Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

💙Nick💛

“You’re literally pinching me against the steering wheel, Nick.”

“Sorry—” I reach down in the narrow space to try and manoeuvre the seat backwards, to give us more room. Charlie winces when I accidentally push it further forward, almost winding him, and glares down at me. He’s got a very expressive face, especially this close up, and even in the dark, right now I think he might be veering towards hate-fucking me. His fingertips are digging into the flesh at my sides, nails almost drawing blood where he is clinging to me so hard, and I want to ask him to stop. Or to be more gentle, maybe. But that isn’t what this is. It isn’t what I asked him for, when I approached him in the club.

Charlie Spring. I haven’t actually spoken to him properly since we sat together in form during my GCSEs. I don’t think I said more than ten words to him back then, either, but at least I wasn’t mean to him – unlike some of the others. He was quiet, kind and funny. I was— I was okay… on the surface. Popular, sort of, thanks to rugby. Polite enough to get by without drawing any attention to myself, which was my main aim in life back then. Teachers didn’t really notice me, except our rugby coach, and I doubt any of them gave me a second thought after I failed pretty much every exam and never came back. Maybe, if I’d made more of a fuss, they would have questioned it a little more.

Still, it was better than before, back in primary where I developed a reputation for being the kind of boy that your parents didn’t want you being around. It’s not like I hadn’t asked for it, by pushing other kids away – literally, in one slightly traumatic case at the playground – but there’s something lonely about being eight years old and only having your brother for company. Particularly when said brother copes by shutting down. 

At least in secondary school, most people don’t listen to their parents, and I had a hope of making some friends. There were the rugby lads, and some of the girls who hung around them by the fence in the mornings. Not many of them kept in touch, but that’s life. Back then, I’m pretty sure that Charlie avoided us at all costs – something to do with the bullying he suffered when he first came out – and by extension, that included me, regardless of Mr Lange’s seating plan. He always seemed nice enough, though. Even if he largely ignored me.

I heard, a lot later, that Charlie ended up being sectioned before his GCSEs were up. He spent some time in one of those clinics you hear horror stories about, and has apparently been in and out ever since. I’ve followed him quietly on Instagram for years. He breaks rules, he breaks hearts and there’s not much he isn’t game for, if the offer is right. I can’t quite marry up the sweet boy I’d known with the one people have told me about, but there you go.

Bit like how it’s hard to picture him looking at me shyly now, when he is grinding down into my lap. Every so often he leans in and bites my lip, before arching his back and moaning. He’s not shy when he meets my eye. He knows what he wants. It feels very real, when he looks at me like that. I’m slightly glad that one of the two lampposts in this carpark seems to be on the fritz and only illuminating every third second because I’m not sure I could handle the full scope of his gaze. I scrabble on the passenger seat and grab the bottle we threw there earlier. Straight vodka burns, but I gulp it down regardless, before he gives me another look and I tip it down his throat too.

My keys rattle and clink as they fall out of my pocket when I lean in even closer. Charlie flinches a little at the sound, but carries on kissing me anyways. There isn’t enough room for me to go scrambling about to find them without opening the door. No matter, it’s not like I can drive us home anyways.

Charlie is toying with my belt. My jeans feel too tight. 

This is not what I expected to happen today.

Three hours ago, I walked out of the flat I share with my girlfriend in a rage, and headed straight to an empty car park to scream… and then went on to the club. I’d like to pretend I had no plan, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the second Charlie uploaded a story – him under flashing purple lights, with his location right there in a sticker superimposed over the image – I turned my engine back on and threaded through back streets to park up outside that club. I picked up Charlie like it was the most natural thing in the world and promised him a good time.

I have, quite literally, no idea what I’m doing.

Fuck Imogen, is all I can say.

No, not Imogen. Fuck her fucking friends. Imogen is nothing but good, and sweet, and far more than I ever deserved – she just keeps unfortunate company, apparently. It’s my fault, for forgetting my wallet when they were all having a girls’ night in our flat. If I’d been more organised, then I would have been none the wiser about what they really think of me. My plan had been to go straight from the gym to the pub for my usual Friday night drowning of sorrows – maybe call David, and listen as he accepts drunk-me being a prick to him down the phone, like he always does. If I’d remembered my wallet, I wouldn’t have walked back into the flat just in time to hear one of Imogen’s bitchy friends cackle, then scream in her wine-drunk voice:

“What do you mean, he can’t ever get it up?”

My cheeks burn with shame at the thought that they’ve all talked about me. They’ve discussed the fact that I’m technically a virgin at 22 – unless you count some enthusiastic finger-fucking and going down on my girlfriend – even if the entire concept of virginity is bullshit. From a technical perspective, I’m not even sure I am. Does it count if you didn’t want it?

Does it count if someone pushed their way into you and never once considered that they’d be ripping your very being in half?

I hope not. I hope I get some choice in the matter.

Charlie. I chose Charlie. Even if this means nothing to him. I try to focus on him – on the here and now – instead of letting myself dwell on what I’m pretty certain is now a doomed relationship. Maybe it always was destined to fall apart, from the first moment Imogen leant in close and said she was ready to take things further, and I chose to lie, instead of admitting the painful truth.

I don’t know how either Charlie or I are getting home, given that, between us, we have now polished off the leftover third of a bottle of vodka David dropped in my car last time I picked him up. I feel woozy and boozy, and I don’t know how Charlie is upright with his slighter frame, but I guess he’s more used to the wild life than me. Both our hands are clumsy, and there’s no way that I would be able to stomach the feel of his hand creeping lower down my body without the buzz, but he looks at me with a kind of wicked clarity that tells me he’s not too far gone to do this.

Maybe I will end up too far gone. I’ve heard of whiskey dick, but maybe vodka will do the job too. But I’d be deluding myself if I pretended that I’m not hard as fuck right now. I feel queasy with a mixture of nerves and booze and memories, and I bite it all down and focus on the bruise I am trying to work into Charlie’s throat.

Mine. Just for a moment.

Maybe he’s not the first person that I’ve ever fancied, but he’s certainly the first I’ve ever let pull down the fly of my jeans and press their palm to my erection like it doesn’t fill me with fear.

But he does. And he’s the first person to do so in fifteen years.

It wasn’t Mum’s fault. She was lonely when our Dad left. Grandma told us that she needed some decent friends in her life – that David and I should be supportive, and grateful that she hadn’t left too – so when Auntie Diane introduced Mum to a work colleague, we pretended to be delighted. When she brought him home – ostensibly as a friend, though even as kids, we could tell she wanted more – we acted polite, and told him stories about our days. He sat with us at the dinner table and asked us about school, our friends and our favourite subjects. David was in his first year at Truham, and I had not long moved up to the junior building of our primary. I felt grown-up – especially when I was allowed to eat dinner later and join them all at the table – and it was nice, for a while, to have someone show an interest. Christ knows our dad never did. 

Mr Scrubs, we called him. He was tall and handsome – I suppose – and kind to Mum. David and I would speculate, at first, whether he would become Mum’s boyfriend, and eventually, our new dad. Once or twice, we overheard her and Auntie Diane giggling about him over their glasses of wine. Not often – the anti-anxiety meds that Mum was on made her a bit dopey when she mixed them with alcohol – but enough to know that she was happy. We wanted her to be happy.

David caught him sneaking out of my bedroom a couple of months in. I don’t remember the first time it happened, but I do remember the first time I saw my brother’s face crumple in my doorway.

“Don’t tell Mummy…” I had whispered, when David bundled me up in my duvet and carried me to his room. He was almost too small to lift me, but somehow he managed – shuffling slowly down the corridor and knocking my socked feet against the wall as he went. “Don’t tell her – she’ll be too sad. She’ll think it’s her fault.”

I could have told our dad, I suppose. But back then, he was refusing to speak to us in anything other than French, and neither David nor I had the words for this thing that had happened. I don’t think I even had the words in English.

So, instead, it was down to my big brother to protect me. And he tried, he really did.

There was the time David slashed his tyres; big, long gashes made with the penknife that our Grandpa once left on the kitchen counter. The one that David had squirrelled away in his pocket, and later pulled out to show me when Mum had gone to bed. I remember being frightened by how sharp the edge of the blade looked – begging David to stop when he prodded the tip with his finger and watched the little speck of blood bloom. Turns out, it sliced through rubber like butter. I never did ask David how he managed it without getting caught. We had just had one of those camera doorbells installed, but somehow he was able to sneak out completely undetected. The romantic part of me imagines him shimmying down the guttering, or creeping down the trellis that lined the brickwork underneath his window. More likely, he slipped through the French doors to our garden, and clambered over the fence like I had seen him do dozens of times before.

When the tyre vandalism didn’t work, and Mr Scrubs came back again and again, there was the time he put laxatives in the water. We’d both been watching too many spy films, unattended in his bedroom, and so he sprinkled the powdered contents of some pills from the medicine cabinet into two glasses before he let him take one – a preventative measure just in case Mr Scrubs tried switching the drinks, he told me later. I was pushing my peas around my plate as I watched; David maintaining eye contact with this big, dark and scary man as he gulped at the water. The front door had slammed shut less than an hour later, as I listened to David groan in the toilet from my bedroom. Safe, for once. For a little while.

Until it all went wrong, and things got a lot worse before they got better.

I thought nothing of it when I found David out in the garden one afternoon – carefully grinding a rock against a tea towel on the patio. It made a satisfying crunching noise as he did so, so I sat down with whatever toy I had brought outside with me and watched him frown in concentration.

“What are you doing?”

“You don’t need to worry about that.”

Mum caught him gently spooning the shards of glass – remnants from a pair of our dad’s old reading glasses David had found in the kitchen drawer, and one of the ramekins we had eaten pudding from the night before – onto one of the plates of food she had just finished dishing up. Mine, the smallest, was safe at the far end. Mum always gave herself fewer roast potatoes. I’ll never know if David had intended the rest to be a gamble – whether he planned on tipping the shards into both plates and hoping for the best, or if there had been more to the plan. Either way, it never got that far.

Mum was beside herself. Apoplectic and apologetic and afraid of a son she no longer recognised. And David sat, tight-lipped, as she demanded to know what had possessed him to do it. I remember sitting at the bottom of the staircase, trying to worry a hole into the waistband of my pyjama bottoms so I could pull the elastic tight around my waist, and listening to the chaos. Mr Scrubs had suggestions – he was a psychologist, don’t you know – and he had the connections to find David a place at a summer school for troubled boys. Six weeks. And David never said a word – never broke his promise not to tell Mum… not to make me into the reason her heart was broken all over again.

Auntie Diane tried to intervene. I think she knew there was more to it than David just acting out for no reason. She heard Mum’s complaints that I was wetting the bed far later than my brother ever did – saw the way that I stopped letting everyone hug me – and knew. She knew something was wrong. She just couldn’t quite see what. I guess our brains protect us, and hers couldn’t let her believe that the man she’d introduced into our lives could be a monster.

And without David, I couldn’t quite see myself surviving.

I ran away before the first week was over. Or at least, that was the intention. I got as far as making sure I had matching socks and some snacks in the little satchel that I took to school, before sneaking out through the back door into our garden. I nearly screamed when the grassy floor flashed red and blue, and a siren chirped, once, somewhere nearby. The police, looking for David. David, who had somehow crawled out of the window of the old scout lodge that served as a camp base, and was missing. Mum was beside herself when I crept back in and pretended that I had just woken up. So much so that she didn’t even notice that I was wearing mismatched clothes instead of pyjamas.

It was the final straw though. The presence of the police meant that I was no longer easy prey. Once they’d found David, plodding along the edge of the dual carriageway that was his only familiar route home, we never saw Mr Scrubs again. Mum mentioned him, from time to time, with a slightly sad air. But he never set foot in our house again.

David still crept into my room almost every night for months, though. Curled himself around me like a question mark and fell asleep. Until he got too big, and the memories started to fade to the point that we could both lock them away enough to function.

We never talked about it again, not in any real detail. But, sometimes, he lets me know that he remembers as well as I do.

“You should talk to someone,” he had hissed, the evening when I brought Immy home for the first time. He saw the way I flinched when she leant in for a kiss or tried to hold my hand. “Deal with it, finally.”

“Absolutely not,” I’d snapped back, downing the last of my drink and slamming the empty bottle down on the table. He had given me that pitying look that I hated, but at least he hadn’t pushed.

By that point, I had aged out – or, more accurately, bombed out – of any sort of education, so it’s not like there was a school counsellor’s door I could knock on. So, in reality, even if I did want to talk to someone, it was either ask Mum for the money for private counselling, or risk seeing one of Auntie Diane’s colleagues at the public clinic nearby. 

“They’re not allowed to share anything you say, you know,” David had assured me. Which I know, on a sort of intellectual level. Yet the part of my brain still occupied by that  frightened little child can’t get past the fear that people do talk to their colleagues about their patients. Maybe not by name, but with details that could eventually leak back to him, and have him showing up at my door like a ghost I can’t quite shake.

Or what if I’d bumped into Auntie Diane in the corridor, and had to watch, in horror, as she connected the dots? What else would she do? Oh, who are you here to see Nicky? My colleague who specialises in child abuse victims? How interesting.

“Not worth the risk,” I insisted, while David had tutted and drained his beer.

I don’t think I could talk about it, even if I wanted to. It’s all in a neat box that I manage to keep locked away most of the time. Pandora should have kept a lid on it, and so should I.

And, don’t get me wrong, I was upfront with Imogen from the beginning. Well – as upfront as I could be. She knew pretty early on that sex was completely off of the table, on my end. I told her some wild story of a rugby tackle gone wrong at a camp when I was a teenager that left me completely unable to, well, perform. She listened, with rapt fascination, as I pretended to be sad that things just never worked down there after that. 

And she was patient, and kind. I almost felt bad for lying to her. Until we started experimenting with me getting her off in bed, and I hated myself more and more for having any kind of reaction to the experience. Eventually, she suggested that maybe my complete lack of sex drive was what was causing my low moods – how was she to know it was the literal opposite? – and marched me straight to the doctor. He barely listened to me talking vaguely about feeling depressed before he shrugged, tapped away at the computer, and then handed me a piece of paper that I dutifully took to the counter at the chemist. Reading the long list of side effects of the prescription I ended up with – the dosage high and numbing – and realising that it could be the key to boxing the last remnants of any sexual feelings completely had had me kissing Imogen in gratitude for suggesting it in the first place. It dampened things just enough – and it’s not like an even lower sex drive had any impact on my day-to-day life.

All in all, a ‘teenage rugby injury’ was working perfectly well as an excuse, until Imogen had to go and mention it in front of Mum one day over dinner. Mum, who looked confused while David choked on his roast potatoes.

“What rugby injury?” had cut through me, a cold shard, and even David’s attempts to cover me fell flat.

“Well, to be honest, Mum. We both got injured so much as kids it’s no surprise you can’t remember.”

The bitter tone in his voice was lost on everyone other than me.

And the seed of doubt was suddenly sown in Immy’s mind. After that, it was all did your Mum take you to a specialist? and are you sure that there’s nothing that can be done? 

Suddenly, my delicate cover was blown, and I was no longer her poor boyfriend who medically couldn’t get it up. Now – what was it her friends called me? – now I’m just frigid.

Poor Immy, they had said. How have you coped?

And now I realise that their doubts have been rewriting everything in her head long before I heard about them. I could see the cogs whirring, in hindsight. All those times I used my hands and my mouth to leave her panting and satisfied on the bed, before slipping away to the bathroom, were tainted. She saw me, in her mind’s eye, sneaking off to have a quick wank because I just didn’t want her – instead of the truth, which was that I needed to get away before I ruined everything and vomited onto the carpet at the slight fizzle of arousal that crept up on me.

Maybe I should have told her I wanted to wait until marriage and been done with it.

Maybe I shouldn’t have been so fucking offended by her awful friends’ opinions of me. It’s not even like Imogen likes them that much. They’re just the final hang ons from school; Bella, who was always a bitch, and some girl called Melanie… or Melinda… or Maggie. I’m the boyfriend who fetches the wine, and kisses Imogen chastely, and then makes myself scarce so they can all catch up without me eavesdropping. I’m the good boyfriend, the one who isn’t sex-obsessed and staring at other girls’ boobs right in front of her. I had a reputation. I thought it was a good thing.

I didn’t expect to want to prove them wrong. To prove I wasn’t as broken as they made out, when our best bottle of wine had been drained and fucking Bella pulled out the Prosecco.

The humiliation of stepping into the living room and picking up my wallet was almost worth it to see the looks of horror dawn on their faces. They sat, their glasses frozen at their lips, as I said nothing and left. I think Imogen called after me when I slammed down my workout bag by the front door. No doubt she’s currently being comforted as she sobs and Bella tells her that I’m the problem, not her.

I guess I am.

I’d showered at the gym, and the clothes I’d pulled on after were tight enough that I figured I could get away with them in a club. Instagram told me where all the cool people – the ones with far more interesting social lives than me – hang out on a Friday night. So I headed there, and told myself that I would pull the first person I found. 

The fact that it turned out to be Charlie, whose provocative pose in his Instagram story had been the final push I needed to head to the club in the first place, wasn’t exactly going to make me complain. Charlie, whose spiral – according to the people from school I still talk to – has ended with him banging any boy who shows the vaguest interest. I think he’s as broken as I am, and it made me feel confident, just for a second.

I don’t think I even said a word to him before I kissed him; silent as ever as I dove in and parted his lips and pretended that this is me. That I do this. He tasted of cigarettes and schnapps and something else, something harsh and medicinal – cheap vodka, maybe – and he took me by the hand and led me back towards the entrance as soon as I bent my head and whispered:

“Fuck me.”

And now, here we are. 

Above me, Charlie braces his hand against the roof of my car and dives in for another kiss.

Fuck, is he expecting me to thrust enough that he might actually hit his head on the ceiling? 

I find that, if I spread my fingers out in his curls, he holds onto my hand instead and the whole thing feels kind of… nice? It’s not as quick and filthy as I was expecting – being here with him. I can’t see the clock on my dashboard, but it feels like we’ve been doing this for a lifetime; kissing and touching and rutting against one another, in a way that I hadn’t expected to feel so good. There doesn’t seem to be any rush, despite Charlie’s reputation.

He leans back slightly, balanced on my thighs, and his fingers go to the buttons of my shirt.

“I’m going to undo these, okay?”

I nod. My bare chest is exposed a little more with every flick of his deft fingers on the fastenings. When he reaches the bottom he palms my erection firmly and grins down at me.

“Big boy,” he whispers. It sounds forced. Like he thinks that’s what I’m expecting to hear.

“You don’t have to do that,” I murmur. I can feel myself flushing hot and red with the embarrassment of it all; the discomfort in knowing that this is supposedly how we are meant to be together, when it feels so fake. 

“Do what?” He’s acting dumb, but his voice falters, like he’s afraid he’s done something wrong. 

“Talk like that. Pretend to be like that.” I lean forward and press my lips to the hollow of his throat. “Not with me.”

“How am I supposed to fucking know that?” he says, but quietly, and almost to himself.

He’s looking down at my lap, strangely chastised, so I take the opportunity to tug my shirt off of my shoulders and let it crumple down in the narrow space between my back and the seat. Charlie’s eyes widen as he takes me in – roaming my chest in a way that makes me feel exposed – and I swear his hands are shaking as he brings them up to smooth his palms across my skin.

Somewhere nearby, a car is speeding down the country road beside the carpark we’re in. It appears soon enough, its headlights illuminating us in a way that is slightly uncomfortable. For some reason, it pauses at the carpark entrance and the residual light from their LEDs is enough to cast us both in a silver glow. It changes the mood between us, in a way that makes me wonder if this entire endeavour is about to fall apart. Charlie looks down at me as if he has never seen me before, while my eyes are drawn to his exposed arms.

In the club, the flashing lights made it hard to see, and then he’d worn his jacket for the entire journey here. But now, in the low light and with only his thin shirt on, I can see just how much of the surface of his skin is marred with scars. 

It is, I think, the saddest I have ever felt.

Charlie shivers when I press my fingertips lightly to his pulse – feel the life there – then run them up to the crook of his elbow. The moment between us seems to come to a standstill, suspended in time, before the car pulls away. We are left in the pathetic light of a single lamppost, which flickers before winking out completely.

Whatever that was between us, it’s broken again, and we are back to our original goal; fuck, use one another, and then face the consequences tomorrow.

Charlie makes no attempt to remove his shirt, and so I am left to wonder what the underneath might hold.

Still, there’s an urgency when he leans forward to kiss me; like he’s frightened of the sincerity that tiny morsel of light brought us. He latches his lips onto my neck and sucks, hard, and it makes me hiss into the quiet. His confidence is terrifying in the face of my inexperience; he’s going to be able to tell instantly, I just know it. There is no pause, no moment of hesitation, as he presses his lips wherever he wants; wherever the desire takes him.

“I don’t— I don’t know what I’m doing,” I stutter as he nips on my bottom lip. He chuckles quietly in response and then pulls back to look at me.

“Don’t worry, Nick. You’re not the first ‘straight’ guy I’ve been with.”

He says it with actual air quotes, his finger wiggling in front of my face. Without his hands on my shoulders to steady himself, he wobbles in my lap, and I have to grab him around the waist to stop him from tumbling over. It’s the first time I’ve properly touched him. I can feel the ridges of his ribs, like an instrument I want to play. I tug him closer.

“I really don’t know, Charlie. I’ve never done this before.”

This seems to irritate him, and he stiffens in my arms. His voice, when it pierces the quiet again, is clipped and curt.

“I get it, Nick. You and your perfect girlfriend have never had sex in a car, you’ve never fucked a guy. I’m not expecting miracles.”

I choose to ignore the fact that he knows I have a girlfriend.

“No.” I don’t know why it’s so important to me that he understands. This could just be what it is; a drunken, messy hookup that neither of us would enjoy sober. But my mouth is a traitor that I can’t ignore, and it’s determined to ruin this. “I’ve never been with anyone like this before.”

He looks at me like I’ve just told him who shot JFK. 

“You—”

“Yeah.”

He shifts back a little, so that he’s resting on my knees instead of literally on my cock. He misjudges it, and his back hits the steering wheel at an angle that makes the horn beep. We both squeal as he launches himself back at me and then giggles uncontrollably. His arms are briefly wrapped around my shoulders and his chest pressed against mine in a way that feels vaguely… nice… until he scoots back and lifts himself from my lap.

“Wait! Where are you going?”

Charlie raises an eyebrow at me again like I’m a bit simple.

“I need to take my jeans off.”

“Oh, right.”

With a certain amount of shuffling and coordination, he manages to lift himself from my lap and drop down on the passenger seat without hitting the handbrake. I watch – fascinated – as he lifts his bum from the seat and tugs his skinny jeans down his thighs. He’s thin and lithe enough that he can fold himself up and kick the fabric off of his feet, instead of them catching around his ankles. Very thin. Like, I could snap him. The passenger side is closer to our one intermittently working street lamp, which has winked back on again, and in its light, I can see the way the skin is mottled with scars – cuts upon cuts on his thighs, in the same fashion as his arms – like he ran out of space.

I think, maybe, that this is what my body would look like if the inside shone out.

I can see the outline of his cock through his boxers, and I have to bite down the brief, icy panic that would consume me if I let it get a single claw into me. Charlie must mistake it for nerves, because he raises an eyebrow at me.

“I’ll look after you, don’t worry.”

He hooks his thumbs at the waistband and shimmies off his boxers so that his cock springs free. When he catches me staring, he raises an eyebrow.

“See something you like?” he teases, leaning back against the headrest and fluttering his lashes at me. 

“I— I—” I think my panic is clear, because he laughs quietly and shakes his head.

“Nick, I’m winding you up.”

“I know, I—” Fuck. Why is it so hard to just say? “I just really fancy you, you know? And that’s kind of new to me.”

“Fancying a boy?”

“No. Letting myself feel that way about anyone.”

If he thinks that’s weird, he doesn’t let it show on his face. There’s a faint flicker at the corner of his mouth, and that’s it; erased behind whatever wall he usually puts up around himself. He toys with the hem of his shirt and it’s almost comical; me stripped to the waist and him naked from the waist down, like some perverted fashion show. We’re suspended in time again – him in his confusion, and me in my agonising – when really all I want to do is push through all of this and just feel something else for a change.

“Can I—” I swallow. “Can I go down on you?”

He looks surprised, again, before he’s nodding and there’s another subtle shift between us as both of us angle our bodies very slightly in a different way. His shoulders square to the headrest, while I mimic the way he previously sat, with his side against the seat. We pause, wait, and then I try and be brave again.

“Don’t— don’t force my head down, please.”

“Okay…”

I swallow thickly. Charlie slips his hand into mine and strokes his thumb lightly across my knuckles.

“And I— I don’t want you to come in my mouth, sorry.”

“Nick…” His voice sounds… soft? All of a sudden, like he’s lost a little bit of confidence. He strokes the fingers of his other hand through my hair. “Whatever you’re ready for.”

My car isn’t exactly built for this sort of thing, and I’m hardly small, so it’s a bit awkward for me to bend myself over enough to take him in my mouth. The crease of his thigh smells faintly of aftershave – peppery and slightly floral – and it calms me, even as I misjudge and gag when he hits the back of my throat. Charlie toys with a lock of my hair, no pressure, and I hear him snort out a very quiet laugh.

“Careful,” he whispers before he scratches his nails once, lightly, against my scalp. I hum around him and try again.

I don’t really know what to do, beyond letting my jaw go slack and hoping I don’t gag again, so I experiment with swirling my tongue around him and bobbing my head up and down. I’m rewarded with the sounds of his moans filling the car and his fingertips scrunching in my hair. He doesn’t flatten his palm out against my head, doesn’t put any pressure there whatsoever, but the gentle encouragement is nice.

After a few moments, I feel his fingers tugging at my hair, and he pulls me off. I don’t think he was anywhere close, but he smiles at me gratefully when I’m back at his level and leans in to kiss me.

The kissing is nice. Kissing is the kind of love I crave.

Eventually, Charlie growls quietly in the back of his throat, and I know that things are about to shift between us again.

I lean back against the headrest and try and steady my breathing. This is it. 

Charlie swings his leg back over my lap so that he’s straddling me again, his chest pressed up against mine as he deepens our kiss again. His lips don’t leave mine even as he starts shifting and shimmying in my lap, and I screw my eyes shut as I listen to the little noises he’s making to prepare.

A strange little squelch and then something heavy hitting the passenger seat.

The click and squeeze of a bottle.

Charlie’s little groans in the quiet.

I open one eye. His head is thrown back and his lips parted as he reaches around behind him. I can’t see what he’s doing – even if there was enough light in here, the space is too small – but his other hand clenches against my shoulder with every move of the hand I can’t see. I glance over at the passenger seat; there’s something shiny on top of his boxers – slightly bulbous on one end, and flat at the other – and I realise just how prepared he was for someone tonight.

Charlie’s entire body twitches under my touch when I wrap an experimental hand around him. He hisses, then stretches his neck from side to side, before he’s leaning right over to reach for his jeans. He retrieves a condom, then hands it to me with a raised eyebrow.

“You may never have done this before, but I have,” he murmurs, his voice kind, before he reaches down to tug at my boxers.

The condom is weirdly slippery when I manage to fish it out of the packet. I don’t really remember sex ed at school – it being one of those times where my brain decided that disassociation was better than staying present – and I definitely don’t remember them being so fiddly. And cocks apparently move about a lot more than cucumbers do – especially when it feels like putting the condom on requires two hands. Where’s the third hand to steady everything?

Charlie laughs, softly, before he’s wrapping his hand around me and stroking gently. The touch makes bile rise in my throat, while also feeling really good, and it’s hard to marry up the sensations. He leans in to kiss me.

“You really haven’t done this before, have you?”

“Shut up.”

“It’s okay,” he murmurs, lips pressing against my jaw. “I’ve got you.”

Despite the narrow space between us, and the way he has to balance to avoid just crashing onto me and snapping my dick in half, Charlie manages to roll the condom onto my cock in a fairly swift movement. The confidence of it sends a warm feeling through my gut; so much so that I’m distracted, and it takes me by surprise when he shifts back towards me and rubs the cleft of his arse against the length of me.

“Fuck—” I hiss, and tug him closer.

There’d be no going back now even if I wanted to. My body is too keyed up with nerves and excitement to pull the plug. I’m terrified, and confused, and every big emotion that I have refused to let myself feel for years now.

Charlie is holding me firm, lining me up with his entrance and slowly – so slowly – sinking down, when he pauses and cups my cheeks in his hands.

“Want me to tell you how well you’re doing?” he whispers, and crashes his lips into mine as soon as I nod.

Chapter Text

💛Charlie💙

“You feel so good, Nick,” I moan, right up close to his ear, and he grips me tighter. It’s not a lie – the angle is hitting just right – although most of the energy expended so far has been on my end. There isn’t much room to manoeuvre on the driver's side seat, especially considering the sheer size of Nick, and so we have been left with no option except to mainly rely on my ability to bounce enthusiastically in his lap as he presses his forehead to my shoulder and holds my hips tight.

The praise works, though. Nick shudders as the words hit him. He tightens his hands at my waist and thrusts up, once, before he reaches up to cup the back of my neck and pull me in for another kiss. He likes kissing, it seems. And he’s good at it, too. When he parts my lips and licks into me I feel a zap of something shoot right down to my groin. I feel fizzy, and full, and the kind of satisfaction that can only come from having what feels like a lifelong desire fulfilled.

And to think I’d been two minutes from following another guy into the toilets and snorting whatever he offered me before Nick approached. The call of numbing myself was strong, but not quite as strong as the opportunity to fuck Nick Nelson: Rugby King.

And, believe me, I’ve thought about it before. Pretty much the entirety of year 10, back when we sat silently next to one another in form and I was too confused to strike up conversation. I remember being annoyed that he didn’t seem to recognise me, then taken aback that he was nice – nicer than I imagined he would be, with the way my mum talked about him. It took everything in my arsenal to stop her from marching to the school to complain when she heard we had been sat together in form.

Her vendetta against him has lasted about fifteen years at this point, even though I don’t think she could pick him out of a lineup now.

I very clearly remember the first time we met – although a lot of what swims in my head battles against the fabricated memory formed from the amount of times Mum complained about him – so it exists as a sort of hazy blur whenever I’m forced to remember. Which is, pretty much, every time it gets a bit cold and my arm starts twinging. 

He broke it, years before secondary – and without a second thought, apparently.

Long before Mr Lange’s ill-fated seating plan, there was a playground in our local park that had sort of the crème-de-la-crème of children’s climbing frames. It was in the shape of a pirate ship on one side – its bow jutting magnificently out of blue tarmac – and expanded out into a set of bridges and monkey bars that had every child in the vicinity begging to play there. I don’t know if it was the semi-functional periscope (inexplicable, really, in a sailing ship) or the fact that hidden in the depths of the cabin was a particularly naughty swear word, but it was barely ever empty. 

It’s gone now – maybe the council thought it would be best to let it go to ruin after some waif of a kid got seriously hurt there; maybe they just ran out of money. Either way, the structure that used to bring us joy is now just a bare patch of tarmac in the field, the wooden boat long rotted and removed. 

In any case, I met Nick Nelson there, one day after school when I was really little. I can’t remember how old, exactly, but I know that I had a stain down my jumper from that day’s milk and fruit time at school, because mum had almost refused to take me to the park in retribution. Nick had a different uniform on – red to my navy blue – and he asked me if I wanted to play monster catchers with him. Obviously, I did. The entire park was much emptier than usual – in hindsight, the weather wasn’t exactly for the faint-hearted, and our respective adults huddled under a nearby tree from the drizzle and occasionally called out to us to be careful. We had almost free rein of the place, in any case.

We had fun, until we didn’t. He told me that the man stood with his mum at the edge of the playground – snapping something into his phone – was her boyfriend. Nick told me to pretend that he was the monster. We played for what felt like hours, even though it was probably only a few minutes, and I remember feeling so excited to have made a friend. A friend who was bigger than me, and stronger. Someone who might look out for me if things got tough.

Until our parents met next to the slide and we overheard his mum invite me over for a play date.

“No!” Nick had screeched, his face suddenly contorted with something that my young brain couldn’t identify; something primal. I didn’t exactly have much time to process it either. He launched himself at me so suddenly I didn’t have time to dodge, despite being the quickest in my class, and then I remember the climbing frame floor vanishing underneath me – before I hit the ground violently, and felt my arm snap.

So, no, I didn’t have any intention of making friends with Nick fucking Nelson when Mr Lange forced us together. Not when I still got twinges of pain in the rain; not when the scar that they gave me when they operated runs perpendicular to the scars I gave myself and taunts me to this day. No matter how much I fancied him. I just didn’t want Mum kicking off and embarrassing me over the whole thing, when school was already bad enough.

And I really fancied him. I think it took me by surprise just how much it felt like burning to be sat next to him; that my passing attraction was more like a full-blown crush within seconds of him looking up and smiling at me, that first time. He barely said a word to me, but I liked his smile. I might have even plucked up the courage to talk to him in the new school year, if he hadn’t gone and failed all of his GCSEs. They didn’t let him back for sixth form.

I always thought of him, though.

Someone told me that he ended up with Imogen Heaney, eventually. Although I am starting to have my doubts about that, if he seriously has never had sex before. I remember Imogen: bouncy, perky, eager to please. The antithesis of me. She dated Ben. She dates Nick, apparently. I’m not exactly sure what her type could possibly be.

Then again, I’m not sure of Nick’s type either, right now. Not when he wraps his hand around my dick so enthusiastically as he kisses my neck. He’s throwing himself into this whole hookup thing, and I don’t actually have to fake it as much as I thought I would.

I managed to get his shirt off before we started properly, a feat of genius on the part of recent-past-me, now that I can run my palms across his chest and his shoulders. They’re defined in a way that can only come from some serious time in the gym, so I guess he kept up the rugby, and the thought of him in those tiny shorts is almost enough to make me blow my load here and now. I have to take some deep breaths – disguised by pressing my face into the crook of his neck – but he also smells amazing, so it only helps a little.

His hands tighten at my waist and still me where I have been rolling my hips.

“You okay?” he whispers and – fuck – why does he have to be so fucking soft . That’s not the voice of a hookup. Not that he’d know. I almost want him to let go a little – to just grip me hard and drive into me like he doesn't care. I don't want him to care.

“Fine,” I snap, and his face crumples a little, wounded. It’s like I've kicked a puppy. 

“’Kay,” he whispers, as he brings his hand up to the back of my head. He likes my hair – I can tell – and he distracts himself from whatever little shard of pain I've caused him by scrunching his fingers in my curls. He’s studying my face – his eyes sweeping across my features, like they’re in any way interesting, before he settles on my lips and leans in.

“Wait—” I hiss. He jolts as I pull back.

“What’s wrong?”

“I— I’m sorry. That was rude… you didn’t deserve that.” I close the gap between us, but gently, so that my lips barely brush his. When I press our foreheads together, he sighs gently. “I’m just not used to people being nice to me, like this.”

Nick’s hands twitch before he sweeps them around to the small of my back to pull me closer, and then we’re breathing the same air as I try to work out how to claw back some normalcy in what we’re doing. It all feels too soft, too caring for a hookup, and it’s a slippery slope to us both having our hearts shattered and cutting one another with the shards.

Then he goes and ruins me.

“You deserve people being nice to you, Charlie. Especially like this .” He punctuates the words with a movement of his hips that makes him go deep ; never breaking eye contact even as his lips part and he gasps at the pleasure of it all.

Fuck him. Fuck him and his perfect lips and his gentle hands. Fuck all of this.

Except I’m not angry. Not really. I can’t quite identify it, but the emotion bubbling up in me is both unfamiliar and warming, but also utterly devastating when I think about how there’s no way he’d want me for anything more than this . Not tomorrow, anyways, not when he wakes up and realises how broken I am.

But he’s lifting me a little so he can tug his jeans and boxers even further down his thighs. There’s more skin on skin and everything about it feels so wrong and so perfect at the same time. When he cups my arse with both hands and holds me still so he can fuck into me slowly – his feet planted firmly in the footwell – I have to look away. I can’t keep up the eye contact when it feels this intense.

Tipping my chin only encourages him to press his lips to the skin below my ear. In the quiet, I can hear his little breathy moans – gasps that rumble up from deep in his throat – getting louder and louder with every thrust. It’s building – cresting like a wave – and it strikes me how much I will miss his touch when this is over.

The moment is ruined, somewhat, when he snakes his hand back round to touch my cock and practically yanks the thing.

“Fuck! Ow!”

He freezes.

“Jesus Christ, Nick!”

“Sorry, I— I got a bit—”

“Carried away?”

“I— yeah… sorry.”

I squeeze my thighs at his hips to steady myself, before letting my hand roam to cup his.

“Like you’re touching yourself,” I murmur, and he gives me another one of his slightly lost looks. Jesus Christ, this boy. “Gently,” I add, letting my hand guide him into a rhythm that is nice, but not quite enough to get me off just yet. I’m not ready for this to be over. Nick rocks forward and presses his forehead to mine, so that we are breathing the same air again. His mouth gapes open when I moan against his lips. “ That’s it.”

I manage to time the movement of my hips to the beat of his strokes, and together we build up a momentum that has us panting as Nick presses his forehead to the curve of my shoulder. Everything feels so good – despite Nick’s clumsiness – and I have to grab his wrist, to slow things down before they end too soon. He makes a noise of protest before he relents, slipping his hands back to my waist and leaning up to kiss me.

Nick runs his hands up my thighs, his thumbs caressing over the scar tissue there. After my arms, it’s the worst part of me; a criss-cross of scar tissue that maps out every downward spiral, every dark thought that eventually landed me back in hospital. His eyes look glossy in the low light – if he starts to cry, then I don't even know what I'll do – and he touches me so gently that I think he might tip me over the edge into tears. It’s as if he’s trying to memorise me, instead of pretending that this part of me doesn’t exist. For a moment, he traces the old scar on my arm from the operation I had after it was broken, and he frowns, as if he’s accessing a memory that’s buried and barely there. I’m expecting him to realise – to suddenly look at me in horror and apologise – but he doesn’t. Instead, he very gently lifts my arm and drapes it over his shoulder, so he can turn his head and kiss along the soft skin of my inner elbow. His breath tickles, but his lips are warm, and I hold my own breath as he seems to press a kiss to every single scar that adorns my skin.

“I wish…” he starts, before he swallows and seems to think better of continuing. He bites his lip, his eyes glassy.

“Say it,” I prompt, tugging a pinch of hair at the nape of his neck gently. Suddenly, and completely hypocritically, I don't want him to keep any secrets from me. I want to tease out every thought that’s going through that strange head of his; cherish them and keep them safe in the palm of my hand. He looks unsure, for just a moment, before he leans in close.

“I wish someone had helped you see how amazing you are.”

It is not, in any way, what I was expecting him to say. I wish you hadn’t? Sure. I wish I could fix you? Trust me, many have thought it before. But this? I don't know what to do with the sincerity of it all.

I want to tell him that people have tried – honestly, they have. I haven’t just been left adrift to cope with all the bad feelings and bad thoughts. People have poured their hearts and souls into rescuing me. It’s just… I'm not sure it’s possible. 

As much as my parents are annoying, and my mum is about as overbearing as it gets, they really did try and do everything right. The first clinic they ever sent me to, back when my eating disorder first reared its ugly head in my teens, was great. Susan, my key worker, would have gone to the ends of the Earth for me. And meeting Geoff, I think, was the only thing that has kept me alive all these years. Every week – sometimes twice a week – when I head to his office, I think about how lucky I am to have met him, all those years ago. But teenage Charlie had a ropey support system, and when I came out of the clinic that first time, and found that Tao and Elle were obsessed with saving their relationship and nothing else, it hit me hard. He was either visiting her, or moping that she wasn’t around, and the eventual blowup when he accused me of being jealous was too much to come back from. Isaac tried – he’s never really stopped trying – but embarrassment and shame have kept me from accepting his support with greedy fingers. I spent so long worrying that he was pissed with me for not confiding in them that I ended up rejecting every attempt he made to help me. It was a slippery slope back into bad habits.

The pipeline from voluntary inpatient to involuntary one was a tricky one. Geoff warned me – at least, he tried – that without any real progress, they would have few options. If it meant keeping me alive, despite all my efforts, they’d do it.

I didn’t believe them, until I was forced to.

Although I thought I was clever – that I was so good at hiding how bad things were – eventually, even I couldn’t stop people from noticing the way my clothes hung off of me again, or how none of them could account for a single meal in days. Amongst the screaming and the arguing and the begging, they somehow found time to arrange my second inpatient stay, and the rest, as they say, is history. I got lucky with Susan and Geoff. I did not get lucky again.

I wonder if Nick wants to hear how it feels to rip an NG tube out of your own throat, or what it’s like to fight an orderly who’s trying to sedate you. I wonder if that might be the comment that sends him running. I wonder, if I told him all the ways that people had tried – all the ways I rejected – what he would think of me. I wonder whether he’d realise that the only person letting me down is myself.

No, he’d probably tell me some rehearsed shit about how I’m not my worst moment – my worst thought – and that would just make me hate him for not understanding.

He’s stroking me lazily as he watches my face carefully. Truthfully, I expected it to be over by now. I expected him to throw caution to the wind eventually; to push and pull and manipulate me into some position to make me easier to pound into. I expected to feel used, and then discarded, like I always do. Instead, Nick seems to be in no hurry to get off . He’s savouring it… savouring me.

Slowly, like he doesn’t want to break eye contact, his gaze drifts back to the skin on my inner arms. With his free hand, he reaches up to push my shirt further up my arms and presses another kiss to the scars he’s exposed. Suddenly, the car around us feels close and suffocating, and I have to gulp the air to keep myself afloat. He hums against my skin, and the noise crests into a moan when I shift my hips. His lips part, and he catches the skin between his teeth before  he’s soothing it again with a kiss. There’s not a flicker of disgust in his face as I watch him; if I didn’t know any better I would say he looks… calm? Like something inside him has been tempered. I lean down to ghost the tip of my nose along the curve of his cheek.

“I don’t expect you to understand, but—”

“No I get it, I think,” he whispers. “Sometimes I wish I could cut the bad parts out of me… brace myself for a little bit of pain that I know has an end, instead of—” He breathes deep. “Instead of never knowing.”

It is the most exposed I think I have ever felt. It should be scary, except Nick is the least judgemental person I think I have ever met.

I’m still glad that I kept my own shirt on, though. Even under this stupid light that keeps blinking on and off, he would notice the scar on my abdomen; the one from the gastric feeding tube when things got really bad. Back when they couldn’t trust me not to tug out the nasal tube they had shoved repeatedly down my throat, the second they put it back. Geoff and Mum have threatened, more than once, to have it replaced again. Emptily, I’m fairly certain; neither of them have any legal right at the moment to make that kind of decision, given that – on paper – I’m doing okay. I've been skirting the cusp of ‘dangerously underweight’ for long enough to know where the line is. They threaten, I force myself to eat for a few days, the threat subsides. It's the pattern that has been following me around since my teens. 

Still, when Nick skirts his hands around my waist I hear the little intake of breath that he has made every time his fingers dip into the hollows of my ribs. There’s the drag of his thumbs up and down – that knock, knock, knock of the fleshy pads over skin stretched taut over bone – before he seems to get sentimental again and wraps his arms around me. He rocks us both, side to side, before he presses his lips to mine again.

“I really like kissing you, Charlie,” he murmurs, demonstrating beautifully, before trailing his hot, open mouth across my cheek and to the dip below my ear.

“ Fuck , Nick, what is this?” I hiss, as he is kissing his way down my neck. His grip on me is stronger now – his hands roaming with more confidence than when we started this thing – and it all feels clumsier, less controlled. But the way he touches me is still considerate, and slightly reverential, and I still don’t know how to hold it tight without crushing it. It feels too delicate, too easily lost.

Now that I’ve got a taste of him, I don't know how easy it will be to give him up.

“I don’t know…” he admits quietly, and I lose myself completely.

Like everything good in my life, I want to push it and test it and wait for it to break. While Nick stares at me – somewhere completely enraptured, despite the fact that it’s me – I brace one hand on the car ceiling above us and the other on his shoulder, my thumb brushing the hollow of his throat. His eyes widen, panicked, for a moment before he nods permission and I push – as gently as I can while still showing him exactly what I want – so that he is pressed back against the backrest of his seat. 

“Move it down,” I demand. Nick obliges, scrambling to reach down and hook the lever with his hand so that the driver’s seat tips back and I am looming over him. From this angle, I can stare down at the pale expanse of his chest as I rock my hips and build up momentum, until I’m fucking down onto him over and over again. Nick’s chest heaves, his face red under the dim light, and he reaches back to grip the headrest. It makes the muscles in his arms pop and I lean down to bite greedily on his bicep, before my mouth is on his again and he’s licking into me hungrily.

“Charlie—” he moans between kisses, his voice raw. He’s close, so I pick up the pace; straightening up and bouncing in his lap while I watch him come undone underneath me. He utters my name like a prayer, over and over again, and barely seems to notice when I wrap my hand around his again – both of us gripping my dick as I show him just how much pressure I need.

When I come, his eyes open wide as I spill out across his chest and abdomen. I don’t think he was quite expecting the mess, but his shock is overtaken, moments later, when he arches his back and grabs my hips so tight I think his fingertips might bruise. He bites down on his own lip, tempering the moan that I just know is desperate to come out. It’s strange that he is trying to control himself now, when he has been so vulnerable with me since the second we first kissed. I roll my hips and ride him through it, and then we’re both left panting in the dark as the lamppost flickers out once again. When it comes back on, I swear there are tears on his cheeks.

In the silence, Nick’s chest hitches while I smooth my palms up and down his sides. He’s staring at nothing on the ceiling, his lip worrying between his teeth, and I feel around for something to clean us up with. I manage to find some paper napkins shoved into the little compartment in the door, and do a passable job of wiping up his chest and our hands before his face crumples.

“Fuck, I’m so so sorry,” he whispers, bringing his hand up to cover his face.

Ah, the straight-guy guilt. I’ve been here before; guys who fancy trying out something different and then are overwhelmed with guilt when they actually enjoy it. I brace myself for the identity crisis. Nick is clumsy and slow as he moves, but he manages to push himself up onto his elbows and then upright with me still in his lap. His lip quivers, and he reaches up to scrunch his hand in my hair.

“I used you. I’m so sorry.”

Okay, well that’s new.

Before I know what’s happening, he bursts into tears and wraps his arms tight around me so that I am pressed flush against his chest. His heart is pounding, and the neckline of my shirt is becoming damp with his tears. I can feel his dick softening inside of me while he sobs, and honestly, this is shaping up to be the weirdest hookup of my life.

“Nick…” I whisper, because his name is the only word I think I can form. He lifts his face enough for me to be able to kiss him and I press my lips everywhere I can reach – his cheeks, his lips, the tip of his nose – until he lets out a shuddery breath and I think that he has managed to calm down. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and runs his hands through his hair. It makes him look young, slightly crumpled.

“I’m sorry,” he says again.

“Don’t be. I had fun.”

“Yeah… I— me too.”

In the aftermath, things are strange between us. Stranger than they had already been, at least. Nick pulls out slowly, and I help him wrap the condom up in the napkins. We part, reluctantly, and Nick reaches over to grab my boxers and jeans while I scramble out of the car for more room. When I turn back around, clothes back on, Nick is lifting his hips to pull his own jeans back up, before buttoning them again.

His foot hits something in the footwell when he shifts – the vodka bottle we drained earlier – and we seem to realise at the same time that we are pretty much stranded here.

It’s too far to walk – I'm pretty sure we’re at the old wildlife reserve that Mum and Dad used to drag Tori and I to for depressing walks – and there’s no way I’m letting Nick drive us home. He wobbles slightly as he stands up and steps towards me, and I think that the alcohol might be hitting him, now that he’s fully upright and outside.

“You go sit,” he says quietly. “I’m just going to make a call.”

Whoever he calls, they pick up instantly, despite it being nearly midnight now. Nick’s pacing on his phone a little way away while I curl up on the passenger seat. I’m not sure who he’s talking to, but whoever it is, he’s not afraid to cry down the phone to them. He's got one arm wrapped around his torso in a vaguely protective manner, but it makes him look like he might double up in agony any second now. 

As if on cue, he crumples down onto the dusty floor.

“Nick?”

I don’t bother to shut the car door behind me. It’s ten paces across the dusty gravel that makes up the car park before I’m dropping down next to Nick and wrapping my arm around his shoulder.

“Sorry,” he mutters between heaving breaths. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“Nothing…” I whisper back. “Nothing’s wrong with you.”

He doesn’t say anything else; just slumps in my arms and rests his cheek on my shoulder. It’s a strange kind of welcome feeling; for the first time ever, a guy hasn’t run away from me straight after.

The view is nice up here. It’s hard to make out anything much concrete in the dark, but at least we can see the little villages with their lights all twinkling away. There are chalk pits somewhere below – I remember Dad taking Tori and I there as kids – and a couple of factories in the distance. They’re all there in memory, if not in sight; I can just about make out the waste smog that wafts up from the old paper mill and joins the clouds that stretch across the glow of light pollution that illuminates the sky. It’s a strange reminder – although we’re so alone up here – that civilisation is continuing on without us.

Next to me, Nick shivers. He hasn’t pulled his shirt back on yet, so I push myself off of the ground to fetch it from the footwell of his car. My jeans fall down around my arse where I haven’t belted them back up, and there is an embarrassing moment where I have to rummage around in the dark to find and pocket my plug before I have to answer any awkward questions, but then I'm pacing back to the little mound of grass Nick is sat on.

“Thanks,” he murmurs when I hand him his shirt. He doesn’t put it on – just balls it up in his fists, and then hugs it tight against his chest. In the dim light from the momentarily functional streetlamp above, I can see the goosebumps pimpling the flesh of his arms.

“Nick…” I whisper, tracing the curve of his shoulder with the tip of my finger. “You’re cold.” He jumps at the contact, as if he’d forgotten I was even there. He watches me carefully as I stretch my fingers so that my hand is cupping his entire shoulder. “You should get dressed.”

“’Kay,” he nods, and tugs the shirt over his head. His movements are clumsy, tired and slow. I want to pull him down into my lap to sleep.

We sit in silence after that; both of us staring over the edge of the cliff as lights occasionally dance and drift across roads below. There’s no wind, so we can just about hear their horns blare where the side roads join the dual carriageway to our left.

Eventually, a car pulls up a little way away from us, and Nick pushes himself to his feet. I’m not sure who the guy is that steps out, but Nick launches himself at him and bursts into tears again. I doubt it’s a secret boyfriend – there’s no way that Nick is conducting a second relationship on top of his one with Imogen – but he’s clearly close to the guy. There’s some sort of fierce debate going on between the two of them, and when the wind dies down a little, I catch the tail end of it.

“It’s either back to mine or to Mum’s. No way I’m taking you home like this.”

Ah. Brother, then. And clearly a pissed-off one. He’s glaring at me over Nick's shoulder.

He’s not pissed off enough to leave me here, though, and I duck into the back seat of his car before he can change his mind. I’m expecting an awkward journey back to Truham, with the pair of them in the front while I sit in the back like a scolded school child. Nick surprises me, however, by taking the middle seat next to me, and resting his head on my shoulder again.

“Thank you,” he whispers, so quietly I almost don’t hear him. I can’t bring myself to ask him what for, so instead, I wind my arm around him and let him rest on my shoulder while I desperately try and ignore his brother staring at me from the rearview mirror.

The journey back to Truham is fraught and quiet; unnaturally so. Nick’s brother doesn’t turn on the radio or try to make conversation, so the only sound permeating the silence is the tick tick tick of his indicators and the quiet sound of Nick breathing. I think he falls asleep on my shoulder, my arm wrapped around him, until a car beeping somewhere nearby wakes him up.

“S-sorry,” he stammers, moving to straighten until I tug him close again.

“‘S’fine,” I mumble. We’ll be close to my house soon, and I'm not quite ready to let him go yet.

The traffic thickens around us; shifting from lonely cars on country roads to a viscous beast as we battle traffic in the town centre. Car headlights illuminate Nick’s face in swooping intervals and highlight the dampness of his cheeks. Whenever we’re stopped at lights, his brother glances back at us again in the rear-view mirror. Nick doesn’t seem to notice; I’m not sure he’s really with us anymore. He’s staring ahead, unseeing, while his hand grips mine so tight it nearly hurts.

“I— er… you can drop me off here,” I say eventually, when we reach the part of town where the buildings turn from blocks of flats to actual houses. Quaintly suburban. I think we’re a stone’s throw away from the old park. Beside me, Nick shakes his head.

“No, we need to get you home safe,” he whispers, although he still isn’t looking at me. I make eye contact with his brother in the mirror.

“It’s fine,” he says. “What’s your address?”

He doesn’t reach for the phone that’s propped in a holder on his windscreen when I tell him the road my parents live on. I guess he must know it, because he nods sharply and indicates to turn. Beside me, Nick seems to come alive a little, because he straightens and leans forward to rummage in the pocket behind the driver’s seat.

We’re turning into my road when he reaches for my hand and turns my arm gently so that my inner arm is facing up. Shakily, and with more than one smudge when we hit a pothole, he writes his phone number there, right along my old operation scar.

“If you— if you ever—” He swallows. I brace myself for the invite to fuck again, cushioned within the empty assurance that he wants me for anything else. Except, his lip quivers as he gathers himself, and he brushes the pad of his thumb across my pulse point so gently that it brings a lump to my throat. 

The car stops. I’m home.

Nick wraps his fingers lightly around my wrist as I reach for the door handle. “Call me,” he whispers. “If you ever want to… just… talk.”

Chapter Text

🩷Imogen🤍

I should have told Bella to just shut up. As soon as she started having an opinion about Nick, I should have told her to fuck off, and that none of it matters to us anyway. We love each other, you know? But no, I had to sit there politely and nod as she had to have an opinion. She’s always been like this: a bitch who thinks that having the title of ‘first to lose her virginity in school’ makes her the queen of other people’s relationships. As if letting Harry Green finger you behind the bins at a party is a show of good common sense.

And yet, I still let her get to me. Every time.

Stupid .

She wasn’t even sorry when Nick stormed out. That’s what really gets me. She didn’t even look embarrassed . She and I have talked about mine and Nick’s… bedroom situation before. Of course we have. That's what girlfriends are for, right? She and Millie have said all the right things and made all the right faces when I confided in them about the injury Nick had when we were kids, the one that left him… well… you know . They didn’t believe me when I said that it didn’t matter, that I loved him regardless and that I probably have a better sex life than most of our friends… but that’s on them . 

Last night, when I told them how I was afraid that it was a lie, that something in his story didn’t add up anymore, they reacted like I'd just told them the juiciest gossip they’d ever heard. Bella screeched and grabbed Millie’s arm like she might topple over without the support, then proceeded to yell the most obscene theories I’ve ever heard as to what might be going on with Nick. I don’t know how much of it he heard before he let us know he was there – he always comes home so quietly that it’s like he’s trying not to draw attention to himself – but when he walked into the living room to grab his wallet from the side, I felt like I couldn't breathe.

I’m scared that Nick and I are over – for good, this time. We’ve broken up before, obviously. You don’t end up with the guy you went on one date with in year eleven without a bit of bickering along the way. I got bored of him back in secondary when he wouldn’t kiss me, even after our third date, and ended up with Ben Hope for a while. Ben, who was boring in bed and boring to talk to, but was at least attractive… That is, until he punched Charlie Spring in the corridor one afternoon, just before our GCSEs. It’s hard to carry on finding someone attractive when they treat people that way. Especially someone like Charlie, who never did anything to hurt anyone.

Nick seemed to think so, judging by the way he reacted. I think that was what drew me back to him; the fact that he was as mad as me about Ben. I found him pacing around outside by the school gates after word had spread – those gorgeous arms crossed over his chest like he didn’t trust his hands to behave and muttering about how life just isn’t fair – and when I hugged him, he flinched like he wasn’t expecting kindness. That’s the strangest thing about Nick; he’s always grateful when people are good, like it surprises him somehow.

I remember that he sobbed in my arms out there – although he tried to hide it – and after he had done a pretty terrible job of wiping his eyes he let me kiss him. The rest, as they say, is history.

Six years later, and I think we’re falling apart again.

Okay, so maybe not six full years. If this were a romcom, then I think we'd be described as on-again, off-again. We’d be that couple that has the sweeping soundtrack to our reunion right before the credits roll, when that audience knows for sure that this is it , they’re going to be okay. Maybe someone out there would be rooting for us, the same way they do Ross and Rachel, Ted and Robin… despite all the ways that we don’t work. I thought my friends would be rooting for us. They listened to me cry down the phone enough times when I was at uni and I was regretting the fact that I’d called us off again because I’m allowed to explore, you know?

I think that, maybe, they weren’t very good friends at all. Not if Bella’s grin when Nick walked in and I realised he’d overheard everything – or enough, at least – was anything to go by. At least Millie had the good grace to look embarrassed, as Bella cackled and poured herself another glass of wine.

I kicked them both out anyway. I considered calling Sahar, but to be honest she’s never liked my friends, and I wasn’t in the mood for her to be proven right. She’d always warned me to be careful with Nick, like she saw something fragile in him that the rest of the world couldn’t see.

By the time I’d downed the last of the Prosecco and plucked up the courage to call Nick after he left, his phone was off. I called Sarah, but either he was there and had given her explicit instructions not to let on, or he wasn’t , and I didn’t want to worry her. Either way, when the conversation was over, I was none the wiser as to where he was. I waited up for him until I fell asleep on our sofa, and woke up this morning with an empty glass dangling from my hand and a stain on the carpet I now need to deal with.

Nick never came home. Not that I really expected him to – I mean, who could blame him? He must feel so humiliated, and it’s all my fault. I just hope that he did stay at his mum’s or his brother’s last night, instead of sleeping in his car, like the last time we broke things off. He’s so stubborn sometimes. He’d rather freeze than go back home. I guess he doesn’t want to upset his mum with our silly problems.

Maybe I shouldn't have called her after all. I’m sure she could hear in my voice that I was worried.

The stain on the floor at least gives me a distraction. I manage to get most of it out of the carpet and tidy up all the evidence that I had friends over last night. When Nick does come home – and I have to manifest that he will – I don’t want him to walk into a memory of feeling humiliated. I don’t even know why I told them. It’s literally none of their business, and I should've known that the second Bella got her budget nails into some juicy gossip she’d use it to get herself some sort of moral high ground.

It’s not like our sex life has ever been a dealbreaker. I slept with some other guys at uni – and there was Ben of course – and to be honest, none of them were particularly noteworthy. I can’t say I enjoyed any of them going at it like a jackhammer under a duvet while I lay back and thought about how I was getting home. Let’s face it, who really enjoys that? Things between Nick and I have always been different. He makes sure I’m satisfied in the bedroom, and never complains about his own condition. Sometimes, I get the feeling that he’s a little sad about the whole thing, but he literally would never let on.

I can’t let myself think about things being over, so I scoop my messy hair up and focus on cleaning up the kitchen instead.

It’s midday when I hear a key in the door. 

He doesn’t call out, and by the time I make it to the hallway, Nick is standing on the welcome mat, stock-still, like he’s forgotten how to move. He’s staring down at his feet, arms held awkwardly, like he can’t quite let them relax against his body. He looks like a broken mannequin in a shopfront. It gives me a chill to see him that way; so pent-up with something that I can't identify. 

He drops his keys. They hit the floor with a clang.

“Nick?”

He looks up then, like he’s just realised that I’m there. I must look like a little housewife – the dishcloth I've been using to wipe the kitchen counters dangling from my hand, and my hair scooped up in a headband – and him, the disinterested husband arriving home from a hard day at work. Although it’s lucky, really, that today is Saturday. He doesn’t look like he’s in any fit state to be going anywhere right now.

He bends down to fetch his keys, deposits them on the little shelf we have by the door that’s supposed to store all of our important things, but which has mainly become a place where I can keep hair ties and earrings when I stumble home at the end of the day. Nick keeps all of his things in his jacket pocket; wallet, keys, lighter, passport. He's the only person I know who still carries loose change. Always the same jacket, no matter the weather, like it’s a crutch. He shivers in winter and boils in summer and always, always knows where the important things are. I once joked that it’s as if he’s prepared to run away at any moment – just step out of the door and disappear. He laughed, dryly, but I still think there was some truth there.

Especially now.

It makes it even the weirder that yesterday he had to come home for his wallet. I don’t think I had really thought about it before now, but there’s nome sort of fucked-up, sinister fate going on that that was the one time I have ever known him to leave it behind.

“Nicholas, please talk to me,” I beg. If he hears me, he pretends he doesn't, just steps past me into the kitchen and grabs a glass from the draining board. When he fills it with water and lifts it to his mouth his hands are shaking so violently that it spills down his wrist and then the glass is hurtling – water and all – across the room to smash against the wall.

“Fuck!” he spits, like the glass has hit him… or he’s the one that has shattered. He left his shoes on at the door, so the glass makes a crunching noise under foot when he steps towards the wreckage. I watch as the colour drains from his face before he backs away and slumps, first against the wall and then down onto the floor. 

I've seen Nick cry before; of course I have, we’ve known each other for ten years. I’ve found him crying behind the spectator stands at a bad rugby match in year eight; I've seen him wipe away a tear at the cinema when he thinks I can't see; I've even seen him cry with his baby cousins, when they’ve fallen and hurt themselves.

I have never seen him cry the way he does now.

It starts slowly, like a leak in a dam that becomes a spewing force. His face is a mask, until it’s not, and then everything tumbles out of him. He tries to cover it up – brings his hands up to protect his face – but it does nothing. Not really. The anguish is there even behind his hands. I can see the way his face is scrunched up and red from crying; see the way his shoulders heave as he gasps for air. I can’t bear it.

He has collapsed on the floor right next to where the glass shattered, so I fetch a tea towel and scoop as much of the shards to the side as I can before I fall down next to him and wrap my arms around him. He stiffens, and for a moment I think he’s going to push back against me, but then he slumps against my side, his head on my shoulder.

“Nicholas…” I whisper, my hands in his hair. “Please, just breathe with me.”

His hands are shaking when he finally pulls them away from his face. He twists his fingers painfully in his lap, lip quivering, and tries to match my breathing. It feels a little silly and exaggerated to be sat here, taking big gulping breaths while he stares at his hands. Eventually, though, he seems to calm down a little. The tea towel I used to brush away the glass is no good, so I tug my headband out of my hair and use it to dry his face a little. He doesn’t look at me.

“I—” he starts, before he bites down hard on his lip. The skin goes white around his teeth, and then red where the blood rushes back. There’s a little patch of broken skin at the corner of his mouth, like he’s been worrying at his lip. It’s an old habit of his that I thought he had broken. Clearly not. 

He takes another deep breath, then takes mine away. 

“I had sex with someone.”

He starts as if I've slapped him when I recoil away. 

Fuck!

For a moment, I can almost convince myself that it’s some horrible prank; revenge for how humiliated he felt last night. But Nick is not a good liar, and there’s no mistaking the shame on his face when he says it. He did it, and he came home today to throw it in my face.

Except he doesn’t look pleased, or like he wants me to suffer.

He looks like he’s in pain.

“When?” I whisper, as every single part of me – down to the smallest molecule – hopes that he says it was in the past. That it happened one time we were broken up, and it’s been eating him up inside. Yes, he’d still have lied to me all this time, but at least we could work through it. 

Instead, he shakes his head sadly and pinches one hand in the other; his thumb digging into the fleshy part of his palm as he gathers himself to break my heart.

And I know that’s what he’s going to do.

“Last night. After I left.”

It hurts . It actually physically hurts. I want to clutch at my chest and rub away the pain, but doing so would mean my arm would brush against him, and I can't bear to touch him right now.

“Who is she?” I ask quietly. I want my voice to sound firm, strong. Instead, it comes out shaky and weak. Bella would have a fucking field day right now. It would be like the time she found me sobbing in a bar with Sahar, the last time Nick and I broke up. I can still remember her shitty voice as she raised an eyebrow and waved her cheap cocktail at me.

“What happened to feminism, ay, Im? Look at you crying over a lad, like the rest of us.”

I hate her. And I hate Nick. Except I don’t, not really. Not when he looks so broken.

He takes a deep breath and swipes his hand across his face. He clearly didn’t shave last night, wherever he stayed, because there’s a decent amount of stubble on his face, and it makes him look red and drained where he’s irritated his skin. 

“Charlie Spring.”

It takes me a moment before my brain catches up, but when it does, it gives me a sort of clarity that I think I’ve been searching for for years. It all makes sense: Nick’s thing about Charlie at school; how things are for us in the bedroom; all the little ways that Nick has avoided even the notion of fancying anyone else. He’s never dated any girls other than me, never even shown an interest. It’s just taken him this long to realise why .

I laugh. I can’t help it; not when it’s so ridiculously simple. Nick looks at me like I’ve gone insane.

“What’s so funny?”

His cheeks are all pink and patchy from crying, and he looks so horribly baffled that it’s comical. I reach out and touch his arm.

“Nothing, I'm just so… so relieved . This whole thing… Nicholas… it makes sense – you didn’t want me because you’re gay .”

His eyes widen, and his back straightens. Poor boy probably hasn’t even had the chance to put a name to it all in his head.

But we can cope with this. We can still be friends. I won’t lose him the way that I was afraid of five minutes ago. Okay, so things will change , obviously, but he’s still my best friend. I love him regardless.

He gawks at me for a few moments before he finds his voice, and it comes out in a huff that feels petulant.

“I’m—”

He’s interrupted by a banging on the door that makes us both jump. I’m not expecting anyone; neither is Nick, if his face is anything to go by. But whoever it is is hammering on the door like they’re about to break through if we don't answer. Even the most harried Evri driver isn’t that enthusiastic.

In his pocket, Nick’s phone starts to buzz. He pulls it out and we both stare at David’s name on the screen.

Nick and his brother have always had a weird relationship. Anyone would think that they hate one another, the way they carry on. But they’ve also always had this bond that I don’t think anyone will ever understand. David is abrasive and rude where Nick is meek and timid; David was expelled from three secondaries before their mum found him an apprenticeship instead. Even now, no matter what he does, Nick is his safety net. If David calls in the dead of night needing a lift home from the pub, Nick goes. If David needs someone to be his verbal punching bag, Nick is there. I can’t say that I like him, or that I think he’s a very good influence on Nicholas.

But here he is, apparently, banging on our front door like he wants to knock it down.

“Fucking hell, Nick. Open the door!”

Nick grabs my arm, eyes wide. I don’t know why David is here, but I know that this is not a conversation to have around him.

“Imogen—” Nick starts. I hush him with a kiss on his cheek.

“It’s okay , we can carry on talking later.”

I get to the door just as David’s shadow retreats a little – like he’s about to take a flying leap at it – and swing it open. David barely looks at me – tosser – and mumbles an apology.

“Where’s Nick?”

Instead of waiting for a response, David storms past me and into the kitchen, where Nick is still curled up on the floor against the wall like a child in trouble. David glares at me, then him, and I brace myself for his shitty comment. If there’s anything David hates, it’s people showing emotions, especially Nick. He’ll be all get a grip, Nick or why the fuck are you crying? Trust me.

Toxic masculinity, Sahar would call it. She’s one of my cool friends.

I am not expecting what he actually does, which is to sink down next to Nick on the floor and pull him close. And I am especially not expecting Nick to collapse against him like he’s exactly what he needed.

“Nicky,” he whispers. I think he kisses Nick’s hair. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

But it’s not okay. Nothing about this is okay. I feel like I've fallen through the looking glass, into some weird reality where I don’t recognise either of them. David has never been nice in his life; even though I know he loves his brother, I've never even seen him be particularly pleasant to Nick. He’s polite to their mum, sometimes, but there’s always an edge to every conversation I’ve ever seen them have. Weird, veiled comments that I don’t get, and that I suspect pass Sarah by completely. Nick always flinches, whenever David starts up, so I thought that it must be inside jokes that I’m just not part of. But my point is – David is an arse. He isn’t… this .

I grip the edge of the kitchen counter and lean back against it. The laminate digs into my back and grounds me, but when I finally muster up the courage to speak, my voice comes out all shaky again.

“Nicholas… what’s going on?”

David surprises me again by looking up at me and smiling. It’s a sad smile, but it’s there. It feels like commiseration, or pity, maybe. He tightens his grip on Nick’s shoulder and jostles him slightly so that he looks up at him. 

“You can tell her, Nicky. She loves you. Mum too. You can tell people, Nicky. Let them help.”

Something in his tone of voice royally pisses me off. Know-it-all David, who must’ve had a good laugh at my expense last night when he took Nick in. Clearly that’s what happened; Nick had a gay crisis and went crying to his brother, who apparently has had a complete personality transplant overnight. I bet he told his girlfriend all about it. I bet they were still giggling about it this morning when they woke up.

I feel so humiliated , all over again. As if finding out my boyfriend is gay isn’t enough emotional whiplash, I have to find out that his arsehole brother already knew .

“I know about last night,” I say firmly. If David fucking Nelson is going to feel like he’s got the upper hand, then he’s got another thing coming. Even if mine and Nick’s relationship has been built on a lie, at least we had one. At least we’ve cared about one another, and been there for one another, for years. He’s not going to take that away from me by being smug that he found out that Nick and I were doomed first . 

Except, now they’re both looking at me like I’ve gone mad, and I’m starting to feel like maybe I have . 

David pushes himself up off of the floor. Nick watches him go like prey tracking a predator; eyes wide, shoulders squared, ready to bolt. David has to pass me to get to the cabinet where we store glasses, and he reaches up and grabs two from inside, like he lives here. Like he’s been here more than a handful of times since Nick and I moved in together. Then, he heads over to the fridge and pulls out the Brita. There’s a quiet glug as David – who apparently favours filtered fucking water now – pours out a couple of drinks, and then the silence is broken by Nick gasping as if he’s taking breath for the first time.

“Mum…” he says softly. Then, louder. “She didn’t know. I never wanted her to know. I thought I could just forget about it. I thought we could just pretend.”

Maybe it’s something in his voice, maybe it’s this old flat with all its draughty corners, but I suddenly feel goosebumps on my arms. David closes the fridge quietly and steps back towards Nick, who isn’t even looking at either of us. His eyes are fixed on a point on the opposite wall – some tiny speck in the paintwork, maybe – or maybe he’s not even here with us at all. He's got that vacant look again, that makes me think that he’s in some faraway place just waiting for us to pull him back.

I don’t think we’re talking about Charlie Spring anymore.

“Nicholas… “ I whisper. “You’re scaring me.”

“Here.” David hands me a glass of water and passes another to Nick. He stares at it like it might poison him. There’s a click and a hiss, and I realise that David has helped himself to a beer from the fridge.

Nick takes a single sip, then cups the glass in both hands. I love his hands; they’re so big and strong, and they feel like they could protect me from anything. Right now, I just want to hold them. I could pinpoint the exact moment that whatever rising anger I felt for either of them vanished – the little flicker of pain in his voice – and it has dissipated into the air, and been replaced by something I can't identify, but I definitely don’t like.

Nick takes another shuddery breath. At the table, I swear David holds his.

“When we were little Mum… she had this… friend ,” Nick whispers. “He was nice. We thought. He’d tell us funny stories about his job and bring us sweets when he visited. We thought he’d be Mum’s new boyfriend, eventually. She really liked him. He was over all the time…” He trails off and brings the glass back to his lips for another shuddery sip.

Have you ever felt uneasy all of a sudden? Like something big and bad and awful is about to happen and there’s nothing you can do to stop it? That’s how I feel when his words properly hit me; when I really think about them. Like life is about to change forever, and I’m about to hit the edge of then and fall hurtling towards now . Before and after. David gets up from his seat at the table and drops back down next to Nick on the floor and I watch as my boyfriend curls up in his brother’s arms and sobs, and I know – I know in my bones – that nothing is going to be okay ever again.

“He— he made me do stuff,” he chokes between sobs. “He did stuff to me. David tried to stop it, he really did. He got himself in so much trouble trying to look out for me. But he wouldn’t stop. And it hurt . It still hurts. And I don’t know how to be okay.”

Time stands still. It feels like none of us can breathe – like the oxygen between us is caught in Nick’s throat, and it can’t get out – until he makes a noise like a death rattle and screams.

Remember that pain I felt, when he told me that he had cheated? Remember that? That’s nothing compared to the gutting, splintering agony that I feel when I watch David wrap his arms around Nick’s chest and pull him tight as he wails and claws at his chest. 

“You let it out,” David mutters as he rocks Nick back and forth. “You did it. You said it.”

The glass David gave me earlier clatters onto its side, water spilling down the cabinet and onto the tiles, when I launch myself across the room and drop down on the floor in front of Nick.

My Nick, who is big and strong and guarded, not because that’s who he is , but because that’s who he thought he had to become. 

Despite everything, he reaches for me when I get close enough and pulls me into him, so that my face is buried in the crook of his neck.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispers. “I should’ve been better to you.”

“None of that matters, Nicholas,” I hush gently. He sags in my arms, like it’s a relief. Like anything I feel could remotely compare.

There’s one thing niggling at me, though. And although it doesn’t really matter, not in the grand scheme of things, I have to at least ask.

“Nick?” 

“Yeah?”

He pulls back enough that he can look at me. His face is blotchy and damp, and I wipe some of his tears away with the pad of my thumb. I take a deep breath.

“Why Charlie?”

Whatever he was expecting me to say, it wasn’t that. I wonder if he even remembers telling me, or if his brain is so used to rewriting itself to stay safe that it’s already been tucked safely away in a little box in the back of his head. He frowns and shakes his head slightly, and I shuffle so that I’m next to him, propping him up from the opposite side to David, while he figures out what to say.

“I— I don’t know. I guess— Maybe I saw something in him I recognised.”

David leans forward and glares at us both.

“Wait. Charlie? As in Charlie Spring? That’s who that was last night?”

Nick whips his head round to look at his brother.

“You know Charlie?”

David shrugs.

“Not really. I just remember him from years ago. You went apeshit at him at a park and pushed him off the climbing frame. Broke his arm I think. His parents went mental at Mum and that bastard.”

Nick stares at him as he absorbs this. It’s not a story I’ve heard before – although Nick has made vague references to being an angry kid. It never matched the the Nick I knew, and so I always assumed he was exaggerating, but now I’m not so sure. Sad as it is, I guess I never really knew him at all. Next to me, Nick sighs.

“Mum was so angry with me…” he whispers.

The mention of Sarah leaves me and David silent. Nick thumps his head once, very gently, against the wall.

“I have to tell her, don’t I.”

“You don’t have to do anything —” I start.

“She needs to know, Ni—” David starts at the same time.

David and I glare at one another, until I concede. I think that, maybe, David is right for once. He clears his throat.

“It’s your decision, Nicky,” he says quietly. “But I don’t know how long you can keep running from this. It’s going to eat you up inside eventually.”

“She’s going to be so sad,” Nick whispers. I grip his arm tight.

“We’ll be there for you.” I look at David. He nods curtly. “Both of us. You’re not alone anymore, Nick. I promise you.”

He rests his head on my shoulder and squeezes his eyes shut. I can’t promise him that things will be okay, as much as I desperately want to. I don’t think I believe it myself. I do know that I mean it, though. I’m here for him, in whatever way he needs, no matter what life looks like from now on.