In retrospect, Nick knew he was a goner in the very first moment.
In the moment, however, he was trapped in Harry Greene’s birthday party, where the rugby team played a swift game of telephone with fresh gossip.
“Mate! Charlie Spring, remember him?”
“Who?”
“Remember hearing about the school fag? He works here!”
“Didn’t he graduate ages ago?”
“Did he even finish school?”
“He’s at your fucking party, mate!”
Far from bothered, Harry lit up with far too much glee for Nick’s liking. “Where is he? Let’s find him.”
“And do what?” Nick worried, hoping he sounded more resolute than he felt. Keeping up with the full force of Harry’s whims was difficult enough during school and rugby.
Over the noise of his party music, Harry said, “Well, it’s a hotel, innit? Maybe we can bully him into letting us into the locked rooms. Like the pool room! Or we can find a spot for Nick and that girl to have a chat.”
The boys laughed in the way Nick didn’t like. One of milder rugby lads wondered, “There’s a pool here?” As for Nick, he stayed where he was. He held no interest in watching Harry harass a hotel employee. His interest in Harry’s party had been next to none already. Harry had invited him under the duress of everyone will be there and only cool people at my party, yeah? Which seemed like counteracting statements, but the implication that he’d be a loser for not going had been apparent. Not that Nick feared falling from the grace of popularity. He had no idea how he’d been placed on the plinth in the first place. And then there had been Harry’s annoying insistence that Nick was overdue for a girlfriend.
He left the sitting room to make a lap of the big ballroom that was the beating, strobe-lit heart of the party. He considered texting his mum for a ride home. Calling would be better, but he’d need to go outside for that. At the rate he experienced his friends divide between rugby boy nonsense and the girls either wanting to dance with him or having nothing to do with boys altogether, Nick found himself outside.
The hotel did not have a pool, but it did have a back garden. Nick glanced back at the building while he stepped further out onto the pathways with hedges and trees taller than his head…
“There we go. Good girl.”
Nick paused, unsure if he’d heard right. The voice had been so quiet, but when he turned the corner, he understood why. A young man crouched over the ground while a small cat shared in bits of chicken from his sandwich. Based on his black trousers, black dress shoes, and white dress shirt, he was hotel staff. Probably on break. Even in his uniform, Nick could tell he would be tall and slim when he stood up; lanky to some but Nick didn’t mind. His gaze locked on the man’s ear on this side, the small silver hoop and the earbud above it. He couldn’t hear Nick. He had no idea someone watched him overseeing a teenage kitten eat all of the chicken he ripped out of his sandwich.
So, when he stood up suddenly, they both startled from each other. The man choked on what might have been three curses at the same time before he managed a much more professional, “Sorry, the garden’s closed till June.”
In an instant, Nick knew this must be Charlie Spring. He was the youngest staff person he’d seen so far. Young enough to be Truham alumni.
In an instant, all Nick wanted to do was study the dark corkscrew curls falling over his forehead. The earrings that framed his slim but beautifully handsome face. The hands that were pulling out his earbuds—
He and Nick stared at one another. Nick blurted, “S-Sorry?”
Either out of politeness or practiced customer service, the man smiled. “Are you all right? You seem a bit lost.”
Nick glanced at the hotel. “I just needed some air.”
“Not feeling ill, are you?”
“Uh, no. Just…just tired of it all, I think.”
The smile tilted into something sympathetic. “You don’t like dancing?”
Nick laughed breathily, nervous. But not in a run and hide sort of way. “I never really thought about it. It’s not my strong suit.”
“A little-known secret is that you don’t have to be very good at it. Just dancing with a girl you like is enough.”
Nick shook his head. “There aren’t any girls I like.”
“Dance with a boy, then,” he said, like it were that easy. Perhaps…a little bit of a challenge to it. Or maybe that was just Nick’s internal reaction to what the megaphone that was Harry Greene would inflict on him if he did such a thing.
Nick didn’t know what his face did but he answered honestly, “The only boys brave enough to dance together are making a joke out of it.”
The man nodded like he knew this already. “When you’re older, people will be brave enough, and it won’t matter.”
Nick watched him walk towards a bin to throw away the rest of his sandwich. He’d said it so…simply. Nick hadn’t said if he was gay at all, which he was pretty sure he wasn’t, but it was almost like it didn’t matter. Charlie lived outside the dumb cage of Truham Grammar for Boys, and Nick wanted to taste more of it.
“I’m Nick.”
Charlie turned around like he hadn’t expected this. He smiled crookedly, endeared nonetheless. “I’m Charlie. If you need help with something, I’ll do my best.”
“Well,” Nick stymied. His eyes flicked up the stairs to the party, “I might be able to help you more.”
A new demeanor took over Charlie. He slowly pivoted to face Nick fully, with a smirk that Nick couldn’t read. “What do you mean?”
Nick said like an apology, “You might want to stay away from anyone who looks like they play rugby.”
Charlie’s eyes pointedly swept down Nick’s body, and came back up. “Like you?”
Nick felt frozen in time as heat bloomed in his gut. Nick…liked that. Ignoring the otherwise consuming reaction in his body—something to analyze later—it was nice to be acknowledged. Despite standing as tall as Charlie and any other adult, his babyface persisted.
“Yeah, but more specifically, the birthday boy.”
“Why?”
Nick did not have a compassionate lie ready. He tried to mold the truth into something palatable. “He’s a dick—”
Great palate, Nelson, he scolded inwardly.
“—and someone recognized you, so…”
Charlie visibly absorbed that, something going cold behind his eyes even as he scoffed a smile. “Don’t tell me I went down in history at that school. How old are you?”
“Sixteen,” he answered, and immediately wished he hadn’t. Wished he’d been better at lying, and had the physical stature to back it up.
Charlie’s eyes drifted up, doing the maths before he admitted, “I guess it wasn’t that long ago.”
“What was?”
Charlie shook his head, the conversation over. “Go have fun with your friends. Or don’t, whatever you want. My ‘smoke break’ is over,” he said with air quotes. “Don’t stay out here, though. It’ll be dark soon.”
Nick stood by as he pocketed his earbuds and went inside. He wished that could have gone differently. With nothing else to do but to take a lingering look around the twilight garden, Nick put his hands in his pockets and climbed up the stairs as well. By the time he entered the party once more, Charlie was gone. Nick had no idea what his job duties were, so he didn’t know how to find Charlie, let alone how to not be just an annoying hotel guest…
He didn’t want to just be a guest. Nick knew the word to describe what he was feeling was limerence, but he’d never had personal experience with such a thing until now.
But now…he felt like a hole had been punched in his chest. Only, he had never known that agony could share a room with bliss.
The lap around the party felt different this time. Eager and searching instead of listless and lost. Nick couldn’t stifle or quench the desire to see Charlie again, even just a glimpse. He managed it a couple of times: Charlie walking above him on the gallery overlooking the ballroom, and below, carrying a fresh dish of food to the buffet table from the kitchen.
Unfortunately, so did Harry. The next time Nick saw Charlie, he was being guided outside by what looked like the hotel manager. Night had fallen, so Nick followed them out, easily hiding in the shadows while the manager lit a cigarette for himself and said, “I need you to start the movement upstairs.”
“Okay, me and who?”
“Just you.”
Charlie frowned. “Hang on, moving the storage? I thought that started tomorrow.”
“It does, but this rich kid is making demands, and the easiest thing is to put you upstairs. You don’t have to do much, just get things started and we’ll all be out of here early tomorrow for it.”
“What demands? And why am I doing it alone? That’s a health and safety risk waiting to happen.”
He sputtered smoke in a laugh. “You’re young enough to still have some rubber in your bones. Don’t be foolish and you’ll be fine. If you throw your back out, I don’t want to hear about it.”
However, Charlie persisted, “What did the boy say? I heard he was looking for me.”
Nick’s features pinched, definitely wishing he’d handled that conversation better.
“He’s just a rich prick trying to sound big and grand like his father. He doesn’t realize his parents are homophobic twats.” He glanced at Charlie, but the latter held his ground, staring him down until he confessed, “He had something to say about you carrying the food.”
Charlie eased back a step as if he’d been pushed. “That’s what this is about? Old sixth-form gossip because I’m gay?”
The manager moved a hand between them, cigarette pinched between his fingers as he mediated, “We can all win here. You get to be free of the party, we’ll leave early tomorrow, and the big boss is already paid for this silly soirée. Come back down for cleanup at eleven, and this will all be a headache we get to sleep off.”
He flicked his cigarette to remove the ash, but accidentally cast it to the ground. “Shit,” he cursed mildly, but with the discussion over and his nerves alleviated, he let it go and marched back inside.
Charlie sighed haughtily at his backside, and then swiveled around to find the cigarette. He stepped over to it and plucked it off the ground, inhaling through his mouth and exhaling through his nose. Nick had gotten the impression that Charlie didn’t smoke, but then again, maybe he had to be driven to it…which made Nick feel worse. He’d managed to escape Harry’s nonsense only for Charlie to get the full brunt of it.
He stayed in the shadows behind some decorative Cyprus trees and waited for Charlie to finish. He only had two drags from the stub before he put it out on the side of the bin and properly disposed of it.
Nick had already seen how much of the hotel was available to the party. Most of the second floor stood empty, so everyone kept to the ballroom gallery or the ground floor. As he ascended the stairs and searched through the empty parlours and minor ballrooms, he occasionally encountered Truham boys or Higgs girls; mostly small groups of friends chatting or couples making out. If Charlie had some kind of job to do, he would’ve had to go where there weren’t students…right?
Nick found a brass stand holding up velvet ropes as well as a sign reading, Area Closed. Please Do Not Disturb, that he couldn’t remember seeing during his first wanderings of the hotel. The sign stood in a corridor before the staircase. Nick glanced behind him. Seeing nobody who might take his whims as permission to trespass as well, he stepped over the ropes and jogged up the stairs. There weren’t many rooms up here, but he quickly understood the conversation about moving storage once he saw how much of the hotel’s furniture had been moved up here to accommodate the party.
The music downstairs faded in the distance, allowing his head to perk up at the new commotion up here. Nick found Charlie in a room with stacks of metal chairs, among other miscellaneous things. The room may as well have been empty with how Nick watched Charlie…dance. His earbuds were in, and he danced. Not well. Not with any visible history of lessons or performing, but a smile pulled up Nick’s cheeks, crinkling his eyes. Not out of taunting amusement, but endearment. Charlie’s voice broke out every so often, singing or mumbling a lyric or word while he played Tetris with the room at large. He seemed to be trying working on pulling one of the pillars of chairs out. He made space around them first, and then reached up to try and take some of the higher layers up off the stack…
Charlie’s head whipped around when Nick came too close. He heaved, “Oh my god,” as he pulled his earbuds from his ears—
His head jerked up and they both caught the chairs he’d dislodged before they fell. The earbuds clattered on the floor somewhere and Nick’s heart hammered in his chest as Charlie laughed in a Murphy’s Law sort of way. Like this might as well happen, one mess to another.
With another breath for resolve, Charlie gestured at the topmost chairs. “Can you take those?”
Nick clamped his mouth shut to hoist the chairs up and set them down a safe distance away. Charlie set his own segment of chairs down, the column no longer a precarious, leaning tower anymore. He removed the phone from his pocket to use the torch and search for his earbuds. Nick apologized, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. Again.”
Charlie gave him a look, but not a stern one. “It’s fine. It doesn’t take much. Are you all right?”
Nick looked down at himself, as if he had to visually check since the inflated sensation in his chest kept him from feeling anything else. “I think so. Are you?”
Charlie gave up searching the floor and said, “Yeah, I’m okay.”
“Can I help you find your pods?”
“I think I’ll just have to hope to find them as I move things out of here. Mind your feet.”
He lifted two chairs off the shorter stack to take downstairs. Nick asked, “Are all of these chairs moving?”
“Yes, there’s a convention here after we clean up the birthday. Speaking of, you don’t have to do that.”
Nick followed him with more chairs. “I want to.”
Before he descended the stairs, Charlie gave him a worried look. “You’ll miss the confetti.”
“There’s confetti?” Nick scoffed, because of course Harry or his parents would go in for something so extra.
“It’s what the staff is looking forward to the most. And the least, because of the cleanup, but still.”
They carefully navigated the stairs and Nick followed him into one of the rooms behind the sign and velvet ropes. “What about you? Were you looking forward to it?”
“I was,” Charlie said as he set the chairs down. He pointed and directed, “You can set them there. The idea is to make it easier to get these all the way downstairs tomorrow.”
Nick placed them but persisted, “And now?”
Charlie shrugged, already on his way back out. “Now I’m up here.”
Nick didn’t know what to say, aside from an apology. “I’m sorry about what Harry said. He shouldn’t have said it.”
“First time hiding in the garden?” Charlie said with a smile in his tone.
Nick froze, jaw slack as he realized he’d just snitched on himself. “Uh. I.”
Charlie released him with, “It’s fine. But really, you shouldn’t be up here alone with an adult.”
Nick’s face crumpled in an indignant grimace. “What? Moving furniture around? I’m so in danger.”
“Yes, terribly,” Charlie taunted, but he smiled on his way out with more chairs.
“Well, how old are you?” Nick asked while they worked.
“Twenty, though, not for much longer.”
Nick frowned until he understood, “Oh, like, your birthday is soon?”
Charlie set down the chairs and took a moment to catch his breath and unbuttoned the collar around his throat. “Yes, but why are you more interested in manual labour than a party with your friends?”
Nick sighed on the stairs. “You know by now that Harry’s a busy body.”
“Harry is…?”
“The birthday boy.”
“Greene. Right,” Charlie remembered. Nick supposed it made sense that a hotel staff member would remember the last name over anything else.
“His whole thing tonight—until he heard about you—was trying to set me up with a girl.”
Charlie turned to him with a confused wince on his face. “Set you up? At his own birthday party?”
A relieved, breathy laugh burped out of him. “Yeah. Weird, isn’t it?”
Puzzling it out, Charlie said, “It’s not enough that it’s his birthday? Sounds like he wants bragging rights over you.”
Nick shrugged. “The only thing he really doesn’t have is being captain of the rugby boys.”
“Dare I ask, who’s the captain?”
“Me.”
Charlie looked at him again, pausing from moving more items out of the way of the chairs. “Oh, well done.”
Nick smiled, a guilty little laugh escaping him. Charlie continued, “Well, there you go. Your coach must know how to balance a team if—”
A sharp pop! came from downstairs. It sounded like a toy gun or a t-shirt canon. Nick’s brows furrowed at the sound, and the applause they felt through the floor. He looked to Charlie, who tipped his head. “Confetti.”
Nick processed that, but at the crossroads of returning downstairs or staying here, he felt the weight of an easy choice keeping him right here. He wanted to stay here, where Charlie was new and interesting and he let Nick be here just as himself. Where Nick didn’t feel lost or the punchline of someone else’s jape…
“What is all this?” he wondered, honing in on the things Charlie moved with care.
“Supplies for vampire guests.”
Nick’s brows flew up underneath his swooping fringe. He approached the line of machines on rolling trolleys that Charlie moved into a line against the far wall, but Charlie held his arm out. “I have to ask that you don’t touch these. You’re not certified, and they’re medical, so sanitary protocol is different for them.”
Nick stayed a respectable distance away, but he glanced at the chairs and other miscellaneous jetsam of the hotel. All the stuff that wasn’t maintaining any sanitization protocol. “What are they?”
“Blood transfusion machines.”
“Why are they in here with everything else?”
Charlie wore a weary but resigned expression. “That’s just how it goes, sometimes.”
“How what goes?”
“Rules being broken. You can keep moving the chairs, if you’re up for it.”
Nick rather thought it was disrespect at work, not merely rules being broken, but he knew he was being dismissed. He took another set of chairs down twice, but each time he came back he observed Charlie’s progress and care in organizing the medical equipment. The line of machine trolleys. The blood bag standees like sentinels, ready and waiting. As Charlie rewound an extension cord, Nick’s eyes caught on something on the floor. Two somethings.
Charlie perked up when Nick held his hand out, two earbuds on his palm. Charlie immediately lifted a smile at him, and Nick felt like he stood in the eye of the sun. As if from far away, he heard Charlie utter fondly, “Thank you,” but his fingertips sliding over Nick’s palm felt utterly close. Like Charlie could reach into his chest and stroke his heart if he so wanted.
Nick wanted him to.
The realization of that made his voice sound punched out as he tried to get a grip on himself. “Certified, you said? Like a nurse?”
“Could be,” Charlie answered quietly. “Or something a little less thorough.”
“What do you mean?”
“You don’t have to be a full nurse. A person can be taught and certified to administer transfusions. I am.”
Nick absorbed this and voiced, “That seems…like a really compassionate skill.”
“Um, more of a selfish one,” Charlie said like an apology. “As a vampire in the modern world, knowing my way around a needle seemed a pretty good idea. Looks great on my résumés, though.”
“Would you ever take it further into nursing?”
Charlie shook his head, but he didn’t seem put off by the question. “Healthcare isn’t really my niche, unfortunately. I don’t think I have the stamina for it… Are you ready to go back downstairs yet?”
Nick blinked perplexedly. “Why?”
Charlie’s eyes moved between Nick’s, searching. “Certain subjects tend to make people go quiet. Or angry. I’m a blend of all of them…but you seem fine so far.”
Nick answered simply, “My aunt is a vampire. She doesn’t tell me much, but it’s because she’s my aunt first. Vampire stuff is way down on the list.”
Charlie nodded reassuringly. “Makes sense. Are you close to her?”
“I’d say so. It would be nice if she and her family lived closer, but they’re close enough for more visits than just Christmas.”
They both nodded conversationally, but a silence eclipsed them. Nick ventured, “Are you close to your family? If you’ve stayed close to this area, I mean.”
Charlie’s eyes went distant. Just for a second, but it was answer enough. “Not my extended family, no, but my parents are here. My sister and I live in the city.”
Whatever expression Nick wore fell off his face. “You—live—in the city? London? But why are you here?”
Charlie shrugged. “Part time student. Part time jobs. I’m sort of part time in a lot of places right now.”
“A student in London?” Nick asked wistfully. “What are you studying? God, I haven’t a clue what I want to go to university for.”
Charlie smiled, “You have time, Nick. Don’t stress. Your greatest battles right now are dodging girls, apparently.”
Nick craned his face to the ceiling with a lamenting laugh. “Avoiding everyone, at this rate. It’s not that I don’t like girls. I just…don’t like any of them right now.”
His gaze sank back down, to find Charlie not quite listening. His face seemed fully relaxed, his eyes calmly focused below Nick’s face. Nick realized, with a jump in his heartrate, that Charlie stared at his throat.
In the same instant, lucidity returned to Charlie’s demeanor and he said as if the moment had never happened, “School is a box. Everyone’s trapped with each other, using one another for amusement, but you don’t have to go along with it. You have time. Just like you have time to find someone yourself. Or no one, if you prefer. You don’t have to be someone else’s bragging rights.”
Nick could feel his heartbeat in his chest. Like his arteries had inflated with the need to rush blood to his extremities. He licked his lips and said like a secret, “I think I would want someone.”
A small smile curved Charlie’s face, like he knew. “She would be fortunate to have you.”
“You’re just going to assume it would be a she?” Nick heard himself ask. He didn’t know who that person was. He felt himself on the precipice of growth, the terror of becoming a new person and not know who that person is yet. But it felt…honest. Earnest. He wanted Charlie’s answer.
Charlie, whose eyes moved between his again. More, they moved over all of Nick’s face, studying him. But he didn’t sound on sure footing anymore as he voiced, “It’s not my place to assume anything. It’s just…obviously it’s okay if it’s not a girl.”
“It’s just what?”
Charlie’s lashes fluttered in rushed half-blinks. He swallowed—
Boom.
They both froze at the odd sound that came through the floor. Charlie looked visibly confused. Nick felt the same, even though he couldn’t say why. He guessed, “More confetti?” right as a bigger Boom! from outside ignited the shadows of the room.
Charlie recoiled as if the sound physically hit him, but he went to the tall, floor to ceiling window, and opened the gauzy curtains. Nick followed him as his brain wondered over lightning, despite very much knowing what a firework looked like. Once he could properly click that together, he gazed out over the front of the hotel and asked, “Fireworks too?”
They stood together in the window frame. Nick held back the curtain on his side so Charlie could put his arm down, but they didn’t see any staff on the grounds. Charlie denied, “No, no fireworks planned…and in the front of the hotel?”
Boom.
They saw it this time, the projectile shooting out as if from below their very feet. From inside the hotel.
BOOM!
Charlie acted first. His arms flew around Nick even if he was not fast enough to pull him back from the window. Either way, they jumped back as if the searing, colourful embers would pass right through the glass. Ironic, how Nick had a visual representation of how he felt over the last hour.
Short-lived, as they stumbled into furniture and the light and colour in the room faded as the embers fell out of the sky. Nick’s gaze sought Charlie, who ran from the room. Nick went hotly after him, running down the stairs as another Boom! Sounded, louder this time, except the following explosion of the firework resounded through the walls. He and Charlie jerked their hands over their heads; the shockwave in the air made it feel like the ceiling would come down…
“Oh, fuck,” Charlie uttered. Nick didn’t need to ask what he reacted to. He found it himself: down the corridor to the smoke coming out of a bathroom. The very bathroom a number of boys were running out of. Between their fear and haste, they had no regard for anyone else. They shoulder-checked Charlie out of their way, all but throwing him against the corridor wall. Nick caught him, slowing his fall to the floor so they landed in a gentle heap together.
“Are you okay?” Nick asked, but the smoke alarm screamed over him. Charlie flinched, his hands over his ears and his rigid body pressing into Nick’s chest. Even so, Nick felt him trying to stabilize his feet under himself. They stood up together, and Charlie pushed him towards the stairs that went down to the ballroom.
“Down! Down!”
Nick ran, his mind rationalizing a fire evacuation route. The music had been cut off downstairs, but someone spoke into a microphone to direct everyone out. Nick stopped on the next landing and pressed himself to the wall for anyone behind him…
“Charlie?” he yelled, because Charlie wasn’t there.
Nick took off up the stairs again, running all the way into the corridor of smoke. It didn’t smell bad or foreign; it smelled exactly like firework smoke, which must be a good thing. The hotel wasn’t burning yet. He heard the bang! bang! bang! of stall doors slamming open.
“Charlie!” he called again, and Charlie caught him with a hand on his chest. The other held his shirt over his nose.
“There’s no one here. Downstairs!”
Nick grabbed his hand and ran with him, not taking the chance after Charlie ran into smoke once already. They ran together into the back garden. So much for being closed now, with nearly all of Truham and Higgs standing about, waiting for instruction. Nick stopped and looked at Charlie, blinked over red, watery eyes. “Are you okay?”
“I need to flush my eyes,” he said, and let go of his hand to go back inside, presumably the kitchen since it was closest. Staff came and went from the house, but they would all have to be outside once the fire brigade showed up.
“Nick,” a laughing voice called behind him. Nick turned around during a long blink for patience. Harry congratulated, “What were you doing with Charlie Spring? Are you hero? Saving the damsel from the fireworks?”
“Shut up, Harry,” he rebuked.
“What? Why? I only mean it’s good of you. Did you see he was crying? He must’ve been so scared—”
“He’s crying because he ran into the smoke to make sure none of you burned alive.”
“What’s your problem?” he countered. “You didn’t just have your birthday party ruined by bellends in a toilet.”
“My problem, is you can stop being homophobic at any time, Harry. Happy birthday.”
It was not Nick’s intention for the whole school to hear that. He completely forgot everyone stood around in their respective friend groups until he began to walk away, and found varying reactions watching him. Groups of people, and now he was the odd one out.
* * *
With water still on his face, Charlie ran around the side of the hotel property with a box in his hands. It smelled faintly of onions for the kitchen, but it would do. He had been working on this cat for weeks, and he’d be damned if a fuck-ton of teenagers ruined his progress.
He sent his resonance out, searching in the direction he’d seen the kitten come and go. A blessing and curse of being a vampire, resonance. Like a light he could shine brighter or dimmer, it radiated out from himself and pinged off of living things. So, he steered away from the horde of teenagers.
He found her easily enough, and knelt in the grass with a coaxing softness in his resonance. Aloud, he begged, “Come here, kitty. No more cold nights or scary guests for you.”
He knew some vampires could control animals with their resonance. Charlie did not have the practice, but this was why he had been trying the human way for so long. By now, she knew him, and his eyes found her lumbering through the underbrush to him. He smiled, saying a farewell prayer to the sanctity of his car since he’d stolen a can of sardines for her.
Charlie scooped her up and placed her on the dish towel with which he’d lined the box. He tried to make his strides long and steady but rushed around the hotel to the car park. With the rose tint of his resonance gone, she meowed for the clouds to hear her, but he secured her on the passenger seat of his vehicle. He cracked open the sardines and slipped one into the box for her. Mollified for now, he left her and ran back to the hotel kitchen to wash his hands.
“There you are,” one of his coworkers greeted. A nineteen year old woman saving money for her big university move. “Did you get her?”
“Yeah!” he exhaled at the sink.
“Finish quickly. The brigade’s upstairs and parents are going to be arriving soon to take these kids home.”
Charlie dried his hands as he asked, “How long do we have to stay?”
“Manager hasn’t said yet. He’s been on the phone since this started. Who was the boy you evacuated with?”
Charlie’s face froze in practiced indifference. He tossed his paper towels in the bin. “One of the guests.”
“Do you know each other? I went up to help you but left since you were chatting.”
“No, we only met tonight.”
“He followed you like a puppy, I thought you might be old mates from school or something.”
He rolled his eyes onto her as they strolled outside, giving the student body a wide berth. “He’s not a puppy. He was helpful until somebody started lighting bombs in the toilet.”
“Be honest, you liked it.”
“Yes, I love feeling in mortal danger—”
“Come off it,” she laughed. “He’s cute, from what I could see. You don’t think so?”
Charlie indulged in a cheeky smirk. “It’s probably better we’re not close in age. I would’ve been obsessed with him.”
A sensation spiked behind him, like a volume dial going up. Charlie glanced back and saw Nick standing on the pathway. He kept walking with his coworker for a few paces, before he made a decision and said, “I’m gonna ask the manager when we leave.”
“Okay,” she chimed, otherwise going to join the rest of the staff in whatever small, private clubhouse stood out on the grounds.
Charlie rotated towards the house, but he met Nick’s stare and turned sharply into the landscaping. Not exactly a maze, but certainly occupied by tall hedges, trees, cherry picker machines, and whatever else the hotel had left in place. Charlie went deeper and deeper into the shadows, where only the occasional lawn torch stood in the grass with a little solar panel on its lid.
Nick had not struck Charlie as a rebellious sort, but he knew when to emerge from the shadows to join him. Catching up, they soon walked side by side until he grasped Charlie’s arm to stop him. They spoke at the same time.
“Did you mean it?”
“I’m sorry. I—” Charlie froze. He said alone, “What?”
Nick breathed like he had run here, not merely walked at Charlie’s speed. “Did you mean it?”
Charlie desperately searched for something to say. He stared, he looked elsewhere, his mouth moved but nothing came out. He finally shut his eyes and scrounged his mind for control. “I’m sorry. It was a careless conversation and inappropriate. I didn’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable or unsafe.”
“Careless because it was honest?” Nick queried. His chest heaved with a deep, encouraging breath. “I don’t feel unsafe. I want to know if it’s true. That you like me?”
Charlie did not know how to respond. He stood in the spotlight of Nick’s focus until he saw an aid: a bench. “I’m going to sit down,” he said, so at least Nick didn’t think he was bailing. Nick sat beside him and looked more at ease for it. Neither of them had to trust their legs right now. In the safety of the shadows, Charlie tried, “I’m a bit older than you.”
“What? So?”
Charlie shrugged like an apology, or like he didn’t know what else to say. “Some people care about that sort of thing. And we’ve only just met.”
Nick frowned. “You’re not giving me a direct answer.”
Charlie tried to exhale quietly, as if his very breath could make the hedges tremble. “I’m not really sure of the question. Nick, have you ever liked a boy?”
He could hear Nick swallow. The back of Charlie’s brain whispered, Please don’t give this sweet boy a panic attack in the garden.
Nick answered, “Not this fast, maybe. And not this…intensely.”
“Tonight’s been a lot. For everyone. It’s probably better to just—”
If Nick knew one thing for certain, it was that he did not want Charlie to finish that sentence. “Could you not talk like you work here? Please? Just talk to me like a person.”
Charlie sat with worry all over his face; his tilted brows and parted mouth. He closed it and pivoted his knees to better face him. “I can get into a lot of trouble. It’s not your fault for liking somebody…and I’d be a liar and a fool if I wasn’t delighted.”
Nick’s chin lifted in time to catch the fleeting, giddy smile on Charlie’s face. It quickly faded, though, as he finished, “I want to like you. But our timing is off.”
“Our timing is right now.”
“Oh, you work fast,” Charlie scoffed.
Nick didn’t take that bait. “You want to like me? Does that mean you don’t?”
“No,” Charlie corrected. “It means…it’s easier for us both if I don’t.”
“There’s nothing easy about my lungs trying to climb out of my chest.”
That broke through Charlie’s nerves and he smiled again. He even laughed; a short, beautiful thing that made him lurch forward and put a hand on Nick’s chest. Like he might be able to calm his lungs down.
As easily as he’d put his hand there, his hand lifted off, but paused. Instead of leaving, his fingers drifted to the buttons of Nick’s open button-up. Nick wanted his hand back on his chest, to feel the warmth of his palm and fingers through his t-shirt. Charlie said quietly, as if the garden lamps shared secrets, “Of course I’d be obsessed with you. I meant it when I said anyone would be fortunate to have you.”
Nick ventured a smile of his own. “You’re so sure of that after having just met me?”
“A rugby lad who escaped a party in favour of manual labour? Yeah,” he nodded with a confident, albeit quiet, chuckle. And he set his hand back on his lap.
Nick licked his lips. “I just wanted to be close to you. Is that weird?”
He caught the way Charlie’s eyes flicked down to his lips. Then back up, as he said, “I think it’s extremely normal to want to be near your crush.”
“You don’t think I’m pathetic?” he tried to dismiss with a nervous laugh. He didn’t really succeed.
Charlie’s eyes were steady on him now. “I think you’re brave. Much braver than I was at sixteen.”
Nick didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know what to say. He just knew that the thread of his lifeline might snap if he didn’t ask, “Would you kiss me?”
Charlie’s lips parted. As his eyes wandered Nick’s face, Nick expected him to say no, or some delicate evasion that answered as much.
Charlie didn’t say no. His eyes locked with Nick’s mouth and his hand came back up to cradle his cheek. It wasn’t Nick’s first kiss, yet he didn’t know what to do, so he closed his eyes and surrendered completely. In equal measure, Charlie held Nick still and guided their mouths together. A jolt to Nick’s system, the softness of Charlie’s lips. Fascinated disbelief of how soft a mouth could be fell to the wayside as the delicate crush of their lips lifted into a sweet sound. Nick’s eyes stayed closed, and he was rewarded with Charlie kissing him twice, a gentle peck before he eased back to check on him.
Nick opened his eyes. All he could see was Charlie, like the world was a blissful, blurred out void. Charlie’s hand sank back down to Nick’s shirt, and he said hopefully, “Are you okay?”
Nick heard himself swallow. At least his body knew what to do because his mind remained empty aside from one desire. He lifted Charlie’s hand back up to his face as he nodded, and leaned forward for Charlie’s mouth again. Charlie kissed him anew, but this time, the kiss flowed into Charlie tilting his head and sliding his open palm down the side of Nick’s neck. The kiss deepened, Charlie moving Nick’s lips apart with experienced nods of his head. Nick felt his rhythm blindly, following and wanting as his hands grasped Charlie’s shoulders and slid behind to hold his back.
They clutched each other close, but each kiss surged desire down Nick’s body, and it wasn’t close enough. Nick wanted more. He wanted to kiss Charlie longer, deeper. As if he knew, or maybe he wanted it too, warm and slick passed over the seam of Nick’s lips. With exhilaration on his breath, he realized it had been Charlie’s tongue—
“Oi, Nick!”
Their mouths separated as if they both woke from a dream.
“Nicholas! Mate, where’d you go?”
Understanding ignited in both of their eyes and Nick gasped, his vision fuzzy on the edges and his body feeling like blood was thicker, heavy. Yet he felt a sparky energy to take off. His legs moved towards the sound of voices, and he immediately knew he had an issue. His eyes jerked down at the indiscrete lump in his trousers and back up to Charlie.
“Nick! Do you want a ride home or not?”
His breath went shallow as he rushed to take off his button-up shirt. He stood with it draped over his wrist and falling in front of his groin. He glanced back at a stupefied Charlie and blurted, “Um, I have to go.”
Charlie nodded once, and empty, “Yeah,” hanging between them.
Nick didn’t want to leave. He certainly didn’t want to get found here, in the state he was. Out of time, he strode down the path and turned the corner to intercept Otis and Sai. The former interrogated, “Oi, lad, what are you doing on the edge of the world?”
“Avoiding Harry,” he answered, surprisingly honest.
Sai understood, “We don’t blame you one bit. He’s been looking for you to have the last word.”
Otis waved him forward. “Come on. We’ll take you home.”
Nick walked in stride with them. Whatever his face did, Sai asked, “Are you all right?”
He nodded impatiently, not to leave, but to get into a car before anyone could possibly wonder why Captain Nick Nelson had his cock up. “Yeah. Smoke’s still in my eyes, is all. And the party was overstimulating.”
“I thought it was all right, until the obvious,” Otis conversed on their way to his father’s vehicle out front.
Charlie remained on the bench. He tugged on his slacks to move the fabric over his erection and then drew his knees up to set his heels on the bench with him. He brushed his palms over the top of his head, flattening his curls. Behind the hills of his knees, his jaw lowered to make room for his fangs, sliding low enough out of his gums for the tips to catch the low light. His tongue carefully swiped over one, and then the other. Sensitive, he shuddered, the apex of his legs aching fiercely.
He had to stand up to pace in long, quick strides, forcing his blood to circulate and his mind to go elsewhere. He would not be successful on this night, but at the very least, he had to go back to work.