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Nick doesn't know how he ended up in this situation.
He's sitting in Charlie Spring's bathroom, his desk chair squished between his sink and the wall. Charlie stands behind him, a pair of blunt scissors in his hands. A recycled spray bottle sits by the tap (Nick isn't entirely sure the bottle doesn't still have cleaning chemicals in it. Charlie promised he washed it vigorously though), and Charlie has an evil grin on his face.
“Please don’t fuck it up,” Nick begs. His possibly incompetent hairdresser just laughs.
“Don’t you worry, Nicky. You’ll look like a Disney prince when I’m done.”
“Flynn Rider at least? Prince Charming? Aladdin?”
Charlie dips down to grab the spray bottle. “The beast,” he says. Nick scoffs.
Nick and Charlie have been friendly with each other for a few weeks, but today is the first time Nick’s been at Charlie’s house. It feels… weird to be here, out of place, like snow on the beach, or an American attempting an English accent. But it’s exciting, too. They’re finally moving away from the realm of awkward conversation starters and into one of friendship. Them hanging out today is proof of that.
At the very beginning of their relationship, Nick felt overwhelmingly nervous around Charlie, his poor attempts to impress him falling flat to Nick’s ears. His mates are nothing like him, is the thing. Before Charlie, he didn’t know friends could be so equally kind and snarky to one another, but Charlie carries a balanced amount of gentleness and wit wherever he goes.
(Charlie’s touchy too, which is another thing. And not in the elbow-jabbing, hair-ruffling, tackling sort of way. He likes to link arms and press their sides together, things Nick wouldn’t even think of doing with Harry and the other rugby lads. But he supposes Charlie doing these things is perfectly fine).
(Not that he doesn’t like it. It’s good. It’s welcome).
(Not that it’s overly welcome, it’s just— Nick, he— Charlie is— whatever).
Charlie’s movements are precise and focused. From his position, Nick can see his friend squint in the mirror, can see how purposefully his fingers move. Despite his vocalized reservations, Nick thinks Charlie will do a good job.
As if reading his thoughts, Charlie haphazardly sprays water in Nick's face. Nick squirms away from the mist, which was either the product of bad aim or Charlie messing him around.
Charlie blows out a shallow breath and steadies Nick's head with his free hand.
"Hold still. Unless you want it to look like I fixed you up with my eyes closed."
"Hmm, why am I letting you do this again?"
"Cause." Charlie makes the first snip. Nick tries not to follow the lock of hair's journey to Charlie's porcelain sink. "You were all like, 'Charlie, oh, my god, did you get a haircut? It looks soooo good' and I was like 'want me to give you one?' and you said yes." He snips again. Nick looks away from the mirror.
"Alright, yeah, thanks for the recap, but I was there, y'know."
"True." Charlie leans forward, so close that Nick can feel his breath on his neck and the smirk in his words. "But you sound ungrateful. I had to remind you what a good friend I am."
Nick stills. He replays Charlie's statement over and over in his mind, dissecting the gravelly edge of his voice, the bitten-lipped delivery of it all, the tangibility of syllables formed through ragged puffs of air, coy yet inviting. He's never heard Charlie's voice go that deep and low before. It's unfamiliar. Nick doesn't like unfamiliar things.
That's why he feels all mixed up now. Yeah. He usually associates Charlie with cheeky grins and breathy words and deep dimples, not… whatever that was. His brain is just trying to adjust.
Yeah.
"Why've you gone quiet?” Charlie brushes leftover hairs from Nick’s shoulder. Nick can feel the heat of Charlie’s hand through his jumper. “Feel bad for questioning my talents, do you?"
"The baddest."
"Not a word." Charlie moves to Nick's right side. "And here I thought you were a year older and wiser than me."
"Some of us don't read classical literature in our spare time, Charles."
Charlie hums. "Oh, you saw my posters? Did you have any trouble reading them? Cause it's the Iliad. That's a hard word for most people, though. Don't sweat it."
Charlie isn’t usually this clever , Nick thinks, and worries for a second why that might be. Maybe Nick is being too boring, and Charlie desperately wants to fill their lulls in conversation. Oh, god, will this be the last time we hang out? Am I blowing it?
Nick’s worries are quickly forgotten, though, when Charlie snips the scissors close to Nick’s ear and mutters a quiet, “Oops.”
It takes three red-faced seconds for Nick to realize Charlie is joking with him, and there was no oops.
"You little shit. " Nick grins, aiming to grab Charlie's wrist. He backs away just in time.
"Sort of a bad idea to attack the boy with the scissors, Nicholas. Could backfire."
"I feel like this is going to backfire regardless of whether I have all my fingers by the end of it."
"You have so much faith in me," Charlie deadpans.
Nick is about to respond. He swears he is. Except.
Charlie runs his fingers through Nick's hair, gripping and toying with the strands he's working on with calculated ease. It doesn’t hurt as much as it shocks. Nick can feel every little tug, every brush and hold and cut that Charlie performs. And he. He just.
Logically, Nick knows Charlie is doing this because that's how haircuts work, because he's trying to make everything look good and even and that's fine.
But oh god. Someone is pulling his hair. Charlie is pulling his hair.
Nick's face is on fire. He's suddenly too aware of Charlie's presence beside him, too aware of when he shifts and steps and moves at all.
The nervous feeling is back with full force. Butterflies swarm his flipping stomach, on the prowl for any last ounce of composure he’s managed to maintain.
"Don't worry, Nick,” Charlie continues with the same low murmur. “I'll take good care of you."
Well. That doesn't help anything, does it?
Fucking say something, Nick thinks. He can't, though. Like, he's racking his brain for at least one word (surely he knows one ) but his mind has gone completely, terrifyingly blank.
"I'll believe it when I see it," Nick drawls.
Or maybe it's just on some sort of demented autocorrect.
Charlie stops moving for a second, enough to be perceptible but not enough to call him out on, and Nick is, well. Nick doesn't know what the fuck is going on or why the air feels so thick. He just knows that he can't breathe. Not while Charlie's fingers brush against his neck, so rough and yet so soft, or when he pats a stray strand of hair from the exposed strip of skin by Nick's collarbone, or when he tilts Nick's head back for a better angle. Nick's breath might be permanently hitched in his throat.
He doesn't know what to make of that. He doesn’t know how to feel about anything that’s happened in the last five minutes, actually. Nick kind of wants to scream.
They sit in silence for the rest of the haircut, and Nick feels its crushing weight on his chest, in his hands, on his tongue.
"Looks good, I think," Charlie says. The quiet breaks like a cheap stained-glass window.
"You think? How reassuring for me." Nick’s voice quivers, just the tiniest bit.
"Oh, just look and see for yourself."
Nick can’t deny it. He looks great. His hair is just the right amount of short on the sides and long up top. Charlie must have experience with cutting his hair. Or other boys’ hair.
Wait, has he? Has Charlie cut another boy’s hair? Was it a boyfriend? Or just a friend? Why does he care so much about this? Why does it matter?
Nick runs his fingers through the slightly smaller mess of dirty blonde. “Yeah, no, you’re right. It looks good.”
Charlie beams. “Ha, triumph at last!”
Nick returns his grin and moves to stand. At the same time, Charlie heads for the door. But the bathroom doesn’t have enough space for two growing boys and a desk chair, and the result is not ideal.
Charlie’s shoulder bumps into Nick’s, who, while still trying to maneuver around the chair, loses his balance and falls back onto its edge, which slips out from under him as the chair rolls away. Hoping to latch onto anything that might break his fall, Nick hooks his fingers on Charlie’s jumper, which sends Charlie crashing down on top of him. Chest to chest. Eye to eye. Lips to— fuck.
“I’m so sorry!” Charlie immediately begins rambling, his increased confidence long gone. Nick wants to give him a hug. “Oh, my god, I should have let you walk out first instead of, like— I literally attacked you, and—”
Nick decides to give Charlie a hug.
Before he can second-guess, himself, he wraps his arms around Charlie’s waist. This stops Charlie’s rambling altogether, which leaves the boys breathing heavily, gazes locked and lips no more than a few centimeters apart.
“It’s fine, Charlie. It was my fault, not yours. Don’t worry about it.”
“Did you hit your head?” Charlie asks. Tile isn’t exactly the most forgiving of materials.
Yes. “No.”
Charlie’s hand moves to where Nick’s dull ache has turned into full-on pain. He rubs the spot gently, as if trying to absorb it into his fingertips.
“You’re such a bad liar.”
“Well, you’re not such a bad hairdresser.”
If I moved up, just a little, we’d be kissing. The thought flows through Nick’s mind before he can stop it (or wonder why he’s thinking that in the first place). In the thought’s absence, he’s left with a stupid grin on his face and a dazed film in his eyes.
Charlie stands before Nick does, bursting a bubble Nick hadn’t known existed. He accepts Charlie’s hand and drags the chair back to Charlie’s desk on the way out. Charlie slams the bathroom door shut and collapses onto his bed. Nick searches the room for something, anything to get rid of the pounding in his chest.
“So,” he rushes out. “You play the drums?”
This, as Nick comes to find, is an even worse idea than the haircut.
That night, after an afternoon of crammed stools and floaty questions that become more concrete as the moon rises, Nick goes home, checks the corridor by his bedroom and opens his laptop, the word friend morphing into something warm and unfamiliar every time he pairs it with Charlie’s name.