Kaleidoscope (a Heartstopper fanfiction)

Unsure

By the time he got home, Nick had half-convinced himself he'd been imagining all those feelings at Charlie's. Something he ate, maybe, or not enough sleep, made him feel weird. Nothing more.

He sat down on his bed, pulled his phone out of his pocket, and started scrolling through his Insta. Finding a picture Charlie had posted from his back yard in the snow, he stopped on it, smiling, remembering what a lovely day that had been. He switched to his own pictures, all the selfies of the two of them and Nellie lying in the snow.

He clicked on one. His own half-smile, his eyes nearly closed; Nellie with her tongue out; and Charlie smiling over the top of her head, so naturally. Nick zoomed in on Charlie's face, feeling a rush of affection.

But it was more than that, too. He looked at Charlie's eyes, his hair, his smile, and he wondered what it would be like to kiss him. Suddenly he could imagine it so clearly, and he could feel his chest tighten, his breath coming short, the way it had when he'd wanted to hold Charlie's hand on the couch earlier.

Well. That settled it, then: He liked Charlie. And not just in a friend way—in a romantic way.

Wait. What was he thinking? That was—that was what someone who was gay would think. And Nick wasn't gay. Surely he wasn't. If he was gay, he would have known by now, wouldn't he?

But how did you know? Did you just wake up one day and find yourself dreaming of kissing your friends? Because if that was the way that worked—maybe that was what was happening to him. He wished he could ask Charlie how he'd known. But no. He couldn't. Not until he knew what was happening to him.

Nick moved to the beanbag chair in the corner and opened up his laptop. His fingers hovered above the keyboard, not even sure what to search for. At last he typed, hesitantly, "am I gay?"

For a moment, Nick just sat there, frozen, not even wanting to look at the words on the screen, his heart pounding. Then he clicked "enter".

There were so many websites. How did you choose? He clicked on "5 Signs You Might Be Gay", but none of the descriptions really seemed to fit him. If everyone who liked superhero movies was gay, then maybe the whole world was, and that would be something of a surprise to a lot of people, Nick thought.

Then he found a page that talked about homophobia, and the things a lot of LGBTQ people had to go through. He thought of Charlie and the way he had been treated last year, of some of the jokes in the locker room. Why did people have to make other people's lives difficult? What was the point of that?

He read about the passage of Marriage Equality in England, so now people could get married to the person they loved. Nick approved, but it didn't help him with his dilemma.

In the middle of the page was embedded a box that asked "Have you questioned your own sexuality recently?" He hovered the mouse over "Yes" and then over "No", and eventually decided not to click either one.

Another click led him to an article on conversion therapy, on taking someone who was gay and trying to force them to be—not gay. He imagined that kind of thing happening to Charlie, and was immediately furious at the very idea. It made him want to run over to Charlie's house, wrap him up in a blanket, and keep him safe from anyone who ever wanted to harm him again. Another site was about discrimination against gay people in the real world. Nick got the message: Being gay was still not accepted everywhere. Well, he didn't need the internet to tell him that. Truham was enough.

Finally, he found a site that promised it was "The Ultimate Gay Quiz!" He had never noticed himself crushing on male actors ... but he was a bit possessive of at least one friend of the same sex. He had wondered what it would be like to kiss a member of the same sex. By the end of the quiz, he had answered "Definitely" and "Maybe" a lot more often than he would have expected to.

His answer came up: 62% Homosexual.

So. He was gay.

But no, not even gay—maths wasn't his best subject, but he knew 62% wasn't really one thing or the other. So he was half-gay. Was that even possible? And how could he be this person today that he hadn't been yesterday, or last month? Nick's eyes welled up with tears. He was so confused, and so unsure of who he was now and what he wanted, and what he should do, and how he could ever look Charlie in the eye again. Did secretly crushing on his gay friend make him as bad as Ben?

Nick eventually fell into a troubled sleep, but all of Sunday he worried at the problem like Nellie with a bone.

It seemed as though he might be gay. But he couldn't possibly be gay, because he was straight. He'd always been straight. Unless this was the way it happened—you were straight most of your life then suddenly you discovered that you had a crush on another boy. Was that the way it had happened with Charlie? Nick tried to imagine it, a younger Charlie and whoever it was he had started having a crush on, and he didn't like that at all. It was hard enough to imagine that last fall Charlie had liked Ben, but to conjure up some other boy Charlie had liked before that—Nick tried to identify the feeling that welled up in him, and was surprised to realise it was jealousy. He didn't want Charlie to have had a crush on someone else. He wanted—

He wanted Charlie to have a crush on him, to feel about him the way Nick felt. And he just didn't even know if that was possible. How could he know? Just because Charlie was gay, Nick couldn't just assume that he liked every boy he met. How confusing would that be? And Nick had never liked every girl he met ... although maybe if he was gay that was why. Certainly some of his rugby friends seemed to like every girl they met.

As he brushed his teeth that night, Nick realised he would have to see Charlie in the morning. What would he say? How would he act? Could they keep hanging out if Nick was going to continue to want things he had never imagined wanting?

He looked at himself in the mirror. The idea of not hanging out with Charlie made him feel so ... empty and sad. No, he couldn't stop seeing Charlie. But if he kept on, he would need to find out how Charlie felt. He had no idea what he would do beyond that, but learning if this was a mutual crush or not would be a start, at least.

Nick nodded at himself in the mirror, glad to have at least some part of a decision made.