Archive of Our Own

The lorries pulled up on a random Wednesday. Nick watched as the workers piled out of cabins and trailers, their grins wide and their shirts grubby. They dispensed long metal beams and swathes of fabric on the ground. A bit late in the year, Nick thought, as he watched their breath condense in thick puffs while they argued and laughed and hauled machinery out from the depths of the lorries. It piqued his interest, though. He wondered whether they had come beforehand to plaster colourful posters around the town – the kind he remembered from when he was a kid.

As he watched from the window, the same buzzy sense of excitement from back then filled his belly. 

By Thursday morning, the field outside his window was transformed; no longer a barren patch of land but something magical. The big top took up most of the space – all bold stripes in red and white – and Nick passed the time counting how many times someone limboed underneath the tent fabric throughout the day. One hundred and four, not that anyone asked.

Even in the low glow of an autumn morning, the booths – with their flashing lights and colourful prizes – blazed like a fire and lit up the room like fireworks. Nick sank back against the pillows and watched as the wall opposite his bed metamorphosed into a kaleidoscope of lights dancing against the plaster. 

At night, one of the nurses flicked the blinds shut with a scowl.

“They’ll be leaving a right mess and it’ll be up to the council to sort it,” she snapped, as if Nick had asked. “And then all of our council tax’ll go up, you mark my words.”

Nick said nothing, but accepted the tea she offered him with a polite smile. She wasn’t his favourite – the day shift had a much friendlier bank of staff – but she at least made a decent cup of tea. That being said, his favourite nurse always allowed him two sachets of sugar in the piss-weak Earl Gray she passed him of a morning – even though his meal plan technically forbade it.

“I like the circus,” he offered quietly when the nurse was busy pouring from the metal jug. Even with the blinds closed, she still periodically glared towards the window like she could see what was going on outside. “I used to go with my brother.”

“Filthy places,” she muttered, as if she hadn’t heard him. “No place for someone in your condition.”

As if the blinds weren’t enough she tugged the curtains closed too, before huffing out of the room, leaving him wallowing in the depressing glow of the dialysis machine lights.

“Did you see the circus, Nicky?” his Mum said cheerfully when she arrived back in his room in the morning. Behind her, much to Nick’s confusion, David skulked into view and slumped into one of the awkward plastic chairs that lined the room.

“Er, yeah, they finished setting up yesterday,” Nick started, frowning. “What’s David doing here?”

“Nice to see you too, Nicky,” David quipped back, barely looking up from his phone. From his scowl, Nick assumed that he and Jess had broken up – again – and that was the only reason he had deigned to come. None of David’s relationships had ever lasted very long, but Nick had hoped that this one might finally convince David to move out.

“Be nice, both of you,” Mum warned, even though Nick would argue that it was never him that caused an issue. And he never asked for David to join her.

“I am a beacon of calm to aid in Nicky’s recovery. Fucking starving though, where’s the vending machine?” David snorted, before pushing himself out of the chair and heading back out of the room. Nick refused to give him the dignity of watching him go.

“How are you feeling, baby?” Mum whispered when the room was clear, tucking her hand underneath his fringe to feel his forehead. Slightly unnecessary, Nick thought, given that there was a rolling carousel of nurses in and out of the room to check his temperature throughout the day to make sure he didn’t have a fever; a common side effect of the dialysis that was pumping his kidneys back to relative health, apparently. 

Nick shrugged off her hand and tugged the scratchy blanket further up his chest.

“Fine,” he snapped, although he knew she meant well. Mum pulled her hand back quickly, face hurt, and Nick instantly felt guilty. “Sorry, I’m just really bored. And tired. And I want to get out of here.”

Mum clicked her tongue sympathetically.

“Soon, baby. The doctor thinks it might only be a few more weeks and then we can have you at home.”

That would take him through half term and partway into the Christmas term, he thought bitterly. The rugby season would be well over, even though he knew logically there would be no way he would be allowed to play again this side of A levels. Even being at home, he knew he would be facing more bed rest until the new year.

He had at least managed to celebrate his birthday and see all his mates for a week before everything went downhill; a rugby tackle gone wrong in their first proper match of the year. One that sent him hurtling into the dust with the knee of the other fly-half striking him almost impossibly hard in the back. A renal haematoma, they called it, and Nick had been sent home with strict instructions for bed rest and a depressingly specific diet. 

He hadn’t thought much about the cut, not enough to mention it to anyone in any case. And when he woke up feverish and tired not long after, he assumed that it was just one of the symptoms the A&E doctor had reeled off from a long list that Nick had hardly listened to. He’d feel better in the morning, he had told himself, he just needed more sleep.

When his mum found him collapsed next to the bath – the water overflowing and dripping through the ceiling below – he’d argued that the ambulance was unnecessary. He’d be fine, if people would just stop making a fuss and let him lie down. Three days later, he had woken up with an even fuzzier head and a new diagnosis: sepsis. Now, until his kidneys recovered enough from the double blow, he would be stuck in this hospital bed like he was tethered to the metal headboard. For the foreseeable, his days consisted of strict bed rest, a carefully controlled diet and regular dialysis that filtered his blood while he stared at the ceiling and tried to think happy thoughts.

What he really wanted was a walk, even just around the ward. But the fatigue was a bit much nowadays and his attempts to shuffle to the nurses’ station and back – IV rolling noisily at his side – only ever resulted in them having to up his pain medication, which left him feeling woozy.

“Do you think the circus will still be here when I get out?” he asked hopefully. He knew, logically, that these big crews tended to move on quickly, but it didn’t exactly hurt to be optimistic. Until, that is, he watched as his Mum’s face fell in the brief moments before she remembered to turn around and pretend to fold the clothes she had brought with her. 

“Maybe, baby. We’ll see,” she whispered, and Nick heard the ‘no’ loud and clear.

🎆🎆🎆

His hospital room held space for two beds. For the first week or so of Nick’s stay, the other side of the room had been an empty expanse of linoleum and machines hooked to nothing. In his second week, they had wheeled in a bed containing a boy who said nothing to Nick for his entire stay. Instead he just scrolled through his phone like he might miss a morsel of news or gossip if he dared to look up from the screen. Nick never found out what was wrong with him.

His next roommate had been cheerier; a teenage boy a little younger than himself with a scarf around his head and a scar on his chest. Nick had listened to him rattle off a series of diagnoses and treatments that sounded like a foreign language, until Nick asked him when he would be getting out and the room went quiet. He was gone not long after; off to a more suitable room for whatever his next round of treatment would entail. Nick had felt a little luckier that night as he laid and listened to his own, slimmed down selection of machines quietly beep in the darkness.

The next few came and went quickly – a revolving door of faces that Nick hadn’t bothered to get to know before they were gone, either discharged home or carted to whatever destination in the hospital was best suited to their needs. Nick never found out, in any case. He never bothered much to care.

Until the perky, chatty little boy arrived the day after the circus and brought with him a fanfare of family members – who fretted and fussed and fanned out around the room. They all had opinions, and loudly expressed them with seemingly no care for Nick napping in the far corner. He ignored them, as best he could, until he couldn’t.

“What's your name?” the boy in the bed asked, as his mum furiously argued with one of the nurses in the hallway. Nick had been vaguely listening to her shrill demands to speak to a doctor, just for something to do, until he realised he had been spoken to.

“Eh?”

“Leave him be, Olly,” the girl Nick gathered to be his sister said, looking apologetically over at Nick like this was some great trespass upon his day.

“It’s okay,” Nick replied softly when his brain caught up. “I’m Nick.”

Olly, apparently, waved. He had a mass of thick, dark curls that stuck out in all directions where he had been fidgeting against the pillow. Nick wondered if his sister straightened her hair into the blunt bob that hid most of her features or whether they had each fished from a different genetic pond. There was no mistaking the eyes, though: bright, clear blue that trained on Nick as Olly wiggled excitedly in the bed.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Olly!” His sister’s face twisted with mortification. Nick simply shrugged.

“I got hurt playing rugby, and now my kidneys don’t work properly. You?”

“I fell off the climbing frame at school and hurt my arm and now I have to have a cast and everyone in my class is going to sign it and my teacher has to let me use an iPad!” Olly, it seemed to Nick, needed to take no breath. His sister smiled fondly.

“They sure will, mate,” came another voice, one Nick didn’t recognise from the cacophony of anxious voices that had filled the room earlier. He craned his neck to see. Just masked by the privacy curtain that would be pulled across later when Nick and Olly were being seen by their respective doctors (as if that would block out the resident doctors’ loud discussions), another boy was hovering in the doorway. Taller than Olly, but clearly related. They both had that same dark, curly hair. 

He was also, Nick thought, vaguely familiar.

While he was wracking his brain trying to figure it out, the other boy came further into the room. He had black trousers and a smart shirt on – not dissimilar to the ones that were presumably languishing in Nick's wardrobe at home – but it wasn’t until Nick saw the blazer dangling from the other boy’s fingers that he made the connection.

“You go to Truham?”

The brother and sister narrowed their eyes at him. They looked so uncannily similar that Nick thought they could be twins. Olly, however, didn’t seem quite so suspicious.

“That’s Charlie’s school!” he yelled, delighted. His sister gave him a look.

“Er, yeah,” Charlie said slowly. “I do… I'm in Year Eleven.”

“Me too!” Nick exclaimed, louder than he intended. All three siblings jumped. “I go to Truham, I mean. Not in Year Eleven, obviously… we would have met. I’m in Sixth Form.”

Charlie narrowed his eyes again, less severely this time. Nick felt hot under his gaze.

“Wait? Nick Nelson?” His sister leant back in her chair to give him a closer look. “Fuck.”

“Tori! That’s a bad word!” Olly shook his head in disbelief, although Nick thought he looked fairly delighted.

“Yeah… that's me,” Nick blushed uncomfortably under their stares. 

“I saw that match…” Charlie said quietly, his voice a little far away and wistful. Nick watched him carefully; something about the way his eyebrows knitted together was fascinating to him. He must have seen him in the corridors before, but placing him was difficult. Maybe he was one of the arty kids who hung around on the field near to where the rugby team practised at lunchtime; sat with their sketchbooks and pencils, and drawing so quickly that Nick often wondered if the lead left the page. Or, maybe he was one of those really smart kids who holed up in the library for a couple of hours and then understood everything better than Nick could ever hope. Either way, they were fairly unlikely to have crossed paths. But there was something about him…

Charlie leaned against the foot of Olly’s bed – hands rammed into his pockets and stance casual – and Nick felt something swoop in his belly.

Then, a nurse came hurrying in – one Nick recognised from his first week there – and flicked through some paperwork on her clipboard. She looked slightly harried, and more than a little annoyed. Presumably, she had just come into contact with his new roommate’s mum, who was still causing mayhem out in the main corridor.

“Right, Master Spring, let's have a look at this arm then.” Olly offered it helpfully.

Spring… why did that sound familiar— 

Oh.

Nick remembered that name. Charlie Spring, the kid who was outed a couple of years previously. He had been the main focus of Coach Singh’s tirade when it transpired that the old rugby captain had been the orchestrator of a fairly tortuous regime against Truham’s only openly gay student. Nick remembered listening carefully as Coach had read them all the riot act – it didn’t feel appropriate at the time to argue that he hadn't been involved, not when he noticed the captain and his cronies snickering whenever she looked away.

They hadn’t lasted much longer on the team and, eventually, Nick had been appointed captain by an exasperated Ms Singh. He had tried to repair some of the damage to morale by attempting to convince the rest of the team to just be… better. Not that it was hard. Otis, Christian and Sai were pretty much the only ones who managed it, though.

Nick wondered what Charlie thought of him: captain of the team that tormented him. He wondered whether it mattered that Nick had never been personally involved, or if the entire concept of a rugby lad had been tainted for him forever. He also wondered why he cared.

The nurse was fussing around Olly now; shoving Tori and Charlie out of the way to neaten up his bedding and fluff his pillow. Tori stuck close by and glared, but Charlie stepped away from the bed and made his way around the room instead. Nick watched as he ran his fingertip over the tops of the machines that had been left at the edge of the room – ready to be taken as soon as they were needed, presumably, but making Nick feel like they’d plonked him in a storage room and forgotten him. When Charlie got to the machines that were hooked up to Nick, he made a sort of humming noise at the back of his throat. Nick frowned.

“What?”

“Eh? Oh, nothing,” Charlie said vaguely, waving his hand in a mildly apologetic manner. “None of my business.”

“You can ask…” Nick said softly, although he would be inclined to agree with him normally. There was something about Charlie, however, that made him want to talk more. And if that meant explaining the boring ins and outs of his treatment, so be it. 

“Do you have to be hooked up to this all the time?” Charlie asked quietly.

“Oh, no. Just a few hours a day.”

Charlie frowned and prodded the plastic casing, just where the little red ‘on’ light flickered.

“It’s… noisy...” he pondered, not unfairly. That beeping had woken Nick up from more than one nap. He resented feeling like an inconvenience, though, and he folded his arms across his chest and scowled.

“Don’t worry, they turn it off overnight, it won’t keep your brother awake.”

“Oh— I—“ Charlie had the good grace to look embarrassed. “Sorry, that’s not what I meant. Olly can sleep through anything. I was more worried about… about you. Must be annoying listening to that every day.”

Nick cringed inwardly.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “I get a bit defensive.”

“Yeah, I guess it must get boring answering questions all the time.”

“It’s not that. I— I actually don’t get many visitors. So most of the people I talk to are either nurses, my mum or strangers worrying that I’m going to interfere with their darling’s recovery.”

Charlie snorted quietly.

“You do look a bit ridiculous in that bed. Maybe they think you’re some creep who’s snuck onto the kid’s ward.”

“I’m seventeen!” Nick said hotly. “And it’s not like I want to share with a bunch of kids.”

“Nick, I was kidding.” 

When Nick looked back up he realised Charlie was smiling: a warm, lopsided grin that dimpled his cheeks and made him look younger.

“Oh, sorry. I guess I’m out of practise at talking to people.”

“I actually find it hard to believe that Rugby King Nick Nelson hasn’t had any visitors.”

It felt strange that Charlie knew of him. Of course he did, though. Nick imagined that the entire school had heard about his accident. Enough of them witnessed it; Nick had never been more annoyed to be playing a home match in his life. 

“Yeah, well, that title comes with a lot of fake friends, unfortunately.”

Charlie’s face shifted, almost imperceptibly; a little flicker of sadness that darkened his eyes and froze his dimpled smile. Nick wanted to turn back time and take back the joke. Except, he realised bitterly, it wasn’t exactly a joke.

Otis and the lads visited once or twice when he first arrived. But their interest in bussing it to the hospital seemed to wane and evidently none of their parents felt it was worth their time to offer a lift. It had been a week since any of them had texted him and he was fairly certain that Harry – their acting captain – had started a new group chat without him.

Beside him, Charlie cleared his throat.

“Yeah… I can imagine,” he said softly, his face thoughtful. Something about the wording struck Nick as odd, but Charlie’s mum hurried back into the room before he could question what he had meant.

🎇🎇🎇

Charlie, it turned out, was wickedly funny. Nick wasn’t entirely sure whether his time cooped up had warped his sense of humour a little, because there was no way he had gone to the same school as the boy for years and never realised. But there they were: Charlie scooting his chair over to Nick’s bed whenever Olly fell asleep during his visits. And he visited every day. Nick knew he didn’t exactly have the best frame of reference for good big brothers, but seeing Charlie appear in the doorway each day – armed with a book to read to Olly, a toy that made his brother’s face light up or, on one occasion, a Switch – made Nick believe in brothers again. 

Even with his botched time perception, Nick was vaguely aware that half term started a few days after Olly arrived. Not least because Charlie had started to appear earlier in the daytime and was always wearing skinny jeans and jumpers instead of his uniform. Once or twice, he brought his own homework to work through as Olly dozed, but more often than not he’d glance over at Nick for silent permission before settling in next to him to chat about whatever came to mind. Not much, in Nick’s case, but he was happy to listen.

Unsurprisingly, the children’s ward catered to much younger children than teenagers in terms of entertainment. But one day, Charlie trotted out to the little respite room that the more mobile residents of the ward were welcome to use and came back with an armful of books.

“What the fuck are those?” Nick laughed, once he’d glanced over to check Olly was still asleep.

“Literally every ‘Where’s Wally’ book you could ever need,” Charlie replied, dropping the pile somewhere in the vicinity of Nick’s shins. Nick scooted over on the bed and patted the thin strip of mattress between himself and the metal barrier. 

Between them, it took Olly’s entire nap to find Wally twice.

🎆🎆🎆

“Did you hear that Harry Greene got suspended on the last day of term?” Charlie asked casually one day. Nick looked up from the packet of chocolate pieces Charlie had snuck him (hidden, stealthily, in the ruched up blankets at his hips. It made the chocolate melt and coat Nick’s fingers when he reached in to take his allotted two pieces, but it was worth it to avoid being told off by the nurse on duty.) Charlie was sitting crossed-legged at the end of the bed, his shoes kicked somewhere under the chair he’d vacated when he made himself more comfortable. Nick had a vague understanding that he was testing him with the news; how he reacted to one of the biggest knobheads in the school getting his comeuppance would presumably cement Charlie’s opinion of him. 

It wasn’t exactly hard to look pleased.

“No way? What did the prick do?”

Charlie visibly relaxed, sagging back against the bedframe and grinning at him. Nick really loved that grin – the one that broke through Charlie’s reserved demeanour and lit up his face – and he found himself leaning forward to be closer to it. There was something about Charlie that made him feel warmer. 

“He yelled something obscene at someone he thought was a Higgs Sixth Former…” Charlie started, his eyes wide with the gossip. “But it turned out to be one of their French teachers in an unfortunately uniform-like outfit.”

“Merde,” Nick muttered, and Charlie went red.

🎇🎇🎇

Olly’s arm required surgery, Charlie told Nick quietly towards the end of the first week. Not a clean break, apparently, and if he had any hope of it healing properly, they would need to reset the bone and add in a metal plate. Their dad was allergic to anesthetic, and it had complicated the plan while the doctors tested Olly and came up with a plan b if necessary.

They’d found one by the time the following Monday morning rolled around. Nick listened to Olly complain about not being able to eat breakfast all morning, and then resisted his attempts to bribe Nick for snacks. Olly had offered Nick his favourite Lego figure, as well as a small drawing of a monster, in exchange for the one of the treats he kept tucked away in his drawer. Any other day Nick would have considered it a fair trade and proudly displayed the drawing on the little wipe board above his headboard. But the doctors had been very clear: no food before surgery. Nick didn’t fancy the wrath of Mrs Spring or Tori if he was caught delaying Olly’s procedure. 

His own mum was due later that day for a visit, and Nick had exhausted his entire stock of novels and puzzle books the previous day. He didn’t fancy the Sudoku, and besides, Charlie liked to fill them in. So, with want for anything else to do, Nick watched with rapt attention as the entire Spring family awkwardly hugged their littlest member before he was wheeled away to theatre. Mrs Spring wiped away a tear as he went, while her husband tugged her close, and Nick wondered how a family could come across as both so loving and so distant at the same time. It felt a little intrusive, but the nurse hadn’t opened the blinds for him that morning before hooking him up for dialysis, and no one had paid enough attention for him to be able to ask for his view back.

“They’ve timed it right,” said the young doctor who had gone through the pre-surgery checklist with them. He tucked his clipboard under his arm and nodded in the vague direction of the ward exit. “All goes well he’ll be out of here before bedtime. You can go and chat to the nurses about getting ready for discharge, if you like.”

At the edge of the room Charlie – kitted out in his Truham uniform, ready to go back to school – glanced over at Nick sadly as his parents hurried out of the room. Tori went with them, giving Nick a strange look as she went.

“So… I guess this is goodbye, then,” Nick chuckled dryly. Charlie pouted, slightly petulantly.

“I— I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Nick forced a smile, but he could see by Charlie’s face that he hadn’t managed to make it believable. “Would be a dick move for me to hope a little kid’s surgery got delayed just so I could keep my friend around.”

Charlie hoisted his bag strap further up his shoulder and grinned. 

“Friend, ay?”

Nick tsk-ed softly.

“Well,” he teased. “I don’t share a cryptic crossword with just anyone.”

Charlie laughed.

“Is that what you call letting me figure out all the answers for you?”

“Yeah,” Nick whispered. “Something like that.”

Charlie shifted awkwardly in place, his mouth still twisted into that sad pout that made Nick think that maybe, just maybe, he had something else he wanted to say. He opened his mouth and Nick leant forward, until the beeping from the machine next to him signalled time was up.

“Okay Mr Spring, time to give Nick here some privacy while we get him off of this thing!” declared the nurse who seemed to appear from nowhere. Charlie stepped back – hitting the wall behind him softly – as she marched past and began fiddling with buttons on the machine. She raised an eyebrow at Charlie when he made no move to leave. “Don’t you have to get to school?”

“I’m— I’m missing the first lesson so I could say good luck to my brother,” Charlie stuttered. Nick noticed, with a little tingle of something that could have been excitement, that he still wasn’t moving.

“Well I don’t see your brother here. Off you go.”

Nick hated her: hated her as he watched Charlie smile sadly and leave, hated her as she carefully removed the line from his arm and applied the requisite plaster, hated her even as she fluffed his pillow and offered him something to eat.

And he hated, just a little, that voice in his head that was bitter Olly would be recovered enough to leave.

🎆🎆🎆

“What’s wrong, baby?” Mum asked when she spotted him glaring out of the window. He had snapped at the porter who came to close the blinds when it started to get dark, causing him to skulk off and leave Nick with a vanishing view of the outside. As the sun set, Nick’s window became a mirror reflecting his own miserable expression back at him. Some of the booth lights of the circus flickered across his cheeks mockingly, but the rest of the world became a black, empty space that Nick was starting to forget how to fill.

“When can I get out of this fucking place?” he snapped. When he looked back at her, his mum’s face was pale. “Why can’t I go home? At least for a night?”

“You need monitoring, darling,” she replied softly, and it was nothing new to him. He knew the reasons, he just hated them.

“One night won’t hurt though, will it? I miss Nellie, and my bed. I miss Cha—”

He bit his lip. Mum raised her eyebrow.

“Why don’t you video call some of your friends while you don’t have anyone else in here with you?” she asked calmly, her voice even despite the way her eyes were welling with tears. “I’m sure they’ll all be happy to see you.”

Nick glanced at his phone on the bedside table. He hadn’t asked Charlie for his number, he realised, and he hated that he had left without giving it. Would he still want to talk to Nick when he finally made it back to school? Or was that it – they’d both pretend that the past week and a bit had never happened and ignore one another in the corridors?

“Oh, baby,” Mum cooed when he burst into tears, curling himself up in the bed and pressing his palms against his eyes to stem the flow.

“I’m sorry—” he sobbed. “I’m just so fed up with being here.”

His mum rubbed his back gently but said nothing. After all, what could she say to make it better?

🎇🎇🎇

“Cheer up, Nicholas!” his favorite healthcare assistant chirped one morning when she came to help him to the shower room. She already had his toiletry pouch tucked under her arm and was holding out his towel before he even had a chance to prop himself up in the bed. “You’ll have a great view of the fireworks next week!”

Nick frowned and scrubbed at his face with his palm. The blinds were already open – how long had he slept? – and the light was streaming in like a beam hitting his bed. 

“Sorry?” he muttered, his voice raw from underuse.

“Your window – this side gets a great view of the display they put on at The Great Lines every year. It’ll be like front row seats up this high!”

Nick glanced out at the stretch of common outside. A few of the circus workers were milling about near their caravans; big plumes of smoke billowed up where two of them shared a cigarette back and forth while another bit into what looked, from this distance, like the biggest bacon sandwich Nick had ever seen. The entire scene was far less romantic in the mornings, but Nick had enjoyed trying to spot the resident clowns as they sauntered back and forth amongst the caravans each day while applying their thick, colourful makeup before the lunchtime crowds appeared.

“Yeah,” Nick muttered, gripping his towel firmly as he took a hesitant step towards the door. “Maybe.”

🎆🎆🎆

Three days after Olly was discharged, Nick got a new roommate. A polite lad of a similar age to Nick, whose juvenile arthritis was apparently playing up – according to his very friendly mum. Nick hated them both instantly, no matter how much conversation they tried to make. And he hated himself a little for wishing Olly had needed to stay longer. 

“Nicky…” his mum warned when she came in and found him scowling silently at the far wall. “Be polite when people make an effort, please.”

Nick shrugged and tipped his chin to glare at his blankets instead. Mum had taken his throw from home to wash the day before and he already resented the itchy, fleece offering that one of the nurses had given him as a replacement to drape over himself for warmth. It bobbled and felted whenever he ran his palm over it, and his mum picked gently at some of the accumulated tufts of fluff after she lowered herself into the chair next to his bed.

“What’s the point?” he muttered when she had smoothed the covers a little. “They’re just going to leave eventually anyways. Besides, they’re already annoying me.”

Sarah frowned and tugged the curtain behind her closed as if that might block out his rudeness in retrospect. It didn’t, and Nick could hear his roommate’s own mum mumbling out platitudes to her presumably wounded son. Nick watched, furiously, as his mum got up and crossed the room to try and make amends with them. 

That was fine, he told himself. He didn’t need her company anyway.

🎇🎇🎇

On Friday, Nick found himself being wheeled down to another floor for a round of checkups. He was deposited in a room where an unfamiliar student doctor poked and prodded him and helped him to a set of scales, then frowned at the results. Nick glowered quietly as more doctors came and went; discussing Nick with words he still didn’t understand while he slouched in the wheelchair. Afterwards, they thanked him politely and he was dismissed back out into the corridor with a bottle of water and instructions to wait to be taken back to his room.

“You have a visitor,” the nurse whispered when she finally wheeled him into the lift.

“Yeah,” Nick shrugged. His reflection in the lift mirrors was bothering him and he was only half listening. He’d managed to pick up only a few tidbits from the doctors: presumably his current worn out looking state was thanks to the anemia that he was apparently suffering from on top of everything else. “My mum is dropping by.”

“Not your mum.” She leant down conspiratorially, elbows sticking out comically where she was gripping the handlebars of Nick’s wheelchair. “A nice young man.”

Oh fucking hell, a visit from David was all he needed. Nick braced himself for twenty minutes of awkward conversation and trying to pretend that his brother hadn’t been sent to visit by their mum. Nick doubted very much that he had come of his own free will, but they would keep up the charade regardless.

“Can’t you just leave me in the wrong room?” Nick muttered bitterly. Behind him, the nurse chuckled.

“No can do, love,” she trilled. “You’ll have to suck it up and act sociable for half an hour. Not long until dinner time. Give me a wink and I’ll kick him out and pretend those are the rules.”

“Fine.”

Nick folded his arms tight across his chest as they reached the door to his room. If nothing else, maybe listening to David rant about the journey from Glasgow to Kent might fill a bit of time. He could at least count on his brother to use some colourful language and offend his roommate – who still hadn’t forgiven him.

Inside his room, someone had drawn the curtain around said roommate – Nick could hear the quiet nattering of him and his mum as they caught up – and it blocked off most of the view of Nick’s own bed until the nurse had fully pushed him into the room. Nick bristled at the sight of socked feet propped up on his mattress: their owner hidden from sight behind the curtain.

“What the fuck, Da—” Nick began angrily, until he saw who was in the chair. “Charlie?”

In the corner of the room, Charlie started at Nick’s tone. He had been flicking through some sort of textbook – an open notebook in his lap – and it clattered to the ground as he leapt up.

“Sorry—” he stuttered. “I— I thought you might like a visitor. I can go—”

Ignoring the nurse’s noise of protest, Nick pushed himself up out of the wheelchair and across the final few feet of floor to where Charlie stood. Charlie made a noise like the wind had been knocked out of his lungs when Nick threw his arms around him.

“I can’t believe you came,” Nick whispered, his voice shaky.

“Well, I couldn’t stand the idea of you sitting around all on your own,” Charlie said softly, after a beat where he seemed to be debating whether to hug him back. To Nick's delight, he did. He felt Charlie’s arms wrap hesitantly around his back. Charlie's fingertips searched as they went, and Nick realised he was feeling for lines or ports before he hugged him back properly. Nick sighed, when he felt Charlie’s breath on his neck and his body finally relaxing against him. “I would have come sooner, but my mum took some convincing.”

“Thank you,” Nick breathed. Behind him, the nurse cleared her throat.

“Nick, dinner’s up in half an hour. Has your friend eaten?”

Nick and Charlie disentangled themselves and Charlie shrugged.

“I’m fine, thank you. I ate before I came.”

It was, Nick realised, the first time he had been out of bed while Charlie was visiting. And, for the first time, Nick studied the differences between them. He was taller than Charlie – not by much, but enough to find himself looking down at Charlie through his fringe – and despite the way his body had changed slightly during his time in hospital he still dwarfed Charlie’s slight frame. His hands fit perfectly against Charlie’s hips where he had withdrawn from the hug but refused to part completely. Maybe that was a strange thing to notice about a friend, he thought, but it had been long enough since he’d felt like he’d had one that he wasn’t sure. All he was sure of was that he didn’t want to let him go.

“Do— do you need to sit down?” Charlie asked softly. “You look a little pale.”

Nick felt the rising wave of fatigue engulf him in the same way it always did when he was out of bed for any length of time. But not just that – something else niggled in his belly when Charlie wrapped his hands around Nick's biceps and helped him into bed and under the covers. It grew and grew as Charlie smoothed out the blanket and helped Nick to arrange the pillows behind him so that he could sit up properly.

“There,” Charlie whispered when Nick was finally comfy, and that warm feeling threatened to rise up and choke him. Charlie reached out and smoothed Nick's hair back from his face and he wished that he didn’t feel so warm and clammy. Why was the ward suddenly so warm?

Even Charlie, who had once mentioned how cold he constantly felt, should surely feel it? Nick wondered why he had kept his jumper on when the entire room was burning up.

“Nick? You okay?” Charlie asked, pressing the back of his hand very gently to his forehead. “Now you've gone all red.”

Nick tore his eyes away from where he had been staring at Charlie’s lips as he spoke and met his eye. Had they always been that blue? 

“Fine. I’m fine,” he said quickly, shifting in the bed and folding his arms across his chest. “Just a bit hot in here, that’s all.”

🎆🎆🎆

🎇🎇🎇

“‘In some degree, also, they diverted my mind from the thoughts over which it had brooded for the last month…"Devil," I exclaimed, "do you dare approach—’”

Nick stirred where he had been resting his cheek on Charlie’s shoulder. His class had read a different book last year – and he was admittedly pretty exhausted – but Nick was fairly certain he should at least be able to follow along as Charlie read.

“Wait, what? That doesn't make sense…” he mumbled, his voice deep with tiredness. Next to him, Charlie carefully placed a bookmark in his copy of Frankenstein and laid it down on the bedside table.

“Nick, you’ve been asleep for like twenty minutes. I think you probably missed a bit.”

Nick flopped back against the pillow and sighed. Earlier on, a nurse had come and hung up another bag on his IV pole, which was supposedly going to counteract his fatigue; the fact that it didn’t work instantly was something she had failed to mention at the time. Presumably to mitigate the sulking she knew would occur afterwards.

“I’m so sorry.” His back twinged as he stretched – arms high above his head – and when he settled back against the headboard Charlie had shuffled closer. Nick fought the urge to drape his arm out across the pillows. It would feel too much like putting his arm around Charlie himself. “Why did you carry on reading?”

Charlie fiddled with the pages of the book; flicking them like a flip book over and over again.

“Well, I need to finish reading this chapter by tomorrow anyway and I figured my voice was doing a decent job of boring you to sleep.”

Nick nudged him with his shoulder.

“Never.”

Charlie looked at him through thick lashes and Nick felt the tumbling nerves that came with being seen. He shifted uncomfortably, crinkling the plastic wrapping from the hospital muffin they had shared earlier that they’d left on the bed. He balled it up and chucked it in the vague direction of the bin. The action was exhausting, and his arm flopped back down into his lap.

“You seem really tired today,” Charlie murmured. “Do you need me to go?”

Tomorrow, Nick hoped, he could maybe get out of bed. Go for a walk and hang out in the respite room with Charlie instead of around his hospital bed. They hadn’t actually discussed it, but Nick was pretty sure he would be back. For now, they had an hour left until visiting time was over and he intended to make the most of it.

“Please don’t,” he whispered, nestling back against Charlie with his cheek on his shoulder. “Carry on reading to me, please?”

🎆🎆🎆

“I have a surprise for you.”

Charlie appeared in the doorway just as the nurse detached Nick from his dialysis machine for the day. He was earlier than usual – apparently he had less to do after school on a Thursday – and his coat was buttoned right up to his throat. Nick peered at the bag dangling from his hand and raised an eyebrow.

“Oh?”

“Close your eyes.” Charlie held up the bag – one of those thick bags for life that meant Nick couldn’t see what was inside. He kind of hoped it was sweets; by the time the nurses remembered to come round, he had a nasty feeling all the good ones would be gone. One of them had gone to the effort of hanging up decorations for Halloween earlier and his new roommate – a six year old with boundless energy – had been dressed as Batman since lunchtime. He focussed on the bag in Charlie’s hand.

“Charlie…”

“Just do it.”

“Okay.”

Nick settled back against the pillow with a palm pressed to his eyes and a grin on his face. There was some quiet shuffling and the rustling of the carrier bag before Nick felt fabric hit him in the chest. When he glanced down, Charlie had thrown a red t-shirt at him.

“Charlie wha— oh my god.”

Charlie grinned at him from under a thick, black mustache and a hat which he had thrust jauntily over his curls. His own shirt was green. He held out a matching red hat.

“Okay, so the shirts are just from Primark but I was quite chuffed with the hats.” Charlie flicked the brim of his cap for emphasis. “This doesn’t get you out of me thrashing you at Mario Kart one day, but at least now you can join in with the ward trick or treating.”

Costumes optional, apparently, but Nick had felt distinctly awkward asking to be wheeled out to the corridor – where the nurses would be arranged in doorways handing out sweets – without one. Enough of the parents gave him a strange look as he hauled himself around on his daily walks as it was. 

Nick gripped the shirt tight in his hands. 

“Thank you,” he whispered. He couldn’t look up, he was fairly sure he was about to cry, but he felt Charlie squeeze his foot under the blanket regardless. With some manouvering of lines and ports, he managed to peel off the shirt he had been languishing in all day and tug on the replacement. When he finally looked up, Charlie was blushing. 

“Here,” he murmured, holding out a fake moustache and a Mario hat. Nick pressed the sticky strip to his upper lip and grinned.

“I can’t believe you didn’t choose to be Princess Peach.”

Charlie chuckled quietly and rolled his eyes.

“Oh please, if one of us is the damsel in distress, it’s you.”

Fair enough, Nick thought; Charlie had saved his sanity, if nothing else. On a whim, he plucked his phone from the bedside table and beckoned Charlie over.

“Selfie for Instagram?”

“Only if you don’t give it some cheesy caption.”

“How about ‘best bros’?” Nick teased. Charlie’s grin froze. When he shuffled next to Nick on the bed and Nick reached out to wind his arm around his shoulder, Charlie felt a little stiff.

“Is— is this okay?” Nick whispered. 

“Yeah,” Charlie nodded and Nick leaned in closer. Framed on the screen, and despite the moustache that obscured a little of his smile, Nick thought he had never looked happier. 

“Happy Halloween, Nick,” Charlie whispered once Nick was satisfied with the photo he had taken.

“Thanks, Char.”

🎇🎇🎇

“I hate that it gets dark so early now,” Nick muttered as Charlie dropped a well placed red counter into the Connect Four frame and won the game. “They keep wanting to close the blinds as soon as the sun goes down and then I feel all cooped up. And then I feel like a dick for arguing.”

Charlie followed his gaze out of the window. The two of them were faintly reflected in the glass but, just beyond them when Nick looked carefully, he could see the flashing lights of the circus across the road. Some of the food trucks had people milling about – Nick could see the tiny rectangular lights of their phone screens as they queued – but the majority of people were currently lining up outside the big tent. Clearly one of the booths was selling novelty souvenirs because an assortment of glow sticks and lightsabers illuminated the people waiting for their turn to see the show.

Absent-mindedly, Nick picked up a counter and dropped it into the frame. He’d already lost, he realised, but Charlie hadn’t said anything.

“Yeah, I like autumn in theory,” Charlie murmured. “But it’s no fun spending practically every daylight hour in school.”

“I love this time of year,” Nick said, wrapping his arms around his knees. “I like rain, and the way the leaves crunch when you walk on them. And I love fireworks. The nurses say I’ll get a good view of them from the window… but I don’t think it’ll be the same.”

He hugged his knees tighter. The mattress dipped as Charlie scooted closer. His movements were slow, careful, and Nick watched him with damp eyes as he reached out and wrapped his fingers around Nick’s hand. 

“I really hope you get to see them properly some time, Nick,” he whispered, and Nick felt his belly swoop.

🎆🎆🎆

The curtain crinkled, and Charlie’s head peered shyly through the gap. Nick gave him a little wave from the armchair beside his bed and watched the realisation dawn on Charlie’s face.

“Hey! You’re out of bed!”

Charlie tugged the privacy curtain back enough to step into the little cocoon around Nick's bed. He had a punnet of grapes in his hand that Nick eyed suspiciously. Charlie shrugged.

“I read somewhere they’d be good for you,” he said, letting his schoolbag fall from his shoulder and hit the ground with a thud. He hovered awkwardly at the end of the bed.

“You can sit, you know,” Nick grinned.

“Well you’ve kind of stolen my seat.”

“Oh have I now?” Nick braced his hands on each armrest and made to get up. “I’m so sorry, let me—”

Charlie pressed a palm to Nick’s chest and pushed him lightly back down into the chair. 

“Don’t!” he laughed, whacking Nick lightly on the chest when he was settled against the backrest. “Stay there. I’ll sit on the bed.” He dropped the punnet into Nick’s lap and sank down onto the mattress.

“Thank you,” Nick whispered, popping a couple into his mouth. The moody nurse had confiscated his chocolate the day before, so Charlie had promised to replace it with something even she couldn’t protest at. “These are so good!”

Charlie blushed, kicking his shoes off and crossing his legs on the bed. He still had his uniform on; the cuffs of his jumper flopped over his hands and he gripped them tightly. His tie was a little loose, though, and Nick could picture him tugging at it while he walked through the hospital corridors. It struck him as a nervous gesture, although what Charlie had to be nervous about he didn’t know. The nurses all knew he was coming at this point. 

One of them had got the wrong end of the stick earlier and asked Nick what time his boyfriend was popping in this evening. Nick had blushed and spluttered and corrected her politely, all the while thinking how funny Charlie would find it when he told him later. 

“You’ll never guess what this nurse said earlier—” he began, grinning widely at Charlie. Charlie raised an eyebrow and cocked his head and Nick—

—breathed.

“What?” Charlie huffed out a little laugh and leant in closer. Nick’s voice caught in his throat

“She—” He bit his lip. Was it funny? Suddenly, he wasn’t so sure. What was so funny about the idea of Charlie being someone’s boyfriend? Specifically, Nick’s boyfriend. At the time he had thought Charlie might laugh along with him, but now he wasn’t sure what the joke had even been. It felt, a little, like mocking all of a sudden.

Charlie frowned.

“Nick?”

It hadn’t occurred to him to wonder why she had said it earlier, when she was checking the state of the IV bag that was pumping him full of the vitamins that explained his newfound energy. He had been too busy being excited to tell Charlie how much better he was feeling – how much closer he felt to going home – to think much about it. Now, he saw them through her eyes: the way he lit up whenever Charlie walked round that corner, the way he deflated when he was gone again. 

He tugged his blanket tighter around himself.

“Nevermind, it was nothing.”

🎇🎇🎇

Charlie pulled back the curtain without warning, startling Nick enough to make him drop his phone in his lap. He had been scrolling through an endless stream of photos on Instagram: his rugby mates celebrating their recent win; Imogen Heaney’s carousel of selfies with her new puppy; a bunch of blurry firework pictures from some party Harry threw at the weekend; Charlie and his friends celebrating together. Those were the ones he’d lingered on, zooming in to study the smile on Charlie’s face as he held a sparkler up in delight, and he shifted the blankets to hide the screen where it fell. Charlie, in real life now, grinned at him.

“Nick, get dressed.”

“What?”

Charlie glanced over his shoulder conspiratorially. Nick could see glimpses of one of the porters emptying out the bin in the corner, but the nurses had been and gone. Charlie turned back to him, holding up a bundle of clothes.

“We’ve got an hour and a half before anyone comes and checks on you. Get dressed.”

He threw the pile of what turned out to be Nick’s own clothes at him. Nick clutched them tight.

”Wha— where are we going? How did you get my clothes?”

“From your mum. And over there.” Charlie tapped the window very gently with a fingertip. The lights from the circus across the road were hitting the damp glass and cascading into starbursts in the raindrops. It had stopped raining an hour ago, but Nick could almost imagine the way the leaves outside would still smell fresh and earthy underfoot. He’d been watching the way the raindrops danced in the lights since the sun went down. Now, they’d trickled down the pane enough to give him a glimpse of the circus outside, and it brought him back to reality.

He shook his head sadly.

“Char… I can’t go out. I haven’t gone outside in weeks.” 

Charlie stepped closer.

“You said yourself that you wanted to see the fireworks. Well, they’re happening in forty five minutes and I think they’ll be better when you don’t have your own face reflecting back at you.”

Nick crossed his arms against his chest and raised an eyebrow at Charlie.

“Are you saying there’s something wrong with my face?”

“Shut up—” Charlie blushed. “Just get dressed.”

He stepped back out past the curtain and tugged it closed behind him, leaving Nick staring at the empty space he had left. The clothes Charlie had handed him were some old comfy ones; a t-shirt and joggers that he used to wear when he walked Nellie, along with his favourite hoodie. They went on easily – the nurse had come earlier and disconnected his IV so he was relatively free from lines and tubes – and by the time Charlie rattled the curtain to warn him he was coming in, Nick was tugging on his socks at the edge of the bed.

“Ready?” Charlie breathed, as Nick looked up at him through his fringe and smiled. “Come on.”

When he’d helped Nick to fish his shoes out from under the bed, Charlie gripped Nick’s wrist and led him out of the room. The usual nurses milled about and paid them no mind as they left, and it occurred to Nick to wonder why none of them were questioning why he was dressed in more than pyjamas and out of bed. When they rounded the corner to the little reception area where the nurses sat, Nick stopped and stared.

“Mum… what are you—”

At the desk, Sarah Nelson winked – Nick was fairly sure he had never seen her wink before – and went back to the form she was scribbling on. Behind the desk, the nurse took the clipboard gratefully and headed back to the office. Sarah leant against the desk and looked between Nick and Charlie with a serious expression.

“One hour, okay boys? After that I come and drag you back here myself, understand?”

Nick felt himself being pulled by the hand, dazed and a little disoriented, towards the ward exit. Very briefly, he considered that he had not stepped past that threshold in long enough that it should be frightening. But somehow, with Charlie’s warm hand in his, he felt confident in a way he didn’t expect. Tomorrow he’d be exhausted, he knew, but at least he’d have this one night.

That no one stopped them on the way out surprised him more than it should have; he’d been monitored long enough that walking past a group of people who couldn’t care less about what he did was jarring. They were just two teens heading out into the night, like it was an entirely normal thing to do.

“Come on,” Charlie whispered when he sensed Nick’s resistance at the door. “We don’t have very long.”

They crossed the carpark in silence; Charlie’s hand burning in Nick’s as they picked their way through the cars and across the little bank of grass at the edge of the road. Occasionally, a car would zoom past them as they walked down the pavement towards the crossing, but Nick found himself unable to focus on anything but Charlie’s hand in his.

It felt… right. 

The edge of the circus ground was unofficially marked by an archway of banners that looked a little worse for wear this close up. There was no fence around the field, but people seemed to be gravitating to the archway as a sort of point of entry and Charlie tugged Nick towards a clown who was handing out balloons to children as they passed. As soon as they crossed the threshold, Charlie dropped his hand and Nick rammed them into his pockets. His phone was in one, an old receipt of some sort in the other, and it gave him something to fiddle with instead of reaching out and taking Charlie’s hand back like it was a normal thing to do.

Inside, the crowd lulled and grew in waves amongst the booths and food trucks. Nick scanned the punny titles and big, colourful menus. The smell of fried onions and burning sugar wafted and merged in the air. In front of them, a family was working their way through a giant cardboard tray of nachos.

“Do you want something to eat?” Charlie whispered.

“I don’t think there’s a single thing here I’m allowed, Char.”

A child ran past with a cloud of candy floss on a stick. It was bigger than his head. Nick licked his lips.

“I absolutely shouldn’t…” he murmured as he watched the kid go. “But I want some of that.”

Charlie rummaged in his pockets.

“Your mum gave me some change and made me promise to get you one treat. I think we can manage that.”

When they asked the stall holder for the smallest stick of candy floss he could manage – Nick holding up his wrist and flashing his hospital bracelet as if that would somehow offer some insight – the man raised an eyebrow but obliged. The cloud he handed them was still big enough to obscure most of Charlie’s face when he held it up, but the guy charged them half of what was scribbled in chalk pen on the price list so Nick didn’t like to question it too much.

“I really don’t think I’m allowed to eat this…” he laughed as Charlie held the stick out to him.

“So have one bite, and we’ll leave the rest.”

Nick pinched a mouthful off of the stick with his fingers and handed it back to Charlie, who held it up like an umbrella and grinned. Nick raised an eyebrow.

“Oh no you don’t. I’m not eating this on my own, you have to have some too.”

Charlie pouted, but pinched a little for himself and popped it in his mouth. Nick nibbled his own piece thoughtfully. It dissolved on his tongue and coated his mouth in a way that wasn’t entirely unpleasant. The thing he enjoyed most, though, was watching Charlie’s face as it lit up in front of him: his eyes widening before he went in for a second bite. Nick watched him with fascination. Some concoction of food dyes had painted his lips dark pink as the sugar melted and it made them look plump and… kissable.

Nick coughed.

“You alright?” Charlie looked panicked and reached out to pat Nick's back.

“Fine— I’m fine,” Nick spluttered, jerking away like he had been shocked. “Just went down the wrong hole, that’s all.”

Charlie withdrew his hand, and Nick missed the contact instantly.

What the fuck was that?

“Okay,” Charlie pouted and pulled out his phone. “We have half an hour until the fireworks. Not enough time to watch the show… but there are some games we could play?”

Nick followed Charlie like a puppy between the booths. Every so often, Charlie would stop and rummage in his pockets for some change before leading Nick by the elbow to whatever brightly dressed worker was manning the booth. Once they’d both failed to whack any moles each, Nick found himself holding a beanbag and being instructed to try and knock down a tower of cans before being whisked away – evidently prize-less – to a sort of plastic pond stocked with rubber ducks.

“I gotta be honest, I thought with your strong rugby arms your aim would be better,” Charlie laughed as he watched Nick knock one of the ducks straight on the head with his hook. Nick blushed furiously.

Charlie liked his arms?

That hadn't been what he said, obviously, but he'd noticed them, right?

Nick swallowed heavily and tried to focus. Above their heads hung an assortment of cuddly toys in various sizes, and Nick had his eye on one in particular. Twenty five points required, apparently, and there were about fifty ducks – and presumably not great odds amongst them – swimming in front of him. Nick frowned. His hands shook a little when he held the stick back out. The worker muttered something about his time nearly being up, and then he felt Charlie’s hands coming up and around his wrists to steady him.

“You got this,” Charlie whispered. And Nick struck, flicking the hook down and around to capture his target.

“Forty points!” the worker yelled when he’d checked the bottom, holding Nick’s captured duck aloft. Around them, a small crowd gathered at the uproar and the guy waved his hand at the assortment of prizes on display. “Take your pick, kid.”

“That one.” Nick pointed to a small stuffed black cat dangling in the corner.

“You sure, mate? You could get a bigger one.” 

Nick shook his head.

“I’m sure, I want that one.”

When the man had fished it down and handed it over – losing interest as soon as the next customer approached – Nick handed the toy to Charlie.

“Nick, you won it, you keep it!”

“No, I— I won it for you. It reminded me of you.”

Charlie clutched the toy against his chest, then held it back out to Nick.

“Okay, then you have to keep it until you get out of hospital.”

“Charlie…”

“That way I can keep you company even when I have to go home.”

Nick swallowed the lump that formed in his throat and hugged the cat tight against his chest.

🎆🎆🎆

Nick flopped back against the blanket. He could feel the damp seeping through the fabric, and he knew soon it would get too cold and he would have to head back, but for now he intended to savour it. They’d found a patch of grass a little way away from the main crowd, where Charlie had produced the blanket from his bag and draped it on the ground. Above them, the few rain clouds that had remained after the day’s storm had slowly drifted away and left the sky clear. Most of the booths nearby had started to close, their lights flickering off in preparation for the fireworks that were due to start at seven on the dot, apparently. Nick kind of hoped that time would stand still enough for him to stay in this moment forever – even if it meant missing out on the display after all. He’d make the sacrifice, if it meant not having to say goodbye to this: to Charlie laid out next to him; to feeling normal for once; to feeling detached enough from reality to sit with that warm, bubbly feeling in his belly whenever Charlie accidentally touched him, without freaking out. The medical tape that held down the cannula on his wrist itched where it was rubbing against his hoodie cuff, but he found he couldn’t quite begrudge it – not when it symbolised the series of unfortunate events that had brought him here.

Charlie stretched out next to him and tapped his ankle with his foot.

“Penny for your thoughts?”

“Don’t judge me…” Nick said slowly, craning his neck to look at Charlie’s confused face. “But I was thinking that I'm kind of glad that Olly broke his arm.”

Charlie grinned at him; one of his big, wide smiles that made his dimples pop.

“Oh, that’s good because I was thinking that I was glad that guy tackled you.”

“Oi!”

“Well, it’s not like Nick Nelson – Truham’s resident Rugby King – was ever going to notice little ol’ me otherwise,” Charlie said haughtily, injecting a little Southern twang in his voice at the end. Nick whacked him gently on the arm.

“I don't know, I think I would have noticed you if you were nearby.”

“Oh, and what would you have noticed?” Charlie teased.

Your hair, Nick thought. And your eyes. And maybe the way you have dimples when you smile. And the fact that you’re really smart, and funny… and probably already the best friend I’ve ever had.

“Oh, just… stuff,” he said lamely. Charlie scoffed and went back to staring at the sky. Nick stared at Charlie instead. He watched as his eyes flickered and darted back and forth as he mapped out the constellations; watched as his lips moved very faintly as if he were trying sentences out in his head. Charlie had his hands crossed on his chest, and Nick wanted to reach out and let him hold his hand tight between his palms.

Suddenly, Charlie shifted, propping himself up on his elbows.

“Did you see that?” He pointed up at the sky.

“No?” Nick craned his face up to look, but it was just the same constellations as before. 

“It was a shooting star.”

Charlie’s face lit up when he looked down at Nick. It made him look much younger than Nick felt – although he was fairly sure that Charlie was only fifteen himself – and Nick wanted to reach out and card his fingers through his hair. Instead, he mirrored his position on the blanket, propped up on his elbow with one knee tucked up and over his stretched out leg, and grinned.

“Damn, better make a wish then.”

Charlie shrugged and picked at a loose thread on the blanket.

“It’s okay,” he murmured. “You can have it.”

Nick let himself fall back down against the blanket. 

What to wish for?

A quick recovery would be nice – although it seemed like a waste of a wish given he was already on the mend. He could wish for this warm, fluttery feeling whenever Charlie was around to go away – for things to feel normal and settled again instead of confusing and scary – but he found he didn’t really want that either. Not when he really examined it.

Right now, the only thing he really wanted – when he let his brain calm down and his thoughts clarify to a single point in time – was to know whether Charlie’s lips would taste of the candy floss they had shared. Those two tufts each that they pulled off the pink cloud before they decided to be sensible and decanted the rest into a nearby bin. Nick thought, maybe, that he could still see the telltale shimmer of sugar on his lips. But maybe that was just the lights creating an illusion.

Maybe, Charlie would taste of nothing but warmth, and home, and not feeling lonely anymore. Maybe that was a scarier thought than anything else.

He shifted enough that he was sitting upright, his arms hugging his knees. Charlie craned his neck to watch him, brow furrowed.

“You keep it,” Nick shrugged. “I don’t know what to wish for.”

Charlie scrambled up to sit and bumped their shoulders together gently. Nick offered him a small smile.

“You can promise me something, though…” he whispered. Charlie leant in closer.

“Anything.”

“Promise me that we won’t stop being friends when I get out of hospital,” Nick murmured. He’d hate that; for things to go back to normal, as if the past few weeks had never happened. Charlie’s cheeks darkened before he nodded. Nick watched as his eyes fluttered closed and then his lips were moving again, a silent reciting of some inner desire that Nick would give anything to overhear.

He glanced down at his phone timer. Their hour was nearly up. They’d have time to watch the fireworks and then they’d have to head back. He flopped back down and rolled into his side to look at Charlie.

“You make your wish?” 

Charlie twisted his lips thoughtfully.

“No. The only thing I want doesn’t seem fair to wish for.”

“Oh? And what’s that?”

Charlie screwed up his face in that way that Nick found adorably cute. He moved slowly, unfurling his legs and lowering himself back down to the blanket so they were face to face.

“Well, if I tell you then there’s like a ninety nine percent chance that it’ll never come true.”

“I thought that was only if you actually made the wish.”

“Not in this case.”

“Oh.”

Nick was vaguely aware that the conversation had shifted into something serious; no longer a silly thought about shooting stars but something more tangible. Charlie leaned in closer and rested his forehead on Nick's shoulder. His hand came up to the front of Nick’s hoodie, fingers twisting in the fabric as he held on tight.

“Do you—” Nick began, reaching up to brush his fingertips across Charlie’s knuckles. “Do you think that one percent chance is worth it, though?”

“Maybe.”

“Well, maybe you should take it, then.”

“But what if my wish breaks my promise? What if it stops us being friends?”

Oh.

“Char?”

“Yeah?”

“Take the risk,” Nick breathed, his voice strained. 

Silence fell down between them – something heavy and oppressive that almost drowned out the screams and the chants of the crowd nearby. Nick was vaguely aware that they were all counting down; a methodic, rhythmic cacophony of mingled voices all waiting for the same thing. He held his breath, and Charlie sighed.

“I wish that I could kiss you,” he whispered, and the spell broke as the swell of voices rose louder and louder around them.

Nick didn’t need to be asked twice. He tipped forward clumsily, felt Charlie yelp quietly as he crashed their lips together. Charlie shivered as Nick ran his hands up his sides and around to his back to pull him even closer. Then something whirled and sang nearby before the world behind eyelids lit up and everything seemed to erupt.

“Nick—” Charlie breathed, pulling back enough to stutter the words out between kisses. “You’re missing it.”

“Don’t care,” Nick whispered back, his hands buried in the fabric of Charlie’s own jumper. But Charlie brought his hands up to cup Nick’s cheeks and held him still.

“Nick,” he said softly. “Fireworks now, kissing later.”

Reluctantly, Nick rolled onto his back as the sky exploded around them. Charlie settled in close enough for Nick to wind his arm around him and pull him flush against his chest. Then there was nothing but the warmth of him and the sight of lights dancing above them. Nick watched as the fireworks illuminated the sky in more colours than he thought possible, and craned his neck to watch them reflected in Charlie’s eyes. Rockets whizzed and squeaked their way in spirals from the ground, before bursting into neon chrysanthemums above them. Somewhere nearby, a child screamed, before being drowned out by the sounds of adults gasping with delight.

Like all displays, though, it seemed to be over in seconds. Nick could still see the patterns of each firework drift across his vision when he shut his eyes, and he savoured the way they sloped gently out of sight as his eyes adjusted back to the dark.

Next to him, Charlie sighed. Nick tightened his grip.

“Thank you,” he breathed. “Thank you for making this happen.”

“It was nothing, Nick. Seriously,” Charlie squeezed his hand gently. “I just— I wanted you to feel normal for one day at least.”

Nick let his hand wander from Charlie’s elbow up until he could cup his shoulder and pull him even closer against his chest.

“I don’t think I’ll ever feel normal again,” he breathed, and prayed that Charlie knew what he meant. 

In his pocket, Nick’s alarm started blaring to signal it was time to go. He wished he could ignore it — that they could just stay here and pretend for a little longer — but he knew his mum was good on her promise.

“Come on,” Charlie whispered, pressing a kiss gently to the corner of Nick’s lips before he made to stand up. “Let’s get you back before you turn into a pumpkin.”

“I hate you, you know,” Nick groaned, letting Charlie hoist him to his feet. Charlie cocked his head and grinned.

“I think we both know that’s not true.”

“Yeah… it’s really not.”