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Nick has lost track of how many times they've been here. How many lives they've lived since their life.
It's always here that they wait for each other. The gnarled wood of the downed beech dimly lit by an eternal dusk and the winking sparks of fireflies — cosmic stand-ins for the fairy lights that gave a soft glow to his earliest memories of self-discovery. Of Charlie.
They always looked so beautiful glancing off his curls and illuminating every shade of blue that twined together in dark irises.
“Are you ever going to not be here?”
Charlie twists to face him, the barest hint of a teasing smirk tugging at his lips. One thick brow quirks in amusement before he counters, “Do you ever want me to not be here?”
“No — no! Of course not.”
Nick is sixteen again, stammering his way through a reassurance Charlie never needed. Just as he doesn’t need this one.
“You…” Nick hesitates, lowering himself to sit next to his stalwart companion in this odd little afterlife. “Have you been waiting long?”
Charlie pulls his knees to his chest, long arms wrapping around them. He shrugs. His smile is easy when he tilts his head forward and considers Nick.
“How did it happen?”
Nick takes a breath. Holds it. This is always his least favourite part of their too-brief meetings.
“Rugby.”
Charlie lifts his head from his knees and nods, staring into the darkness before casting Nick a teasing glance. “Explains the rugged youth.”
A huff of laughter escapes Nick, but it’s a fragile thing. His eyes trace the smooth skin that surrounds familiar eyes and sits above too-sharp cheekbones. Charlie is even younger than Nick's thirty-five this time. He swallows. “And you?”
Charlie doesn't answer. He gives a tight smile, leaning into Nick's side. “What did I miss?”
This has become their routine, this exchange of memories, ever since the first — they'd been older then, the decades of laughter and worry and every other conceivable human experience engraved in the deep grooves of gossamer-thin skin. It had been a beautiful life; they'd worn it well.
The ones after…a mixed bag.
Somehow the memories of each lifetime stay with them, collecting in their minds like vast libraries of well-thumbed and tattered tomes.
Not in life, of course. Each life is a blank slate. But here — after — here they keep the etchings and bare them to one another until their time runs out once again.
-
It takes time, but they do find each other in life once more.
Charlie threads his fingers through impossibly soft strands of copper, back against that never-changing wood. Nick has his head resting on his lap as Charlie recounts the unknown-to-Nick parts of his most recent life as though it's a children's story, something to summon the gentle touch of the Sandman. It seems to be having the opposite effect on Nick; there is a tense set to his shoulders that causes Charlie to pause.
“What is it?”
Nick lets out a stream of air, nostrils flaring. “I wasn't there.”
There is a moment of confusion as Charlie tries to parse the words; there have been many lifetimes where they never crossed paths, but in this one they had. They just…
“Nick,” Charlie sighs, tugging gently at the hair wound around his forefinger. “You were. Just…not quite like this.”
Nick glowers up at him. “We're supposed to—” he falters, perhaps reflecting on all the times they had missed each other entirely.
“This isn't the first time we've loved other people, Nick.”
“But — this is the first time we… We didn't love each other.” The words aren't even fully out of his mouth before his doubt in them carves itself into every line of his face.
Charlie frowns, lightly brushing a knuckle beneath one troubled eye. “Do you think that's true?” He watches that eye narrow in thought before he continues. “You were the friend I needed. I did love you.”
For a long time, Nick says nothing. Finally he whispers, “I'm sorry I couldn't be more.” His throat bobs as he audibly swallows his emotion. “We're supposed to be…more.”
“I'm not,” Charlie says firmly. Nick stiffens and Charlie gives another tug to silver-dusted hair before clarifying. “Sorry, I mean. I'm not sorry. It didn't make you less. I loved you exactly as much as I love you now.”
Nick looks dubious at that. “But — Asher.” He doesn't seem to be capable of more than the name, so Charlie tries to consider his words with care as Nick stares him down.
“I loved him, too,” he breathes, earnest. And he had — Charlie remembers with aching clarity just how deeply he had loved his partner in this latest life. “I think he was just…another soulmate — another kind of soulmate, maybe?”
Nick lowers his gaze and Charlie reaches out to tilt his face toward him. When honeyed brown finally finds him once more, Charlie runs a thumb in the hollow beneath. He tries to imbue every word with the depth of his feelings for Nick.
“Doesn't make you less, doesn't make him more. Just — different.”
Nick doesn't contest that, simply closes his eyes and leans his face into Charlie's palm. Charlie feels the need to further argue his case anyway.
“Did you… Did you not love Erin, then?” His voice lilts with false innocence. As expected, Nick's eyes go wide — he looks painfully guilty. Then torn.
Charlie allows him the time he needs to process, fingers scratching idly against Nick's scalp.
At length, Nick admits, “Yeah. I think I did.” He frowns at the ambiguity. “I did,” he amends with resolve.
Charlie finds the hand Nick is resting on his own bicep and gives it an encouraging squeeze.
“And do you think it made me less? To you?”
Nick's reaction is immediate and endearingly scandalised. “No! No. Of course not, Char.”
Charlie wants to be sure he's made his point thoroughly, so he presses on. “Even in that life?”
Nick starts to answer, then appears to take a moment to really examine his own feelings. In an almost awed tone, he whispers, “No.”
Charlie watches Nick's eyes roam from firefly to firefly as he sits with the revelation. It occurs to Charlie that they very well may have an eternity of this — of discoveries and growth. Together. It's a comfort. He can't help the fond smile when Nick catches him staring.
“We take care of each other, don't we?”
Charlie is sixteen again, reaching for reassurances with the ocean at his feet and stars in his eyes.
Nick meets him there, unhesitating. “Always.”
They are inextricable; they always will be.
“I think there's a…tether — even in the lifetimes we don't manage to find the other end,” Charlie murmurs. He trails a finger from Nick's temple to the underside of his bearded jaw. “But…I think there are others. And I think that's okay.”
-
The next time, Nick is the one left waiting. He can feel Charlie approach, but can't bring himself to look at him. The bitterness is too much and the sound of the careful, cautious footsteps — the very definition of treading eggshells — sets his teeth on edge.
“Hi.” Charlie settles next to him. Nick aches to touch him and to hide away in equal measure.
“Hey, Char,” he manages.
They sit in silence for some time; Nick can't tell if he's imagining the scarcity of the fireflies while it stretches on, seemingly without end.
Sure as the thought materialises, Charlie breaks it.
“Nick—”
Nick interrupts, because he doesn't think he can stomach what follows his name.
“Someone better came along.”
He's almost pleased he doesn't sound bitter or angry.
“Nick.”
Shit. Charlie looks like Nick just dealt him a physical blow.
“I'm sorry,” he rushes to say. “You don't deserve that. I guess I'm just…” His eyes drift closed as his brows furrow. He tries, desperately, to maintain his unaffected mask. “That’s how it usually is. I'm used to being—”
Nick lets out a frustrated sigh, head falling back to rest on the log. He gives himself a moment to gather his wits again before he continues, steamrolling through the last of his thoughts as though, if he just gets them out fast enough, they won't scald him on the way out.
“I've always been very easy to let go of. Only kept around for as long as…” He thinks of his father, of every relationship that refused to last. He draws a steadying breath, then finishes with a resigned, “Until something better comes along.”
“He wasn't better, Nick,” Charlie protests. He threads his arm through Nick's, then leans into his side. Charlie's head has always fit just right in the space between Nick's shoulder and jaw. “It was just the wrong time for us."
Nick contains a roll of his eyes, but it's a near thing. “Right person, wrong time,” he intones. He listens to a tired sigh leave Charlie, followed by even more weary words.
“Are we going to do this every time?”
And Nick is seventeen again, trading warm glances with the love of his life, naively thinking he can't possibly love him more than he does in this moment — this moment where he still keeps the words trapped and buzzing beneath his ribs.
Something in Nick shatters; every ounce of jealousy and fear and insecurity yields beneath the weight of his memories. Their memories.
“I hope not.” He draws a breath and looses it into the dusk with the remnants of his melancholy. “I'm sorry.”
Charlie gives his arm a tight squeeze of acknowledgement. Nick takes advantage of the silence to reflect on his lifetimes, on their every exchange after. He thinks of last time, of the easy acceptance he'd managed when Charlie turned his questions back on him. He knows in an instant of clarity what made this time different.
“I like knowing that you were loved,” Nick says softly. “That you loved. I think — I just resent that there wasn't…there wasn't an Erin this time.”
Charlie burrows his head deeper into Nick's shoulder with a barely audible, “‘m sorry.”
“What for? It's not your fault.”
Nick feels Charlie swell with breath before pulling away and eyeing him with cutting solemnity. He exhales, following it with a quiet, “I'm sorry I didn't make it clear how much I loved you. Even if it wasn't the right time.”
Nick starts to open his mouth on a reassurance, but Charlie doesn't give him the chance to voice it.
“No. That's on me, Nick. I know we don't ever have the insight or whatever that we have here, but — I didn't make sure you knew. I hurt you. I'm sorry.”
Charlie settles back against him, his arms winding around Nick in a fierce grip.
“I'll do better next time.”
It's a promise they both know he can't make, but that doesn't stop Nick believing every word.
-
There are more lifetimes apart before they come together again.
They reach old age, each with full and beautiful and meaningful paths behind them before they meet at the intersection of their forks. Their time together is its own exquisite branch until the very end.
The lines that shape their skin tell a different story than the first time, but it's no less breathtaking in its beauty.
As always, they meet here — this manifestation of their fondest first memories, care-worn bodies reclined against the beech tree that never succumbs to time.
“I think I get it now.”
Charlie peeks open one blue eye to acknowledge Nick, the weathered skin around it creasing with his relaxed smile. He hums in question when Nick only stares at him.
“We chose not to be together.” Nick says it in a way that he hopes sounds like he's prompting Charlie for something.
Charlie closes his eye again and his smile stretches wider. “We did,” he confirms. “We both thought we'd already had our one love.”
“But we also had each other, there at the end.”
“We did,” Charlie says again. There's a warmth in his voice that conveys he understands what Nick is trying to stumble his way through communicating. Charlie always could find the meaning of things with an enviable ease.
“It felt like the first time.” Nick whispers it like a secret. Like something sacred. “Even with barely any time at all. I could feel it.”
Charlie sets his hand between them and Nick follows suit.
In the same instant, they are fifteen and sixteen, eighty-seven and eighty-eight, pinkies brushing together in acknowledgment of a shared spark. An inexplicable and inescapable sense of belonging.
“I think,” Nick muses as they watch the fireflies dance, his knobbed fingers absently twisting a silver curl, “even the times we don't cross paths, I think you're there. Somehow. Like — I dunno, stopping me being run over by a lorry or something.”
Charlie’s laugh is full of gravel and joy. He nods agreement. “I think that, too. You're always there. And that's why we always end up here. It doesn't mean there can't be others or that anyone ever means more or less. It just…I think we're just —” he shrugs, one corner of his lips rising tentatively with his shoulder. “Nick and Charlie.”
Nick tries to fight his own smile, head shaking as he exhales a choked laugh.
He's seventeen again, barefoot under a streetlight.
Why are we like this?
Because you're Charlie. And you love me.
It's as easy as the first time, that same euphoric release of the kaleidoscope beating eagerly against his chest.
“I love you, too.” It’s the only response he could give. “I love you so much.”
