Falling (a Heartstopper fanfiction)

Empty

Left alone in the room, Charlie drew his knees up and bent his head, covering the back of his head with his hands.

For a few moments, he didn't move, didn't think. Some part of him was waiting to see if Nick would get rid of Harry and then come back. But that was stupid, he told himself eventually. If Nick had meant to come back, he would have said so.

No, Nick was gone. He'd left. Because Charlie had pressured him into doing something he didn't want to do. What had he been thinking, asking Nick to kiss him? Nick was straight. Everyone knew he was straight. Charlie knew he was straight.

He hadn't kissed like he was straight, though. He had kissed like—

No. Charlie had imagined the heat of that kiss. He must have. The familiar corridor in his mind where it was all his fault was in front of him, and it was too easy to go down it to stop and try for another direction. Instead he told himself that Nick had been only humouring him, and now he was regretting it. Charlie felt tears stinging his eyes, and he hastily got to his feet. He didn't want Nick or anyone else to find him in here alone, crying. He'd never live it down.

On his way down the corridor—going the opposite way from the way he and Nick had come to the room, hoping for another set of stairs, not wanting to risk running into anyone—Charlie texted his dad to come get him. He really didn't want to be standing round outside. He wanted to get out of here, to go home, before the tears that were threatening became a full-blown storm.

As he waited, he tried to think about how cold it was, how much he wished he'd brought a coat—anything to avoid thinking about what had happened in that room. Not yet.

His dad pulled up as Charlie was starting to lose that battle, as he was thinking about what it had been like sitting so close to Nick, who was like a furnace, always so warm.

Charlie got into the car, finding his dad looking at him with concern. "Hey. Hey, you okay?"

He tried to say yes, to get home without losing control, but he couldn't. He broke down in tears thinking about how good that had felt, how amazing, like a dream come true, and then how wrong it had all been, how selfish of him. Nick would never want to talk to him again. There would be no more hanging out in his room, no more movies or MarioKart, no more long text chats, no more "hi"s in the morning at form. Charlie hadn't realised how important Nick had become in his life until now, when he was certain he had lost his friendship for good. Forlorn, empty, he wept on his dad's shoulder, while his dad held him and said it was okay.

Charlie wished he believed him.

Finally he got hold of himself and they started driving home. "Do you want to tell me about it?" his dad asked.

"No."

"Did someone do something to you?"

Charlie shook his head. It had been all his fault. "No. It ... it was me. I—got my hopes up, and it was stupid, and I—" He swallowed hard against more tears. "It was all me."

His dad laid a gentle hand on his knee. "If you want to talk to me, I'll listen."

"I know. Thanks." He turned his head and looked out the window, because he didn't want to talk. He wanted to disappear.

At home, he went straight to his room and got into his pyjamas, burying his clothes deep in the hamper, hoping he never had to see them again. Then he climbed into bed, pulling the covers up over his head, and tried not to hear the murmuring of his parents' voices, worrying about him, just like they always had to.

If he had only left things alone! If he had never asked those questions, Nick wouldn't have felt pressured to kiss him. It had been an amazing kiss, but ... not worth losing Nick's friendship over.

He'd realised how much he liked spending time with Nick, but it hadn't occurred to him that in a few short weeks Nick had become his best friend. He felt vaguely disloyal to Tao for even thinking it, but ... he and Nick could spend hours together doing nothing. They never ran out of things to talk about, but they could also sit and not talk. Outwardly they had so little in common, but that never mattered. Charlie had felt safe being himself with Nick—the way he mostly only was with Tao and Isaac and Elle—from the very beginning.

And now that was gone, because he'd had to push for more. He hadn't been satisfied with Nick's generosity in letting Charlie be part of his life, and he'd lost his best friend.

Reaching out, Charlie took his phone off the bedside table, hoping against hope for a text, but there was nothing. Nick was never going to want to talk to him again.

He kept fending off memories of that kiss, of how it had felt, of the heat of Nick's hand on his shoulder and the way he'd thought he might just melt through the floor if it went on. The look on Nick's face when they touched for the first time, the darkness of his eyes just before they closed, the eagerness and the passion of that second kiss ...

Charlie stopped himself. That had been an illusion. The Nick he'd thought he was kissing had never existed. The whole night might as well have never happened.

He must have fallen asleep eventually, because he woke to rain pounding on his window—all too appropriate, given the way he felt—and an empty phone. No texts. He truly had messed everything up, and their friendship was over for good.

He tried to roll over and go back to sleep, but instead he just went back to the same loop in his mind. His mother's sharp knock on his door and her reminder that they were going to Grandma's today so he needed to get up and get ready was a relief. Better to be awake and miserable than trying to sleep and miserable.

As he was brushing his teeth, trying not to imagine Nick saying "no" to kissing him instead of that breathless "Yeah" that still caused his own breath to catch in his chest at the memory, there came a knock at the front door downstairs.

His mum called from the back of the house for him to answer it, so he hastily finished brushing and went downstairs, opening the door—to find Nick Nelson on his doorstep, standing there in the rain.

"Hi."

Utterly gobsmacked, all Charlie could do was stand there and say "hi" in return.