s heartbroken, alone, overworked, underpaid and spends all his time listening to how much fun every fucker else in this building is having.
Technically, he could go. No one would make him do anything, he could assert his own boundaries. These things are all about consent and comfort. He doesn’t have to have sex with anyone. Doesn’t even have to touch them if he doesn’t want to. Doesn’t even have to look at them. Although that would be a bit rude. He’s got nothing against eye contact, jeez.
The longer he sits there scrolling through pages and pages of information on Google, the more feasible it sounds. He goes back to work but the idea stays, shimmering and attractive, in the corner of his mind. Teasing him. Tempting him.
The problem is that he’s single. The parties Tommy seems to be attending, and openly talking about, are about partner swapping. One requires a partner to participate in such things. Charlie is sorely missing one of those.
He looks up, over the top of the large monitor connected to his much smaller laptop. His desk is opposite the kitchen and he can see Nick through the glass, leaning on the countertop and flirting outrageously with Phoebe from copyright law while she sips from her lipstick-stained coffee cup and laughs a bit too hard at his mediocre jokes.
The idea is fleeting, a flutter of curiosity, a whisper of lunacy. What if…
No.
Definitely not.
It’s the stupidest idea he’s ever had in his life. What happened to that dignity he was so sure he had earlier today?
He gives his head a shake and goes back to work. There’s no way. He’s not asking Nick to pretend to be his boyfriend. Nick, his colleague. Nick, the serial womaniser who gets more than enough sex and doesn’t need another avenue for that. Nick, the attractive, protein-shake-drinking wall of muscle who would probably laugh him out of the building and into the river Thames if asked to pretend to be in a gay relationship. All so Charlie can convince his ex to dump his current partner and choose him instead.
Yep, that would be a foray into madness. He’s not doing it. He’s not going swinging with Nick. The dickhead.