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“Ow! Shit!”
“Nick, you have to be quiet.”
“But my shin—”
“Shhh!”
Nick grins and makes an exaggerated shushing gesture; one finger poised at his pursed lips while he attempts to wink. This does not, to Charlie’s dismay, make him any less noisy at taking his shoes off. His Vans – already a bit clompy at the best of times – hit the shoe rack with a clatter. Nick winces.
“Shhhhh!” he hisses at his left shoe, which is in the unfortunate position of being closest to them and therefore, apparently, the instigator. Charlie rolls his eyes.
“You’re a bloody nightmare, Nick.”
His boyfriend shoots him a who? me? look, which only makes him look like he drank the majority of Darcy’s rum punch in one evening. Which, to be fair, he did. Charlie makes a mental note to think about how to get revenge on them in the morning. For now, what little brain power he has left needs to be dedicated to getting his much bigger, much stronger and much drunker boyfriend up the stairs without waking up the rest of the Spring clan. No mean feat this close to Christmas when Olly seems to be waking up at every creak of the floorboards, convinced Father Christmas has come early.
“Come on, you big lump,” he laughs quietly as Nick winds his arm around Charlie"s shoulder. “We need to get some food and drink in you.”
“N’more drink, Char,” Nick slurs, his mouth hot against Charlie’s neck. “I think I"ve had enough.”
“You think?” Charlie thumps him lightly on the arm. “I meant water, you numpty.”
Nick hums.
“Water sounds good, yeah.”
The kitchen chairs are apparently too much of a challenge when Charlie finally gets Nick in there. The legs of the first one Nick attempts squeak loudly against the floor tiles and Nick winces again. Charlie glares. It’s hard to be mad when Nick looks at him so apologetically, though.
The second one is even less of a success. Nick somehow manages to pull it out silently; lifting it carefully with his face fixed in a wide grimace of concentration. When he goes to sit down, however, he misses completely and hits the floor with a thud.
“Ow! Shit!”
“You said that already,” Charlie sighs.
“Yeah, but this time it really hurt.”
“Poor baby,” Charlie coos with as much sympathy as he can muster. Which, at this point, isn’t much. Nick seems to decide that the floor is the best place for him; he shuffles bodily backwards and leans up against the kitchen cabinets. Charlie hands him a glass of water. Only some of it ends up in Nick’s lap.
“You take such good care of me, Char,” Nick grins up at him. Charlie sighs… again.
Everything in the kitchen seems so loud suddenly: Charlie pops bread into the toaster that groans as he presses the lever: the kettle gurgles as it boils; the mugs scrape against one another as he tries to prise two from the depths of the cabinet. Every second becomes a slightly fraught ticking time bomb before Jane Spring storms downstairs and discovers them. It won’t matter that Nick is eighteen and technically allowed to be drunk, not when Charlie’s mum is willing to suspend all reason in the name of disgruntlement.
Not to mention the hell that’ll break loose if she catches him in Charlie’s bedroom on a Sunday night. Never mind that it’s the school holidays and neither of them have to be up in the morning; rules are rules, especially at two in the morning.
Fuck, that makes it Monday, doesn’t it? That’ll be worse, somehow.
Charlie quickly butters the toast that pops out of the toaster with thunderous enthusiasm, fishes the teabags from their mugs of tea and grabs a couple of bananas from the fruit bowl. Behind him, something crinkles – a piercing scrunch – then there’s the unmistakable crunch of Nick eating.
“ Seriously, Nick? Crisps?”
Nick pauses, cheeks full, and holds out the offending packet.
“Want some?”
“No I don’t want some!” Charlie throws his hands up, which only dislodges the knife that he had left balanced precariously on the edge of the plate. Nick watches it clatter to the floor and then giggles. “Nick! Couldn’t you have had – I don’t know – a yoghurt or something?” Charlie hisses.
“I’m hungry,” Nick says simply, around a mouthful of masticated crisps. He does, at least, look mildly sheepish.
“Nick, I love you, but you’re driving me crazy right now.”
“Sorry.”
“Where did you even get crisps from?”
“Olly must’ve left his packed lunch on here…” Nick points vaguely at the counter.
“Please tell me you didn’t raid my little brother’s lunchbox for leftover crisps.”
“They’re Pom Bears!” Nick says this like it offers some major explanation. Charlie scrubs a hand across his face.
“Let’s just— Can we get to bed?”
Nick holds the plate of toast in both hands while Charlie carefully carries their tea, the bananas tucked under his arm. There are a couple of blunders as they make their way when Nick trips up the steps, but eventually they make it up the stairs and across the landing to Charlie’s room. Before he shuts the door behind them, Charlie carefully places the mugs down on his chest of drawers and listens for any sign of life elsewhere in the house. Miraculously, everyone else seems to still be asleep.
When he turns around, his boyfriend has stripped to his boxers and is sitting on the floor attempting to wrestle the cuff of his jeans from around his ankle. Charlie watches as Nick stretches one leg out on the rug and reaches over to tug at the offending denim. He looks like an 80s fitness video wet dream.
“You’re such an idiot,” Charlie laughs quietly as he crouches down to help. Nick props himself up with both hands braced behind him and grins dopily.
“You love me, though,” he slurs. “You told me so.”
“I tell you all the time, you dork”