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“It shouldn’t be allowed to get this hot,” Darcy moaned, halfheartedly fanning herself with one hand.
Her point was somewhat undercut by the fact that she made no move to remove the hoodie she was wearing, but it was still accurate nonetheless. It was a balmy day in early July, with a mid-afternoon heat that seeped into the bones and sapped away any energy that the five friends gathered together may have felt earlier in the day.
Tara had suggested weeks ago that they get together for a picnic in the park, but for some reason the group chose a day in the middle of a heat wave. Nick, who was by far the most active out of all of them on a normal day, was nearly asleep on Charlie’s chest. Charlie was fighting to stay awake himself, and turned to Darcy to reply.
“I know,” he said. “I wish there was at least a breeze to cool us down.”
“If you’re so uncomfortable, why don’t you move away from Nick then?” Elle asked with a smirk, looking up from her phone. “Didn’t you say he radiated heat like a furnace?”
Nick, only half-hearing the comment in his drowsiness, made a questioning noise and made to move off of Charlie. Reflexively, Charlie tightened his arm around his boyfriend and carded a hand through the hairs at the back of Nick’s head, feeling him relax again in response.
“I don’t believe I asked for your opinion,” Charlie shot back with a grin. “Let me make my choices.”
Elle’s smirk remained, but she turned back to her phone, letting the point drop. She had been on her phone for most of the afternoon, and everyone knew why. Tao and Isaac were absent from their picnic, as they were studying together for a shared exam they had coming up that week. And from the poorly concealed smiles and quiet giggles Elle kept letting out, it was pretty clear she wasn’t texting Isaac.
Charlie and Tara shared a knowing look while Elle was distracted. Their friends' infatuation with one another was the worst kept secret among their friend group. Both Elle and Tao knew that each of their friends were aware of their individual feelings, but had yet to recognize — or at the very least refused to believe — that their feelings were reciprocated.
It was bad enough that sometimes Charlie suspected their friends actually were together, but were keeping their relationship a secret. But at this point, if that were true, it would have been going on so long that staying quiet would be more of an inconvenience than anything else. Plus, it wasn’t like either of them were being particularly subtle.
“Does anyone want to volunteer to get another round of ice lollies for everybody?” Darcy asked, flopping to the ground as she pointed at the cart that was set up about fifty yards away. “I think I might actually die if I try to move right now.”
“Such a baby,” Tara smiled, pinching Darcy’s cheek. Darcy swatted at her hand, tangling their fingers together in the process.
Elle pocketed her phone with a slightly dejected sigh. “I will,” she said, standing up. “I think it’s my turn anyway.”
“You are an angel walking on earth,” Darcy called out as Elle walked toward the cart, shooting her an amused glance in response. Once Elle was a decent length away, Darcy turned back to the group. “Are we ever going to do something about them, or are we just going to let our friends suffer forever?”
“I mean, we’ve tried saying stuff,” Charlie said.
“I think it just makes them uncomfortable,” Tara said. “They’ll figure it out in their own time.”
“Will they?” Darcy countered. “They seem a lot more uncomfortable now thinking that the other person doesn’t like them back. I bet they would be a lot more comfortable if they actually got together, wouldn’t you say?”
Nick, a bit more awake now, spoke up, “Isn’t a bit of pining, like, a required step in every relationship though?”
There was a beat of silence. Then, Darcy snorted. Nick furrowed his eyebrows at her.
“What?”
“No offense, Nick,” Tara said. “But are you really the best person to be making that argument?”
“Oi!”
Nick blanched, watching as Darcy laughed and nodded in agreement. In search of some support, he shifted his head to look up at Charlie, only to find his boyfriend with his lips pressed together to hold back a smile.
“Wha– you agree with her?” Nick asked, gasping in mock offense. “I thought you were supposed to be on my side!”
“Normally I am,” Charlie said, laughing. “But this time Tara kind of has a point.”
Darcy piped up, “I mean, from what I’ve gathered, didn’t you make the moves on Charlie pretty much immediately after you figured out you might not be straight?”
“It wasn’t immediate , and he actually made the first move I’ll have you know,” Nick defended.
“I’m not complaining at all,” Charlie said, a bright grin lighting up his face throughout the conversation. “But to be fair, I fully believed I was crushing on the ‘Hot Straight Boy’ until about thirty seconds before I kissed you for the first time.”
“That doesn’t mean I didn’t have feelings for you before that,” Nick argued.
Charlie raised his eyebrows at this. Beside them, Darcy had sat up again and was leaning forward.
“Ooh, do tell Nicholas,” she said. “Just how long were you lovesick over our dear Charlie?”
“None of your business,” Nick shot back.
As the girls groaned and pleaded for him to elaborate, Nick felt Charlie’s fingers return to his hair. Looking up at the boy, he found Charlie staring at him with a slightly stunned expression, his grin softened into something gentler. The blush that had tinted Nick’s cheek darkened into something much brighter, and he buried his face into his boyfriend’s chest.
“Charlie, give us the details,” Tara asked.
Charlie, too busy staring at Nick to look back at her, responded, “I didn’t know about this.”
“And you’ll never hear about it again,” Nick mumbled into his shirt.
“C’mon man, you guys are together now! It’s nothing to be embarrassed about,” Darcy said. When Nick made no other move to speak, she turned a mischievous look at her girlfriend. “Would it help if I told you about the time that Tara tried to–”
Tara tackled her to the ground before she could finish her thought. Shrieks of laughter erupted between the girls as they wrestled, neither energized enough to put too much effort into it. The boys watched on with amused smiles.
“I’m not even going to ask,” Elle said, walking up with five ice lollies clutched together in her hands. “But just know these are going to melt very quickly if we don’t eat them right now.”
The four others scrambled up to each grab one, resettling back on the blanket to eat their treats. As Darcy started teasing Tara over her wrestling techniques, Nick’s shoulders relaxed seeing the conversation had shifted to a safer topic.
But Charlie had not forgotten. It wasn’t until much later, when they were working on their homework together in Nick’s bedroom, that he brought it up again.
“So,” he started, smirking when Nick looked up from his worksheet with a questioning glance. “Just how long were you pining after me, exactly?”
“Charlie,” Nick whined, dropping his face into his hands.
“Hey, it’s just us now. There’s no need to be embarrassed,” Charlie said, scooting closer to him on the floor. He let out a self-deprecating laugh as he recalled, “You already know that I was basically obsessed with you from the first second we met.”
Nick was silent for a moment. Charlie’s smile brightened as he noticed his face redden beneath his fingers.
“Yeah, well I probably wasn’t that far off, to be honest,” Nick mumbled.
Charlie gaped. That couldn’t be true. Maybe he had misheard him?
There was another second of silence, then Charlie stuttered, “You– that long? Nick, there’s no way.”
Nick sighed, finally letting his hands fall so he could lean back against them. “I mean, I didn’t understand why at first,” he said. “But like, I knew that I always wanted to be around you, and I knew that I felt different when I was with you — much better than I did when I was with my other friends.”
Charlie drifted even closer, the urge to wrap Nick up in his arms almost overwhelming him. He held back, however, seeing that his boyfriend was gearing up to say more.
“I think it was probably… when we hung out at your house for the first time, that I realized I was feeling something more,” he murmured, looking at the carpet instead of meeting Charlie’s eyes. “You remember that day, when you tried to teach me how to use your drum set?”
Charlie obviously hadn’t forgotten. It was one of many days in his collection when he thought he was going out of his mind with longing. Looking back, he supposed what Nick was saying made sense, remembering how closely he had hugged him before running out his front door that night. But it was just — Charlie’s brain was having trouble computing the timeline that implied.
“But… but that was in March ,” he said. “We didn’t kiss for at least another month after that.”
“Yes, Charlie, I’m aware,” Nick said, chuckling softly as he locked eyes with him. His blush had seemingly become a permanent part of his face. Charlie was endlessly endeared.
“You liked me for that long?” He whispered.
Realistically, Charlie knew that one month wasn’t that long to have a crush on someone, right? But in his mind, Charlie had thought that throughout all that time, he had been hopelessly yearning over someone who didn’t reciprocate his feelings. To find out that for at least part of that period, Nick was feeling the same way — it was a total paradigm shift.
Nick huffed, reaching forward to take one of Charlie’s hands. “You thought you were the only one?”
And it’s the way Nick was looking at him, Charlie couldn’t help but lean forward and press their lips together. He smiled into the kiss as he felt Nick take in a sharp breath and relax into him.
“I adore you,” Charlie whispered, barely an inch between them when he pulled back. He giggled when Nick kissed him again in response. “I can’t believe we could’ve been doing this a whole month earlier.”
“I think we got together at the right time,” Nick said. “It still took me a while to figure some stuff out. I have no idea how I would’ve reacted if you had kissed me any earlier than you did.”
Charlie just hummed in response, and settled in against Nick’s chest as they laid down against the carpet in a switched version of how they had been earlier that afternoon. Nick bit his lip, thinking back about that fateful day at Harry’s party.
“Thank you for being brave enough to do that, by the way,” he said. “I don’t know if I would have ever had the courage.”
Charlie shook his head, then shifted so he could prop his chin on Nick’s chest and look up at him. “You would have,” Charlie said, with a confidence in him that Nick didn’t understand. “You’re the bravest person I know.”
Nick swallowed the lump rising in his throat, and held his boyfriend tighter. Everytime he thought his feelings for Charlie couldn’t get any stronger, the boy did something like this and proved him wrong. By this point, his feelings had grown beyond anything Nick could understand, and were definitely more intense than what is normal for this stage of a relationship.
He wondered if Charlie felt the same way. It was hard to believe that anyone could feel as strongly as he did, but the way Charlie was looking at him then, before he snuggled back into his chest, Nick thought that it just might be possible.
Someday, they would probably have to talk about this more, but Nick felt no rush. He knew they had plenty of time.