Chapter Text
David had driven them as far as he could, only having so much time to get back to his base. He’d dropped Sarah and Charlie off at a train station, helping Sarah out of the truck he’d ‘borrowed’ from work and shaking Charlie’s hand before turning and jogging back to his vehicle.
Charlie had been greatly surprised by David. He hadn’t even batted an eye when Charlie had insisted on coming with them, just ushered him towards the truck along with Sarah.
David did his best to explain while he drove, gripping the steering wheel with such intensity that the whites of his knuckles shone through his skin.
It had turned out, that David Nelson, a man Charlie had previously thought of as an uncaring and cold human, had been using his position and contacts to keep track of his younger brother.
“The message came through a few hours ago. His convoy was attacked yesterday morning and he was injured. I don’t know how badly, but bad enough that they’ve evacuated him back to England. He was on a medical transport that came in last night and they’ve taken him to Bristol. Apparently, he needed surgery. That’s all I know. I’m sorry Mum. I’m so sorry”
Sarah had placed a hand on top of her eldest son and given it a squeeze.
“You’ve got nothing to be sorry for darling”
“But I should have been able to, I thought that I could, fuck. I thought I’d be able to protect him”
“Oh, Davy” Sarah put a hand on her son's cheek and rubbed her thumb over his cheek bone.
There were unshed tears in both their eyes, Charlie huddled in the backseat, quietly observing.
David had been using his rank to try and protect Nick? What had that even meant? Had David had any influence over where Nick was sent? Or who with?
Charlie’s head was swimming at such a speed that he hadn’t even registered everything that David had said.
It came to him slowly as the truck zipped down the quiet country lanes, using more petrol rations with each press of the accelerator under David's foot.
Nick. Attacked.
Nick. Surgery.
Nick. Evacuated.
Nick. Bristol.
Nick was in Bristol? Was in the country? Would Charlie be able to see him that day? Or what if-
No, he couldn’t think like that. Nick was alive. At least as of that morning when David had received the intel, Nick was alive. Charlie would focus on that.
…..
Neither Sarah or Charlie could speak as they rode the train towards Bristol, their hands clasped tightly together and matching vacant expressions on their faces.
Charlie wondered if, like him, she was trying her best to battle away the demons in her own mind whispering that Nick could have succumbed to his injuries by now.
He squeezed her hand extra tight just in case.
……
Charlie thought he may have dropped his heart somewhere between the train station and the several blocks that he and Sarah had half sprinted to the hospital they’d been told Nick was being taken to.
His chest felt hollow as they pushed through the door and searched desperately for anyone with information, anyone who might know anything about Nick’s condition.
Anyone who might know if Nick was alive?
David had had so little information, just the knowledge that Nick had been badly injured and been evacuated out to the hospital in Bristol. What if something had gone wrong on the journey there, what if Nick’s condition had worsened? What if they’d lost him?
This was physically as close to Nick as he had been in years. They were in the same building. Nick was there somewhere, and yet somehow he felt farther away than ever.
Was that because Nick wasn’t really there? Because Nick had already gone? Gone on to whatever was waiting for them on the other side?
“Excuse me dear” Sarah had caught the attention of a nervous looking young nurse with the largest and brightest blue eye’s that Charlie had ever seen.
“My son, my son was supposed to be brought here. His name is Nicholas Nelson”
“Oh um, I’m not sure” the nurse stuttered, looking down at the stacks of papers she had tucked in her arms.
“I’m so sorry. I know that you must be very busy but if you could, if you could check? His been away for nearly four years and if he’s here somewhere”
The girls expression shifted from a look of nervous confusion to that of compassion. Sarah's hand had somehow made it into one of the girls and they were clutched onto one another now, anchored together.
“I’ve not been working here long, honestly half the patients don’t even have proper charts made up, there’s just so much chaos, but I’ll find out” she looked around as if making sure that no one was watching them and leaned in close.
“There’s a little lounge up on the third floor, all the way at the end of the east hallway. Much less crowded than down here. If you go wait there, I’ll come find you as soon as I know something”
Sarah squeezed the girls hand again, her eyes brimmed with unshed tears.
“Thank you dear, Thank you…”
“Imogen” the girl supplied, giving the both of them a sad little smile before ushering them off in the direction of the stairs.
“I’ll be as quick as I can” Imogen called after them.
She could have found Nick that very second, and it still wouldn’t have been fast enough.
………………………….
The lounge that the nurse, Imogen, had directed them to was quite bareboned, just a shabby sofa and a few chairs, but it was mercifully quiet.
Despite it being the early afternoon, Sarah looked utterly exhausted. Charlie insisted she take the sofa and try to sleep. She’d tried to protest there wasn’t a point, as Charlie stood his ground and there was no denying that Sarah was dead on her feet.
Charlie couldn’t be still, feeling as if he might actually come apart at the seams if he didn’t keep moving.
He paced around the small room, counting the steps it took him to get from one end to the other. The number was pathetically small.
There was no clock in the room and Charlie had long since stopped wearing a watch, fearing that dirt would work its way into the mechanics and halting the hands, so he had no way of knowing how much time had passed.
He worried that perhaps they had been brushed off, that Imogen had just sent them off to a far-flung corner of the building just to get them out of her hair. Charlie didn’t really believe that. There was something in the girl's large expressive eyes that made Charlie want to trust her.
A timid knock at the door caused Charlie to jump slightly, breaking out of pace mid-stride. He hurried to the door and hauled it open, relieved to see nurse Imogen standing there.
“I’m sorry that took so long” the words rushed out of her mouth like a tidal wave.
“There’s so much chaos going on everywhere but I’ve got news”
Charlie’s heart leapt and his stomach dropped at the same time, relief and fear competing with one another for his attention.
“Sarah” Charlie placed a hand on her shoulder and tried to wake her as softly as possible. As if she’d been on the edge of wakefulness the entire time, her eyes immediately flashed out and she sat up, alert.
“ His leg was quite badly injured, there was a bullet lodged into his knee and quite a large chunk of shrapnel just below it. They didn’t try to remove it at the field hospital, and thought it best to stabilize it as much as possible before he evacuated him”
Imogen took a breath, while Charlie and Sarah continued to hold theirs.
“Unfortunately infection had set in by the time he reached us. He went right into surgery to stop the infection from spreading. It was touch and go for while I hear. He’s quite lucky really that it was Dr.Farouk here last night, most of the other surgeons would have just cut the leg off. It’s quicker and we’re overrun, but Dr.Farouk doesn’t do short cuts. He takes more times than the others but his patients have better recovery, or so i’m told. It was complicated surgery and he only got out a few hours ago”
“But he’s alive?”
Imogen's eyes went impossibly wider.
“Oh my god, yes. Yes he’s alive I should have led with that”
Charlie and Sarah collapsed together, clutching onto one another as they tried to absorb everything they’d just heard.
“And he’s going to be ok?”
Imogen winced slightly.
“ The doctor cleared out the infection as best he could, and removed the shrapnel but the bullet was lodged in the bone, so he didn’t want to risk moving it, so there is more infection risk there. So we’re giving him antibiotics and hopefully, there won’t be any more complications, but-”
“But what?” Charlie pushed forward, unable to take a stretch of silence.
“I’m still very new, I can’t say for sure but, I don’t think he’ll ever walk the same again. He could need a cane or crutches for the rest of his life or, I mean if the infection doesn’t get under control, they may go back in and take his leg”
Visions of Nick on the rugby pitch and rough housing in the park with Nellie flashed through Charlies mind. He thought of the way that Nick had chased him around a tree on the day of their first kiss.
It was hard to picture a future where Nick was not able to walk or run. But at least Charlie could picture a future. Nick was in this hospital, not in a ditch in the middle of Germany or Belgium of the coast of North Africa.
He was here somewhere. An infection seemed like a small enemy to face in comparison with Nazi’s.
“Can we see him?” Sarah pressed, squeezing Charlie’s hand in a few tight bursts.
Imogen nodded and Charlie’s heart leapt again, winning the battle over his anxious stomach.
“But it’s family only on the ward”
Charlie’s leaping heart plummeted. He was hard-pressed to pass himself off as a Nelson. He looked nothing like either Sarah or Nick. Charlie might actually lose his mind if he had to stay put in this room when Nick was downstairs somewhere.
“This is my nephew” Sarah quickly offered, wrapping an arm protectively around him and making it clear that he was to go wherever she did.
“Charlie” she added as Imogen continued to watch them. Something shifted in her face at the sound of Charlie’s name.
“Charlie?”
He nodded.
Imogen seemed to be considering something, nodding to herself.
“You can both follow me” she offered, turning to leave the room. Charlie and Sarah hurry to keep up with her. Both of them anxious to see Nick as soon as possible.
“I’ll warn you, he’s not regained consciousness from surgery. He’s still on quite a bit of morphine as well, so even if he does wake up soon, he could be quite out of it”
“We just want to see him”
“Of course”
Imogen pushed through a pair of doors and revealed a dimly lit ward, with rows and rows of beds separated by partitions of white sheets.
The smell was intense and Charlie winced the first time that it reached him, burning his nostrils. He was the scent of strong antiseptic and something quite rancid. As they walked down the rows, Charlie peered into each bed, hoping that each one would be Nick.
Catching sight of the open wounds and weeping bandages, Charlie realized that the other thing he was smelling was that of infected flesh. His stomach rolled, but he pressed forward. He was in the same room as Nick. Nick was there somewhere. Closer than he had been in years.
God, how had it been years?
“He’s just here” Imogen had stopped in front of a bed towards the end of the ward.
Charlie felt the air in his lungs freeze, not letting it flow forward and oxygenate the blood, refusing to allow the conversion to carbon dioxide.
This was the last moment of the before. Before he and Nick were together again. Before they were reunited, before their forced separation would finally end.
He was ready for the after.
It wasn’t the boy that Charlie remembered laying in the bed before him but a weathered man. How much four years could change a person.
Nick was only twenty-three years old, not the sweet-faced nineteen-year-old teenager that Charlie had kissed goodbye on a morning in September of 1939.
His face was thinner, his bones more set out, he looked to have grown and inch or two taller and while his shoulders were as broad as ever, his frame seemed diminished. Maybe it was just seeing him unconscious on a hospital bed that made Charlie think that.
No matter the ways his looks had changed, he was immediately recognizable as Nick. His being called out to Charlie, his hands tingling with the urge to reach out and take hold of him, to cling to him and never again let go.
And Charlie would if only they were the only people in the room.
He wasn’t there as Nick’s lover.
He was there as Cousin Charlie
“Cousins” don’t show affection, at least not the kind that Charlie was longing to.
So he stood by as Sarah sunk to her knees at Nick’s bedside, clutching his hand and pressing kisses to his knuckles.
Nick was right there, Charlie could reach out and touch him if only he wasn’t glued to the spot, societal expectations weighing on him. Nurse Imogen had barely let him in to see Nick in the first place. If Charlie gave any kind of sign of ‘inappropriateness’ he was sure to be out on his arse in five seconds flat.
So he settled for just watching him, for seeing him, for breathing the same air as his beloved.
Nick was right there, in front of him, his chest rising and falling, proving to Charlie that he was alive.
……
A nurse who wasn’t Imogen had produced a folding chair from somewhere and Sarah was seated at Nick’s bedside holding Nick’s hand. Charlie was standing behind Sarah, his hand on her shoulder.
It was as if he were touching Nick by proxy. He had his hand on Sarah and Sarah was holding a part of Nick.
“Visiting hours are over I'm afraid” Imogen had appeared back from nowhere and was now standing at the foot of Nick’s bed, her hands resting on the metal rails of the frame.
“Already?”
Imogen gave them a soft smile.
“They were over an hour ago actually but” Imogen gestured to their little group as if it made her point.
Sarah dug a pocket watch out of her handbag and winced at the time.
“I suppose we’d better find a place to stay for the night. What time can we come back tomorrow?”
Imogen dug into the pocket of her uniform and produced a small metal key.
“This key opens door 104, it’s just down the hall from here. It’s for the night nurse to rest in, which tonight is me”
She pressed the key into Sarah's hand.
“Take it”
“Oh, I couldn’t” Sarah began to protest but Imogen cut her off.
“I insist. It’s not safe to go wandering around looking for a room so late at night. I’ll take my break in the staff quarters. It’s really not a problem”
This nurse was truly a heaven-sent. An angel that was sent down to look after Sarah and Charlie in their most vulnerable state.
“If you want to come with me, I'll show you the room and find you a little something to eat”
After pressing another kiss to Nick's hand Sarah stood up and followed Imogen down the row of cots full of injured soldiers. Some were groaning in pain, others were sitting up in bed, reading by the dim light coming from their bedside, and others laid so still that Charlie feared they may not be breathing.
Imogen gestured for Sarah to head down the hall without them, pointing out the door that the key in Sarah's hand would unlock.
Imogen turned back to look at Charlie, lowering her voice to a soft near whisper.
“We run a skeleton staff here I'm the only nurse on duty tonight”
Charlie blinked, confused by what Imogen had just said. Was she trying to coax him into taking a job there? Seemed like an odd time to pitch the idea.
“Um-”
“And I’m going to go make sure Sarah is settled and then take my dinner break. I won’t be back for a while and then I'll be flitting around doing the four-hour vitals, which by the time I finish the last patient it’ll probably have been four hours and it’ll be time to start again. I’ll be so busy I wouldn’t notice if someone happened to slip in past visiting hours”
Charlie’s jaw went slack not quite absorbing what Imogen was saying.
“I was here when they brought your boy in. It was my first time seeing anyone arrive that had been evacuated from the front. It was kind of terrifying”
Charlie was lost again.
“He was sort of delirious. From the fever and the pain, he just kept calling out for Charlie”
Imogen's eyes were soft as she watched him, a gentle smile on her face.
“I know you’re not a cousin, and I don’t really care what you are to him if I’m being honest. But If you were the one he was calling for and if he happens to wake up tonight he’s going to be scared and probably in pain, and I’m guessing you’re the one he’s going to want to see”
Charlie could fall at Imogen's feet and kiss her shoes. He’d give this woman everything he had in that moment, he’d give her anything she asked for. Because she was giving him this.
….
Nick’s hands were as warm as ever, but there were new thick callouses on his palms. His hand slid so easily into his lovers that it was almost as if they'd never been apart, as if they’d been holding hands every day for the past four years and not only catching glimpses of one another in dreams.
Charlie had tucked himself into the chair that Sarah had sat on before, both of his hands wrapped around one of Nick’s.
He was holding Nick’s hand. Nick was there, in front of him. Charlie could feel his pulse beating on his wrist, a constant reassurance that Nick was there and alive.
Charlie watched Nick’s face, a face he’d thought he had memorized before he was forced to spend four years not staring at it every day, several times a day.
He decides to study the planes of Nick’s face, trying to re-memorize every line.
God, he was beautiful. Four years older but still Nick Nelson. Still his Nick.
His eyes were tired and heavy and Charlie had to fight after every blink in order to get them to open again but he didn’t want to lose a single second of looking at Nick, of holding his hand.
Eventually, Charlie's head made its way down to rest on the mattress of the bed, leaning against his one arm and keeping his opposite hand holding tight to Nick.
He doesn’t remember falling asleep, he wasn’t even sure if he had, but he had a strange feeling that a great deal of time had passed.
There was pressure on his hand. It was strange, and at first, he hadn’t recognized the feeling.
He was fairly sure someone was squeezing his hand, and then the pressure stopped. He experimented, tensing his hand in a soft squeeze. The pressure returned, someone squeezing it back.
Charlie sat up, his heart pounding. Nick’s eyes were closed but he was definitely squeezing Charlie’s hand.
“Nick?” he whispered, leaning forward, watching his face carefully. The skin between Nick's brows crinkled as if he were adjusting to a bright light.
“Nick?” he tried again, getting out of his seat and leaning even further over Nick.
Nick blinked. A single slow blink.
Open your eyes. Open your eyes.
And then Nick opened his eyes and Charlie’s entire world came back into focus.
Brown eyes didn’t get enough credit for their beauty. The flecks of warm gold mixed with the deep warm brown was Charlie’s favorite sight in the world.
He hadn’t realized until that second that he’d forgotten the exact shade of Nick’s eyes.
“Char?” Nick’s voice was rough but it was the most gorgeous sound that Charlie had ever heard.
“Nick?” his voice cracked, a sob so close from breaking free from his chest.
Despite the obvious pain he was in, Nick cracked a smile, one hand reaching out to touch Charlie’s face.
“Hi”
“Hi”
Charlie’s self-restraint broke and he sprung forward, throwing himself at Nick.
Nick let out a small ‘oof’ back and wrapped his arms around Charlie in return, burying his head in the crook of Charlie’s neck.
“Oh shit. I’m sorry!” Charlie tried to pull back, realizing he was being too rough with his fresh out of surgery, fresh off the battlefield, sweetheart.
“Don't be” Nick murmured, tightening his arms around Charlie and stopping him from pulling away.
Tears spilled from Charlie’s eyes, overwhelmed from hearing the sound of Nick’s voice seeing his eyes and having him touch him all within a minute.
“I love you” Nick murmured into Charlie’s neck, and the dampness on his skin told Charlie that Nick was crying as well. "Are you really here?"
“I love you” Charlie had written those words what felt like a million times over the past four years, but saying the words out loud felt much more intense. So much more incredible than just taking pen to paper. "I'm right here"
“I told you I'd come back”
Charlie wanted to say that he’d never doubted it, but in honesty he had. Sometimes the darkness had taken over and his worst fears crept into the front of his mind.
“Thank you” Charlie gripped the front of Nick’s shirt as if he needed an anchor to ensure that he stayed there in the moment.
“Thank you” Nick said in return.
“For what?”
“For being here, for waiting”
“Shut up, as if I was going anywhere”
Nick chuckles a truly gorgeous sound.
“How was I supposed to know you weren't going to get swept off your feet by some handsome farm hand?”
It was almost unthinkable that after all the time they’d been forced apart, they could effortlessly slip back into their dynamic of switching between loving whispers and giving each other shit.
Nick let out a hiss of pain as his leg twitched.
Charlie made to get up.
“I’ll go find Imogen, she can give you something for the pain”
Nick held tight to Charlie, not letting him go.
“Don’t leave”
“I’m coming right back” he promises.
“Not yet”
“Nick you’re in pain”
“Don’t care”
“Nick”
“Kiss me first?”
Charlie can hardly believe that they haven't kissed yet, not after four years of dreaming of doing just that.
Charlie leans up, his mouth a breath away from his beloved, waiting for Nick.
Nick's mouth was on his and it was as if Charlie had not been breathing the entire four years, as if the breath he took against lips was the first he’d taken in all the time they’d been apart.
Nick was alive and in love with him.
Charlie was alive and in love in return.
The journey wasn’t over, there was still pain to come, a darkness lingering, but there in that tiny hospital bed, Charlie couldn’t find it in him to care about any of it.
For the first time in four years, his heart wasn’t heavy.
He was with Nick, and that was all that really mattered.