At last, Nick's tears stopped and he lifted his head. Charlie was still there, still holding him. In front of anyone else, even his mum, Nick would have felt terribly embarrassed for letting go like that, but not with Charlie. Charlie understood.

Pulling away, Nick looked into Charlie's face again. "I'm so sorry. I never meant to hurt you."

"I know." Gently, Charlie wiped the tears off Nick's cheeks with his thumbs. "It's okay. If ... if you need time, we don't have to see each other for a—"

"No! No. The only time anything feels right is—is when I'm with you." It occurred to him suddenly that maybe Charlie didn't want to have to wait for him to figure himself out, especially after what had happened to him with Ben. "Unless you don't—"

"No, I do," Charlie said quickly. "But nothing has to change, Nick."

Nick nodded. "It does." He reached for Charlie's hand, his thumb gently rubbing along the back of it. "I can't be with you and not want to—touch you, and I can't ... I can't not be with you. Is that okay?"

"Yes. Yes, of course."

Nick smiled, and Charlie smiled, and they might have sat there smiling foolishly at one another for another hour if there hadn't been a sharp knock at Charlie's door.

"Yes, Mum. Nick's just leaving. I'll be ready in five minutes."

They heard her footsteps walking away from the door. Reluctantly, Nick let go of Charlie's hand and stood up, retrieving his wet jumper from the bed.

Charlie walked him downstairs. As he left the safety and comfort of Charlie's room and came out into the real world, Nick started thinking about what it would be like to actually be ... together. It was going to be hard enough to walk into school tomorrow knowing that so much had changed, without everyone else knowing, too.

"At school," he said suddenly, "is it okay if we, like ..."

"Keep this a secret?"

There was a look on Charlie's face like this was what he had been expecting, and Nick felt awful, remembering what Charlie had been through with Ben. God, how could he put Charlie through that again? But how could he come out, when he didn't even know what was happening to him?

Reluctantly, he nodded. "Yeah. I just don't really know if I can, um ... you know. Come out as anything."

"Yeah. It's fine." Charlie reached behind him for an umbrella and handed it to Nick, who laughed, as much in relief as anything. He opened the door and stepped out into the rain, standing on the stoop to open the umbrella before he looked back at Charlie.

"Bye."

"Bye."

He walked off down the sidewalk, the umbrella over his head. As he reached the corner, he heard Charlie's voice calling his name, and he turned to see Charlie running down the sidewalk towards him.

"Hi," Nick said in surprise, as Charlie joined him under the umbrella.

"Hi."

"Did I forget something?"

Charlie looked around. No one else was out in this rain. It was just the two of them. "Um ... yeah." And he curved his hand around the back of Nick's neck and kissed him. Then he stepped back, smiling—the most open, beautiful smile Nick had ever seen on his face. "Okay. Bye." He ran off, leaving Nick to look after him.

This time, Nick knew to expect the way kissing Charlie made him feel. And he liked it. He liked it a lot.

After all the fear and the uncertainty and the confusion, right now, all Nick felt was ... light. Light as air. Like he could float. Whatever else was to come, he was with Charlie. And for the first time, he knew for sure that was what he wanted.

When Nick arrived at school the next morning, Imogen was sitting at the table near the gate. "Hey," he said, sitting down next to her.

"Hey." She looked at him strangely. "Something's different."

"What?" Something was different, very different, but how could she see that? Did it show?

"Have you changed your hair?"

"What? No."

She reached up and started pushing his hair back off his face. "You have. I've known you since, like, year 7. I can tell when something's changed. You look different."

He pushed her hands away, trying to resettle his hair. "It's different now you're messing with it."

Smiling, Imogen reached up and ruffled his hair up good and proper. "Don't worry. I'm a highly qualified hair stylist."

"Qualified from where?"

"The University of Hair Stylists."

Nick ran a hand through his hair, smoothing it back down. "Wow. Yeah, seems legit."

She laughed. "Oh, I've got to go. I forgot I had morning detention." But before she left entirely, she came back and ruffled his hair once more.

Once Imogen was gone, Nick was free to think about Charlie again. Not that he'd thought about anything else since yesterday morning. Or Saturday night. Or last weekend.

He wanted to make sure he was early to form so he would be there when Charlie got in, so he picked up his bag and headed inside. There was really no one else at the table he wanted to see, anyway.

When Charlie finally came into form, Nick felt a smile spread irrepressibly across his face, matching the one that lit up Charlie's face when they saw each other. He couldn't stop looking at Charlie as he took off his coat and sat down, thinking how everything had changed so much in just two short days, and yet it felt so much like this was how it always should have been.

Charlie looked over at Nick. "Hi."

"Hi."

They'd said that so many mornings to one another, but today it sounded, and felt, different. They both looked away from one another, but only for a moment before their eyes were drawn back to each other's faces, laughing a little bit at how ridiculous they were being and how good it felt.

Nick didn't want to leave form this morning. If it had been up to him, he and Charlie would have just hidden away and spent the whole day together. Having to sit through school seemed like unnecessary torture.

Midway through his first class, he got a text from Charlie. "meet me in the art room at lunch?"

"The art room? Are you sure?"

"it'll be fine"

"Then YES!! See you then."

That made the classes pass by a bit more quickly, but not fast enough to suit Nick.

Mr. Ajayi looked up when Nick came into the art room. "Something I can do for you?"

"Oh. I was looking for Charlie?"

"Were you." He looked Nick up and down, and Nick had the unpleasant feeling the art teacher didn't quite like what he saw. "Does he know you're looking for him?"

"He asked me to meet him here."

"I see." There was something in the art teacher's face that said he knew a lot more about the situation than Nick might have expected. "Well, you can wait here. No crumbs!"

"No. No, of course not." As Mr. Ajayi, with a last suspicious look, gathered up some papers and left the room, Nick took a seat by the window and waited. Charlie came in a couple minutes later, the whole room brightening as he entered. Nick looked up and smiled at him. "Hi."

"Hi."

"I missed you," Nick admitted. He felt like that so often during the school day, that he wished he could see Charlie, talk to him, more often. It was nice to be able to say so.

"I saw you during form, like, four hours ago."

They'd been a long four hours. "You sure your friends don't mind you ditching them to eat lunch with me?"

"Nah. They can deal with it." He grinned. "Clearly I need to be here to get tips on how to be good at rugby."

"Oh, really? So that's what this is actually all about then?"

"Maybe."

Charlie was so cute when he was flirty. Nick would have liked to have kissed him, but he settled for reaching for his hand under the table, stroking Charlie's fingers with his thumb.

"Feels nice to be able to ditch my friends for once," he said thoughtfully. "All they want to do at lunch is just sit on the field and chuck stuff at people."

"Chuck stuff?"

"Yup. Mainly Harry. He's an idiot." He leaned toward Charlie. "My friends are nothing like you." Charlie's eyes brightened and Nick thought again about kissing him. To distract himself, he looked around the art room. "Are we even allowed in here?"

"Yeah. I used to come in here a lot last year. Like, when the bullying was really bad. Mr. Ajayi was the only teacher who really cared that much."

Nick's hand tightened around Charlie's. "Well, he was giving me evils before you got here."

"He must have thought you were Ben. I told him about the 'Ben making me keep us a secret' thing."

The words sent an icy cascade down Nick's spine. He was Ben—at least, he was putting Charlie in the same position Ben had. He started to pull his hand away, and Charlie held on to it with both of his, saying earnestly, "Not ... I mean, that's nothing like what we're doing. You're nothing like him. This is completely different."

Nick said, "Yeah," because it was easier than arguing, but Charlie was wrong. Different reasons, but it worked out the same. Neither of them were what Charlie deserved.