Chapter Text
They arrange themselves into factions on either side, Nick’s bed the de facto battlefield. Aunt Diane and Sarah station themselves by the remaining tubes and wires connected to Nick, visual aids to their point about the ongoing delicacy of Nick’s condition. David and Stéphane stand by the door like the two of them could each grab an elbow and hustle Nick out of the hospital—out of the country—at a moment’s notice. Charlie supposes his place is with Sarah and Diane, but he finds himself at his usual spot by the headboard, an arm slung protectively behind it.
“All right,” says Dr. Farouk, his tone measured. He knows how explosive this discussion might get. “I think we all need to bear in mind that Mr. Fournier’s made tremendous progress since he woke up three days ago. The swelling in his brain has gone down immensely, and his scans are incredibly promising. Even more impressive, he’s ambulating, speaking, and showing no signs of anterograde amnesia. As long as we schedule follow-up appointments over the next few weeks to continue monitoring his progress, I see no reason why this young man can’t go home for Christmas.”
Sarah claps her hands together in relief, and it seems she’ll be making the opening salvo. “Dr. Farouk, we can’t thank you enough for taking care of our boy,” she says. “I live just a little over an hour from here, and I have Nick’s childhood bedroom all set up for him. He’s more than welcome to stay with me for the next few weeks as he convalesces, and I’ll bring him to his appointments.” She pats Nick on the arm, and though he smiles up at her weakly, Charlie knows she’s nowhere close to winning this fight.
“Tu parles!” Stéphane mutters under his breath, it’s like a boom of a cannon. Charlie tightens his fingers around the headboard.
Sarah narrows her eyes. “I’m his mother, Stéphane. And on top of that, I’m a bloody GP! How could you care for him, if you brought him back to France? You’re always at work! You’d set him up alone on the couch in some Paris flat and call him every 48 hours, meanwhile our boy could have a brain hemorrhage and—”
“All right, all right,” says David, “let’s not talk about fucking brain hemorrhages, okay? Nick’s going to be fine. Anyway, he wouldn’t be alone, he’d be with me. He’d already been staying with me since he broke up with Imogène.” Then he frowns. “We might have to do something about the dog, though. Not sure I want a puppy pissing on my furniture.”
“Daisy is very well-trained,” Nick argues, but David pays him no mind.
“Look, if you’re that worried, I’ll hire a carer myself to look after him, Mum. Paris is the one home Nick’s ever really known. You want him to go back to Kent? He hasn’t slept in that bedroom for more than a few weeks since he was in grammar school.”
“And whose fault is that?”
David holds up his hands—don’t blame me—and before either parent can rehash their divorce out over Nick’s hospital bed, Nick’s voice rings out strong and clear. “I want to move back into my London flat.”
Strangely enough, everyone related to Nick in the room seems united on the stupidity of this idea. “Ne sois pas ridicule,” Stéphane says, and Charlie glares at him, knowing enough French to guess that the last word is an insult. “It is a rental only, a lease from my friend’s company, ça n’a pas de sens…”
“Nicky, darling, you can’t even remember your flat,” Sarah reminds him. “You said it yourself. How will you know where to find anything?”
“It’s a flat, Mum, not a maze. I’m sure I can manage finding the loo just fine. Besides, Dr. Farouk said it’s important for me to go back to my routine,” he says, nodding to the doctor who has wisely elected to stay out of the family feud. “As close as I can get to what I was doing before the accident. He said it’s the best chance I have for getting my memories back. And I want them back.” He tightens his hand into a fist on top of the blanket, and for the first time, Charlie really, truly sympathises with how frustrating it must be to be Nick right now. How difficult must it be to have months missing from your life?
“It’s not a bad idea,” agrees Aunt Diane. “I’ve consulted on a few amnesia patients, and returning to routine really is the ticket with most of them. But Nick shouldn’t recover alone.” She refuses to meet Charlie’s gaze for the next suggestion. “If Charlie would be willing to stay with Nick…”
“You would, wouldn’t you?” Nick asks, and Charlie ought to make a rule about how often Nick can deploy those impossible-to-resist eyes. “I mean, we were living together before the accident, right?”
“We hadn’t—I’m still technically at my place in Ealing,” Charlie says. “It all happened rather quickly—”
“Sorry, but this is bullshit!” interrupts David. “I’m not letting my brain-damaged brother be looked after by a complete stranger! A stranger he told us nothing about, by the way! All of us here have known Nick since the day he was born, and yet we’re trusting the random man who shows up and claims to be his fiancé to watch over him? A man who can’t have known him more than three months?! I won’t fucking allow it!”
“David, please—”
“No, Mum,” begs David, “there’s something else wrong here, can’t you see that? Look, Charlie, I—I know I wasn’t very kind to you when we first met, and I’m sorry for that. I hope you can understand that I was shocked, not just about you but about what happened to Nick, and I acted like an utter pillock. But you still haven’t shown us any good reason to believe you are who you say you are! Not a ring, not a bloody photo of you two—and even if you really are engaged, it happened too fast, and there must be a reason why Nick didn’t tell us about you. So I’m sorry, but I can’t let you be the one to look after him.”
Everyone in the room, even Dr. Farouk, looks insulted at his diatribe, but Charlie doesn’t even try to defend himself. Every word is true.
“You’re not the one to make this decision,” Nick says before Charlie can respond. “I’m awake, and I’m of legal age, and I can make this decision myself.”
“C’est vrai,” Stéphane cuts in, and his voice has notes of surrender and finality to it. “You’re absolutely right, mon fils. You’re awake, and you must make this decision yourself, and you’re an adult, non? You’re no longer a child whose parents fight over who will take care of him. Tu es un homme, Nicolas.” He takes a step closer to the bed, his arms crossed over his chest. “Mais un homme a des responsabilités, non? If you can speak, and you can walk, and you feel well enough to go home, then you are needed at home. You’re needed in France. We need you at Groupe Fournier. And pauvre Imogène, she needs you. And who knows? Maybe with so much you cannot remember, you might not remember why you two parted ways. Maybe you find that you miss her.”
Charlie wonders at Stéphane’s audacity to imply that amnesia would make someone willing to swap out one fiancé for another. But Nick just looks down at his blankets. “I remember enough, Papa. Imogène is fine without me.” When he does look up, his eyes are narrowed. “And no offense, but the last thing I need right now is to have everyone fight about what they think is best for me. I don’t fancy being dragged back to France and chained to my desk again, all right?” His voice softens, but not by much, when he addresses his mother. “And I don’t want to go back to my childhood bedroom and be coddled, either. I had a life in London, and I want to get back to it.”
Charlie knows what this means. This is an expansion to the charade, another layer to the lie. He won’t just be required to keep it up in this hospital room, but in actual living quarters with Nick. And yet, when Nick looks up at him, shy and hopeful, it feels like he’s asking him as his actual boyfriend. “I know it’s a lot to ask,” Nick says. “You probably have work—God, I don’t even know what you do—and it would take a lot to look after me, make sure I’m taking my medicines and not dying in my sleep—”
He chokes. “Don’t say that.”
“—and I know there might not be a lot left of the man you fell in love with,” he finishes quietly, “but I’m hoping there’s enough left that you’d be willing to stick it out with me. I totally understand if you didn’t sign up for this, though.”
He knows there’s an audience, but he tenderly brushes some of Nick’s hair away from the gauze on his forehead anyway. “I sort of did, though,” he says. “In sickness and in health, right?”
“So you’ll do it?” he confirms. “You’ll stay with me, here in London?”
“Of course,” says Charlie, and then he breaks the eye contact before he promises Nick anything else. “And I understand that none of you know me very well. I think it would be good for Nick to have you come round and keep supporting him. I mean, it’s almost Christmas, after all. Family should be together for Christmas.”
Dr. Farouk bends slightly at the waist in acknowledgement of the decision. “I’ll start the discharge paperwork.”
Sarah hides her disappointment well, having at least won the battle to keep Nick in England. “Charlie, darling, I think that’s a wonderful sentiment,” she says as Dr. Farouk leaves. “Family should be together for Christmas. Yours must be missing you terribly, so near the holiday. We’ve been keeping you all to ourselves here in London. Where’s your family from, dear?”
“Oh, erm, from Kent,” he says stiffly, “but don’t worry, they’re not expecting me home. I usually work on Christmas.”
Sarah clucks her tongue at the state of the economy. “Shame, that. And from Kent, too! And I live in Kent, I wonder if we ever ran into each other before. Your last name is Spring, right? Any relation to—”
“I don’t really keep in touch with them,” he says, and he prays that Sarah isn’t the snooping type. He nods to everyone and leaves the room without another word, spotting Dr. Farouk sitting at a computer by the nurse’s station. Dr. Farouk beckons him over and asks him for Nick’s address, then prints a series of sheets for him detailing the next steps in Nick’s care. The words swim in front of Charlie—surgical site hygiene, compression socks to prevent blood clots, cognitive exercises, mood swings—and he knows he’s going to have to reread them all at least four more times.
But he will. He’ll commit it all to memory. Nick deserves at least that much.
Dr. Farouk prints out a list of Nick’s appointments, which they add to the calendar on Charlie’s phone. He already knows there are some days he’ll have to switch shifts to make it work. But once he has a decent enough handle on it, he folds the papers up and shakes Dr. Farouk’s hand before the doctor leaves to process the discharge paperwork.
When he comes back, Sarah and Diane are gone. Almost as though Nick can sense Charlie’s confusion, he says, “I sent them home. They’ve been here for days, and poor Aunt Diane has kids of her own. She ought to be with them at Christmas. And Mum deserves a night in her own bed. You have their numbers, yeah?”
“Yeah.” He waves the papers. “Dr. Farouk’s getting it all sorted. I’m pretty much an expert in the home care of brain surgery patients now.” He looks over to David, conciliatory, and adds, “I’d be happy to go over them with you, if that would make you feel better. I know you’re worried about him.”
David just sniffs. “Whatever.”
“And if you’d like to come by and see how he’s doing—”
“Oh, you can be sure of that,” he sneers. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m taking over Dad’s suite at the Royal Lancaster.”
Charlie turns to Stéphane. “You’re not staying? Not even for Christmas?”
“Quel dommage, I know,” he says, raising his arms, “but business is business. I have taken off as many days as I can. But Nick, he is strong, eh? He wants to stay in Londres, so here he will stay. He doesn’t need his papa to look after him.” He crosses over to Nick’s bedside and drops a kiss on the top of Nick’s hair. “Be well, mon fils. Tu es forte, tu guériras rapidement. La perte de mémoire, ce n’est pas si mal. Ça aurait pu être pire!”
Nick’s expression is blank, unfathomable, as he replies, “Oui, Papa. Il y a beaucoup de choses que j’aimerais pouvoir oublier.”
Stéphane goes ashen, clears his throat, and then nods to David and Charlie as he leaves.
Charlie busies himself with preparing the outfit he brought from Nick’s flat for the discharge: another jumper, a pair of boxers, some soft joggers and socks, a t-shirt, and trainers. He puts them in a pile on the edge of the bed—Tara promised to swing by later and help Nick change—and places his wallet and keys on top.
David eyes the pile with suspicion. “Where’s his phone?”
“Hmm?”
“Nick’s phone.”
Charlie hopes he can’t see how the blood rushes, traitorously, to the tips of his ears. “Hmm, I dunno. Couldn’t find it.”
“I probably dropped it onto the tracks,” Nick says, once again helpfully painting the picture of his own exploitation. “Or maybe someone stole it from the scene.”
“No,” says David. “Charlie had it the day of the accident. He showed me a picture of your dog.”
Fuck, fuck, fucking fuck.
“Pretty sure that was my phone,” he says through a tight smile. “I haven’t seen Nick’s since before the accident. We’ll have to pick up a new one for him, but you can call me in the meantime if you want to talk to him.”
David looks like he wants to argue, but then Tara arrives to help Nick change, and so he leaves without a word.
Charlie leaves the room to give them some privacy and answers some texts from Isaac, confirming that he’s left everything at Nick’s flat as instructed. Then he reads the discharge instructions for Nick’s care over and over again. The chemist’s that's closest to the hospital calls to alert him that Nick’s medication is ready for pick-up, and when he peeks back into the room, he checks with Tara to see how long until the discharge will be finalised.
“Probably another few hours,” she tells him apologetically. “You know how hospitals are with their fussy paperwork. A lot of hurry up and wait.”
Charlie nods and pulls on his coat, pulling his knit cap out of the pocket and yanking it over his curls. “Right, then,” he says to Nick. “I’m headed over to the chemist’s to pick up what Dr. Farouk prescribed.” But Nick doesn’t reply, only looks at him with a little crease in his brow. “Is that okay?”
He blinks, then smiles. “Hurry back.”
__________________
Nick stares up at the building while Charlie pulls the wheelchair out of the boot of the Uber, hoping that he looks like he knows what the hell he’s doing. The Uber driver signals his impatience—checking his watch, clearing his throat, accidentally leaning on the horn so both men jump—and Charlie unfolds it and brings it to the side of the car. He helps Nick to slide off the seat and into the chair. “You don’t have to do this,” Nick tells him. “I can walk just fine.”
“The longest you’ve walked without needing a break was twelve minutes,” Charlie replies primly, pulling Nick’s bag out and then shutting the car door with a little more force than necessary. The driver speeds away. “Dr. Farouk said not to push it.”
Nick just hums his surrender, continuing to look up.
“Ringing any bells?” asks Charlie.
“No,” he admits. “It looks like all of our other properties, honestly.”
The doorman rushes to open the wide, full-paneled glass doors for Charlie and Nick, even doffing his cap. “Good to see you back, Mr. Fournier.”
“You, too,” he says cheerily.
As soon as they’re out of earshot by the lift, Charlie informs him, “That’s Terrence. He’s got all your packages, when you’re ready for them. Loads of toys for Daisy, if I had to guess.”
“Probably some Christmas presents, too,” he says when the lift arrives and Charlie wheels him inside. “Hope I remember which one I intended for each person.”
He’s about to offer to help him figure it out, but his guess would be even worse than Nick’s. They ride the lift up to the penthouse, and Charlie manoeuvres Nick out into the tiny space between the lift and his front door, fumbling with the keys. The sound of people just outside has Daisy whipped into a frenzy, and her sudden barks awaken something in Nick. “Daisy-girl!” he says, smoothing his hand on the lintel as Charlie jams the keys into the lock. “I’m right here, Daisy, I’m almost home!”
Once Charlie manages to unlock the door, Nick launches himself out of the wheelchair and into the flat, sinking clumsily to his knees with his arms open to catch Daisy. Her tail wags so fast it’s a yellow blur, and Nick’s face is covered with puppy saliva, but Charlie reckons it’s a better cure than most of the medicine they pumped Nick with over the last few days. He shakes his head, grumbling good-naturedly, and pulls the empty wheelchair inside and locks the door behind them.
“I missed you,” Nick whispers into her fur. “I missed you so much, Daisy-girl. I’m so sorry I left you all alone, but it wasn’t so bad, was it? Charlie took good care of you, didn’t he?”
Charlie drifts past them and puts Nick’s keys on the kitchen island, then starts turning on the lights in the flat. “Are you hungry?” he calls out. “I could make you something for dinner before I take her on a walk.”
“Can’t I come with you?” Charlie walks back to the vestibule with a look on his face that he hopes is answer enough for Nick on this one. Nick seems to get it; he raises his hands in surrender. “All right, all right. Help me up, would you?”
Daisy doesn’t make the job easy, winding in figure eights around the wheels as Charlie helps to pull Nick to his feet and settle him back in the chair. “Right,” says Charlie, finding himself in the unlikely position of expert on a flat he has never actually lived in. “Shall I give you the grand tour?”
“By all means.”
Daisy hops onto Nick’s lap, and Charlie wheels them both through the kitchen, making a mental note to get actual ingredients for actual meals and not just baking projects. Nick’s face remains blank as Charlie points out the cupboards and dishes. There’s not a flicker of recognition in the living room, either. Nick takes in the absurd flatscreen and the floor-to-ceiling glass windows and says not a word.
Charlie jams his hands into his pockets. “Anything?”
“No, not really.” He sighs and nods to the couch. “Could we—sorry, it’s just a lot to take in at once. Can we just sit for a while?”
He’s able to get out of the wheelchair on his own, taking a few steps toward the couch. Charlie sees it on his face, the worry with each step he takes that somehow his brain will fail him, that a clot will come loose or an aneurysm will strike if he’s not careful. But he gamely hides the anxiety and takes a seat, with Daisy curling up next to him. Charlie folds himself into the other corner of the couch.
“Do you still live in Ealing?” Nick asks.
“Yeah. Told my flatmates I’d be helping you out for the foreseeable, though. They know they won’t be seeing much of me.”
“Why don’t we live together yet?”
“Oh, erm…” Charlie is doing his best to base all his answers in truth. It’ll be easier to recall them later as he builds this story. “Well, this place is just a temporary lease, right? You were only here to get started on the international expansion of Groupe Fournier. And my lease wasn’t up yet, and we didn’t know what you were going to do when you finished up your work here. I think we were just waiting to see how things went before we made any more big decisions.”
“Were you going to move to Paris with me?”
Is that where this is going? “I—I dunno. We didn’t really talk about it.”
He can’t tell if Nick seems disappointed or confused. He stares out through the window at the fading twilight. “There’s just so much,” he says quietly. “So much I don’t—” Before he finishes his thought, he shakes his head and says, “Right, I’m starving. Why don’t we order takeaway?”
“I could make you something…” Charlie offers, knowing the best he can do are cheese toasties or instant noodles.
Instead, Nick pulls out his wallet and tosses it to Charlie. “You’ve done so much for me already. Let’s take it easy tonight, yeah? Order a pizza?”
He tries to hide his relief and pulls out his phone to place an order. Pizza is one of his safe foods, and he wouldn’t have wanted to explain the concept to Nick if he had wanted to order something else. As guilty as he feels inputting Nick’s credit card information into his Deliveroo app, he knows he couldn’t have afforded this himself. “Done,” he says, rising from the couch. “I’ll take Daisy out for her evening walk, and when I get back, the food should be here. Will you be all right on your own for twenty minutes?”
Nick settles into the couch. “I think I can manage.” Charlie awkwardly pats his knee and then herds Daisy off the couch, who’s torn between spending time with Nick and the walk she knows is imminent. “Oh, and Charlie?”
“Yeah?”
“When you get back,” he says, “I want to start learning.”
Daisy nips at his heel, but Charlie hardly feels it. “Learning what?”
“About you,” he says. “About us.”
__________________
A box of cheese pizza and a plate of garlic knots later—and two glasses of a deliriously good red wine, both drunk by Charlie even though Nick begged in vain to be allowed a sip and then magnanimously insisted that Charlie at least be allowed to drink tonight if he couldn’t—finds Charlie on the floor, marveling at the fluffy white rug. The sky outside isn’t true black, more like that light pollution blue-brown that could be any time of night. Charlie guesses it’s close to ten, maybe eleven. He can’t tell, and his phone’s somewhere inside the couch cushions, long abandoned. His brain is addled by Nick’s endless questions, or maybe it’s just the wine talking.
“Hogwarts house?”
“Ugh, who reads Harry Potter anymore?” Charlie drawls, and then with an embarrassed sip, he adds, “Slytherin, okay?”
“Favourite film?”
“Moonlight.”
“Favourite bands?”
“Muse, the Strokes, Best Coast. I used to want to be a drummer when I was a kid.” Charlie sets his wine glass on the coffee table before he spills any on the rug. “Played the drums all the way through secondary.”
“That’s so cool.” Nick hasn’t had a drop to drink per Charlie’s insistence, but his cheeks are still rosy, and his chin rests in his hands as he watches Charlie sprawled out on the floor. “Drummers are hot.”
For his part, Charlie buries his face in the rug.
“Where do we want to go for our honeymoon?”
“Athens,” he says around a mouthful of white shag.
“Mmm.” Nick picks up the copy of The Iliad Charlie planted and nods. “Not hard to guess whose idea that was, classics nerd.”
“Oi!”
“Not complaining!” he laughs. “There are beaches in Athens, right? As long as I get to watch you coming out of the sea all tanned and wet and in a little Speedo, I’ll call that a successful honeymoon.”
“Nick,” he groans, rolling off his belly and onto his back, “you can’t just say things like that.”
“I want to see where on Dr. Farouk’s paperwork it says that former coma patients can’t fantasise about their hot fiancés. Find that sentence for me, and I’ll shut the fuck up.”
“Can I ask you a question?” Charlie asks.
“By all means.”
“Why weren’t you more surprised to find out that you were engaged to a man?” He’s just tipsy enough to ask this question, but not drunk enough that he won’t remember the answer. “I mean, your parents didn’t know that you were…into men. David was caught totally off guard. Your mum and aunt seemed to have an inkling, but they never said you confirmed it.”
Nick bites his bottom lip as he considers what to say. “I—it’s not that I’ve always known. It took years for me to figure it out, that—that I’m bi. When things ended with Imogène, I do remember deciding that I was going to…explore that part of myself. I know that was the plan even before I came to London. So when I woke up, and there you were…” His eyes crinkle up as he looks at Charlie so fondly he fears he might combust. “I guess I just thought my plan had gone really fucking well.”
Charlie rolls over again and buries his head in his hands. “Sap.”
“As for why I didn’t tell my parents or David yet,” he says, “I don’t know. I can’t remember that much.”
It’s some strange kind of relief to know that he hasn’t backed Nick into some queer corner. Nick liked men before he met Charlie. Nick planned to date men before he met Charlie. He might’ve even succeeded. “I guess it’s not as simple as worrying what they would think,” Charlie muses. “You didn’t tell them about Daisy, either. David didn’t believe you’d adopted a dog until I showed him a picture.”
“I don’t know why,” he says again. “I…I have my guesses, but nothing’s certain.” When Charlie looks up at him expectantly, Nick blushes and wipes a bit of grease off the corner of his mouth with a napkin. “There were a lot of things about my life that I wanted to change, those last weeks I can remember in Paris before I came here. But I was terrified they wouldn’t stick. Thought I was just having a momentary crisis. Maybe I just wanted to be sure about things before I told anyone about them.”
Charlie frowns, unsure of how that would work. If he ended up not being sure about Daisy, what would Nick have done—sent her back to where she came from? And even though this has nothing to do with him, the wine has made him maudlin enough to say, “Me. You wanted to be sure about me.”
Nick shakes his head. “No, that’s not true. I know I wouldn’t have asked you to marry me if I didn’t mean it. But my father and brother, they…they have a way of turning everything into the family business. The schools my father sent us to, they were to make sure David and I grew up around the ‘right sort of people.’ The rugby team I play with sometimes in France, even just for fun on weekends—three of my teammates are the kids of my dad’s business partners.The clothes we wear, the restaurants we’re seen in, they all…contribute to Groupe Fournier’s success. I think…” He starts to tear the napkin into tiny strips in his lap. “I think I wanted you and Daisy to be separate from that. I must have wanted you both for myself. And until I could think of a way to keep you out of all that, I didn’t want to get you involved with my family.”
Charlie’s heart catches in his throat, and he wants to say something—anything—to reassure Nick, to wipe that somber look off his face. But before he can think of something, Nick bunches up the strips in his lap into a ball and tosses them onto the coffee table, saying, “Anyway, I’m the amnesiac of the two of us, so I’m the one asking the questions around here. And if I had to bet, I’d say your family doesn’t know about me, either.”
“No. They don’t.”
“You said you’re not in touch with them,” Nick says. “Did they—did they not accept you when you came out or something?”
“No,” says Charlie. He sits up straight and crosses his legs. “No, nothing like that. My parents, my sister Victoria, they’re—they were all right with me being gay. I mean, my mum never did much to keep my grandparents from being homophobic when they visited for Christmas, but that’s the worst I can say about them. And they supported me when…” He hesitates. So far, Nick only knows him as the fiancé who saved his life. Someone capable and trustworthy and dependable and—though Charlie can scarcely believe it—attractive. Going down this road will let Nick know exactly how true those things aren’t. How Charlie has an ugliness to him, inside and out.
He doesn’t want Nick to see that part of him yet. But he’s trying so hard to tell Nick the truth, mostly the truth. He doesn’t want to edit himself about this. “So,” he says, “I was outed at school when I was thirteen, and I was bullied pretty badly for it. Badly enough that I started trying to find unhealthy outlets, or—or maybe I was always going to have this, to have these mental illnesses. It’s hard to say. But I have, erm, anxiety and OCD, and I’m in recovery for—for anorexia.” Charlie keeps his focus down, picking at the skin of his fingernails so he doesn’t have to see Nick’s reaction. “I spent some time in inpatient care back in school, when things got really bad. But my family stood by me through everything. And things got better. I saw my therapist regularly, I was doing the worksheets and following the meal plans, and my parents agreed that I was well enough to go to uni. I moved to London, I started going to UCL to study English literature. I wanted—I want to be a writer. To tell about my experiences one day, when I’m brave enough, when I have all the right words. But…”
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Nick let himself down from the couch and onto the floor. He’s only an arm’s length away.
“I met someone my first year,” he says dully. “His name was Ben. He was my first boyfriend, and I—I fell really hard. I wanted to be wanted so badly, and finally here was someone who seemed to want me. I—I lost focus at school. I stopped going to classes just to hang out with him and his friends. My family, my friends, they started to notice, they raised concerns, but I… I shut them out. Told them they didn’t understand how good it felt, that I’d been waiting to feel this way about someone, that I was finally happy and if they didn’t support me, they could fuck off. They were… They tried to help me longer than I deserved. But it got to a point where I wouldn’t let them try anymore.”
The next breath he takes is more shuddery than he would like. It’s been years, and it’s a bed of his own making. It shouldn’t affect him like this anymore. “I dropped out of uni by nineteen and moved in with Ben. Things were fine for a few months…until they weren’t. And then I had nowhere to go, no one to help me. It was…pretty bleak for a while there. I didn’t know if I was going to survive it.”
He dares to look up at Nick, trying for a smile. The absolutely shattered look on Nick’s face is enough to stop him mid-attempt. “It’s okay,” he reassures him. “It’s in the past. Years ago now. I got a job that pays the bills, I signed back up for online classes to make progress on my degree. I even reconnected with my old friends. I’m fine, Nick.”
Nick just stares at him, mouth agape. “Did…did I know this? Before?” Charlie doesn’t know how to answer, which Nick interprets for himself. “Oh, God, did I just make you relive this entire trauma for me a second time—”
“Nick, no. That was…the first time I told you any of that.” He starts picking at the skin around his thumbnail. “Probably should have said something before. Wouldn’t want you to marry a headcase without any prior warning.”
“Don’t say that about yourself,” Nick says with a fierceness that shocks Charlie. “You’re not a headcase. You’re brave to have survived this long, to have made it this far. And God, Charlie, without any fucking help? I don’t—” He reaches out to touch him, to take him by the shoulder, but then he stops. “And you haven’t spoken to your family since?”
“I burned that bridge pretty thoroughly.”
“I don’t believe that,” he swears. “I can’t believe that. My own mother, she—I’ve barely been a son to her at all since I moved to France, and she came running to my side the second you called her. You don’t think your family would do the same?”
Charlie shrugs. “I’ve never had to find out.”
“Do you miss them?”
“Every day. Especially Tori.”
“Then why don’t you—”
“Because they were right.” Charlie might be drunker than he thought. “Because they warned me not to get involved with Ben and they were right. Because I’m ashamed. Because I fucked up my life. Because I’m—I’m a uni dropout who cleans fucking Tube stations for a living—” He stops himself with a gasp and scans Nick’s face immediately, wondering if he’s given it all away by admitting his job. Would it be enough to jog his memory?
This time, Nick does touch him. He reaches for Charlie’s hands and clasps them in his own. “There’s no shame in that,” he says softly. “No shame in honest work while you’re trying to pursue your education. I’m sure they’d be happy to know you’re alive. That you’re doing your best. I’m sure they still love you, Charlie.”
Until he says it, Charlie doesn’t realise that he was secretly worried they didn’t anymore. A little sob, like a hiccup, escapes him, and he withdraws his hands out of Nick’s gasp to clutch them to his throat. “Sorry,” he squeaks.
“No,” says Nick. “No s-word.” But he backs up and gives Charlie a little space. “Do you like being a station cleaner?”
“Who in their right mind would like being a station cleaner, Nick?”
“Just asking.” He starts to collect the empty pizza box and paper plates and napkins that litter the coffee table. “You know, if you wanted… I mean, I have more than enough money for both of us—”
“Absolutely not.” Charlie is already taking far too much advantage of Nick just by being here. He won’t do what David accused him of and actually use Nick for his money.
Nick smirks. “Knew you’d say that. So bloody independent.”
“But you don’t mind?” Charlie checks. “I mean, someone like you, engaged to someone like me…”
“Don’t worry about that,” says Nick. He finishes tossing all the rubbish together in a pile, and Charlie gets up and takes it over to the kitchen for him. “It doesn’t matter to me what you do as long as you’re happy. I won’t deny, I’d get a certain satisfaction out of being your sugar daddy, though.”
“Is that right?” Charlie calls out from the kitchen, folding the pizza box in half with some difficulty before he can stuff it in the rubbish bin that looks like a robot.
“Having you live with here with me, or in Paris, buying you designer clothes and first edition books and whatever your heart desires, knowing you never had to work another day in your life unless you wanted to, paying your uni tuition so you could study whatever you wanted without having to worry about it and then spend your days writing…” Nick doesn’t dangle the possibilities in front of him; he just lists them with a dreamy wistfulness, like Charlie is withholding a dream from Nick instead of the other way around. “Yeah, I want that. But I already know enough about you, Charlie Spring, to know you’d kill me if I tried. You want to do things your way. So no, I don’t mind. I just hope you’ll let me know how I can help you have what you want.”
Charlie returns to the living room and helps Nick off the floor. There’s a moment where neither of them know where to go, if Charlie should place Nick back on the couch or lead him to bed. They sway together, and Charlie looks up at Nick through his lashes and says, “I already have that.”
Nick grins. “Now who’s the sap?”
“All right, bedtime for you.”
“Couldn’t agree more,” says Nick, and his hands, which had previously steadied themselves on Charlie’s shoulders, start to curve around and tug Charlie closer.
“Not—not like that!” Charlie splutters, wiggling out of his embrace. “Time to sleep, Nick, for Christ’s sake!”
“Can’t we do both?”
“You’re—I’m not having this conversation with you.” He grabs the wheelchair and forces it between them, not trusting himself to hold out against Nick, especially when he’s on the razor’s edge of drunk. Nick acquiesces, but there’s a buzzy energy to him that Charlie doesn’t trust. He helps Nick into the bedroom and pulls some pyjamas out of the drawers. “Give me a shout if you need anything,” he says, making sure to be out of sight as Nick stands up from the wheelchair and leans against the bed for support. Nick should be able to change just fine sitting on the bed. Charlie doesn’t need to witness it.
He starts locking up, turning off the lights, filling a cup with water and grabbing Nick’s nighttime pills. Daisy follows him around faithfully and deposits herself on her dog bed by the window as he leaves the living room, though he has a feeling she’ll weasel her way into bed with them before long.
God. Bed. Tonight he’s going to sleep in the same bed as Nick Fournier. He didn’t think this far ahead. He didn’t even remember to bring pyjamas the last time he was here.
Nick’s changed by the time he gets back, and Charlie hands over his pills and water without a word. Nick takes them, sticking out his tongue to prove he’s swallowed them, and Charlie asks, “Do you need a hand in the loo? Help. I mean, do you need help in the loo?”
“I think I’ve got it.” Nick takes a few wobbly steps off the bed and toward the en-suite, and when he picks up his toothbrush, he winks at Charlie.
Charlie pretends not to have seen the wink, demands that his brain not interpret it, and roots around in Nick’s pyjama drawers. Fiancés borrow each others clothes, he tells himself, and he finds a pair with a drawstring that he can at least pull tight around his waist and a baggy t-shirt. The opposite of sexy, an outfit that screams we are going to sleep and not touch each other’s body parts. Charlie dives under the covers and pulls them up to his chin, cursing Nick for being able to afford to softest fucking mattress and blankets known to man. He listens as Nick finishes brushing his teeth and and then cringes and turns away when Nick moves away from the sink toward the toilet.
“It’s so nice not to have the fucking catheter anymore,” Nick calls out. “It was weirdly emasculating—wait, do we do this?”
“Do what?”
“Do we pee in front of each other?”
Charlie pauses. “I guess we do now.” He knows he should go in and check on Nick, offer to help him walk back to bed and get under the blankets, but he reasons with himself that Nick will appreciate a few more seconds of feeling like he can do things on his own.
Nick leaves the en-suite and switches the light off, leaving the warm glow of the bedside lamps as the only source of light in the room. He lifts up the blankets and slides into bed next to Charlie, close enough that he can feel Nick’s body heat, but not touching. “So,” he says, his voice a tad lower than it was before. “Fancy meeting you here.”
In spite of himself, Charlie laughs, grabbing one of his books from the bedside table and chucking it at Nick. “Don’t you dare! Dr. Farouk said not to exert yourself!”
Nick dodges the book and pretends to pout. “I wouldn’t necessarily have to exert myself,” he points out. “I could be very, very still. Very relaxed. Could just lie here, really.”
“And what?” Charlie asks in (mostly) mock outrage. “Make me do all the work?”
Nick props his head up on his elbow, intrigued. “Are you saying I usually do all the work?”
“No, I—we—” Charlie feels himself going crimson. “Nick, please—”
“I bet I do,” he jokes. “I bet I’m on my knees for you all the time. You’re proper bossy when you want to be. Bet it makes me melt and do whatever you say. It already has so far.”
He feels his entire body warm up at the thought of Nick not only on his knees, but enjoying being at Charlie’s beck and call. “Patients with traumatic brain injuries don’t get to make these kinds of requests. I’m supposed to be taking care of you, Nick!”
“You would be taking very good care of me,” Nick wheedles, but then he flops his head—to Charlie’s dismay, since it might jostle his brain—down on his pillow in defeat. “Sorry. Don’t mean to push. I’ll stop.”
Charlie just harrumphs and leans over to the bedside table to turn off his lamp. “It’s not that I don’t—Nick, you know I think you’re very—very—”
“I don’t, actually,” says Nick, turning off his own lamp, “but I’d love to hear it some time.”
“I’m just—I’m trying to take care of you. I don’t want to do anything to—to make you unwell. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. Just…just be patient, okay?” Charlie hates himself for adding that last bit. Giving Nick hope that they can have a sexual relationship in the future isn’t helping. Charlie means what he promised his friends; he will tell Nick everything before this reaches the point of no return. He has no idea when that will be or what will tip him off, but he can’t have sex with Nick. That’s crossing a line.
They lie next to each other in silence as the seconds tick by. Charlie worries that he’s offended Nick with his refusal. But in fairness, even if they were truly engaged, the sort of movement required—Charlie begs himself not to linger too long on thoughts of bouncing, manhandling, and humping, not when he’s this close to Nick Fournier in bed—would be taboo for a post-op neurosurgery patient. They would have had to wait until Nick mended a little more, regardless.
“Can we—is it okay to cuddle, though?” Nick’s voice is small and discouraged in the dark. “Nothing more than that, I promise, just… It was frightening, back in the hospital. Especially at night. Sometimes, I—I worried if I fell asleep, I wouldn’t wake up again.”
How on earth can I fucking say yes to this?
How on earth can I say no?
“Budge over,” says Charlie, and Nick rolls to his side. As predicted, the door creaks open and Daisy comes bounding into bed with them, her warmth radiating near their feet as she settles down with a snuffle. Charlie is careful to keep his pelvis angled away from Nick’s arse, though he wraps his arms around Nick’s chest and even allows himself to press his nose into the back of Nick’s neck and leave a kiss there.
Nick smells like hospital soap, something industrial grade and antibacterial. Charlie determines that they’ll try a shower tomorrow, or maybe a bath is safer, though he doesn’t know how he’ll manage it. “You’re safe, Nick,” he murmurs. “I’ve got you, and Daisy’s got you. You’re going to wake up tomorrow."