Chapter Text
January was perhaps Charlie Spring’s least favourite time of year. The high from the recent holidays that resulted in a crushing low as soon as New Year’s was over. The often bitter cold. And of course, worst of all, the return to school. Essentially, Satan’s Trifecta of terribleness descended and he never coped all that well.
He watched from his car as students milled about while he tried to find the motivation to exit into the cold. The drive from his flat was just long enough for the engine to heat, and he convinced himself that if the car was going to do all that work, he really ought to appreciate the blasts of hot air blowing through his vents before he decided to go inside.
It had absolutely nothing to do with the anxiety he was feeling. Nothing. At. All.
He loved his job, really, he did. Teaching English-getting to delve deeply into some of his most beloved literary works with students-was incredibly rewarding. But as an introvert, it could also be incredibly draining, and his social anxiety always made an extra special appearance at the start of new terms.
New environments often stressed him, and although school wasn’t technically a new environment, having two blissful weeks off where his only responsibility was sitting by his heater, curled up in a jumper while he read Brideshead Revisited for the hundredth time, well…it wasn’t all that difficult to understand why he now didn’t want to exit his car.
His therapist, Geoff, had long told him that stepping out of his comfort zone was good for him, but when Charlie had tried to suggest that going to his job of nearly three years was outside of said comfort zone, Geoff had merely given Charlie a look over the rim of his tea cup while he sipped in silence.
When Charlie finally did step out into the cold, after several deep breaths and three giant gulps of coffee, Mr. Spring, as he was known around these not so hallowed halls, made his way through the gate, smiling and waving at several students who greeted him along the way.
He was well liked as a teacher, known to be tough but fair and strangely excitable about Jane Austen. He connected well with his classes and he knew his obvious passion for the subject he taught was another plus.
It was a nice change from the time he’d spent there in secondary school. When he was outed at fourteen, Charlie decided that once he was finished with this level of his schooling, he would leave Truham Grammar School for Boys behind for good. He had always assumed he would find a job in publishing after university, teaching not even remotely on his radar.
But he’d been lucky enough to have a teacher in sixth form that changed the trajectory of his plans forever. Mr. Davies had fun teaching. He lived for the Classics. His classes were engaged and exciting. They never just went through the motions, because Mr. Davies made the stories come alive. He made them applicable to his students, and Charlie was hooked.
That was what he wanted to do: share his love of reading and literature with younger people in a way that left an impact well past their GCSEs and A-levels.
Even with that, Charlie still hadn’t had any plans to return to Truham. But when he saw the job posting stating that his old school was in need of an English teacher, he applied quickly before he had the chance to talk himself out of it. It felt right, returning to the place that had caused him so much heartache. It was his chance to reclaim it. To actually have the good memories outweigh the bad.
Besides, his time at Truham hadn’t been all bad. He made wonderful friends there, some of whom he still spoke with nearly every day. Even when he considered all the absolute shit he endured, he had come out the other side a better person than his bullies could have ever hoped to be.
Charlie had learned to appreciate the small victories.
“Charlie!” he heard a high voice call from down the hallway, and he froze, teeth already gritting in frustration while his key sat poised and about to enter the lock on his classroom door.
If only he’d gotten out of the fucking car thirty seconds earlier.
He turned towards the noise to see that Margaret Campbell, the school’s drama teacher, was aggressively moving down the hallway. A short, thin woman in her late twenties, Margaret had been drawn to Charlie like a moth to a flame ever since he’d started at Truham three years prior. He’d made the mistake of telling her one day in October that he liked her Halloween themed blouse, and she seemed to think that one comment meant they were destined to be the best of friends.
She was bright and bubbly and volunteered for every little thing she could, and her conventionally good looks made her popular with the student body. Charlie liked her well enough, he supposed, but he constantly had the feeling she was trying to collect him.
It wasn’t exactly a well kept secret that Charlie was gay. He didn’t go around advertising it, but there were enough teachers still at Truham from his time there as a student, and he knew it was still discussed.
Margaret had been standing a metre away when one of his old physics teachers asked if he’d managed to find a boyfriend yet at the Christmas party two years ago. She knew he was gay, and yet she still did a weird, flirty thing with him all the time, constantly batting her lashes at him and asking him out for drinks with the other women teachers.
At least he assumed that’s what she was doing. He wasn’t exactly well versed in the flirting techniques of women.
Sometimes, Charlie still felt like an animal in a zoo. Decades of advancement unfortunately hadn’t erased people’s apparent need to discuss the sex lives of the queer community. And he certainly didn’t need to become the token gay in a group of single teachers.
“Uh, did you…did you need something?” he asked awkwardly when she reached him, a bright smile on her face as she moved her long, wavy hair over her shoulder.
“I was just wondering if you’d maybe like to go have drinks after school with me and my group? We thought it might be nice to celebrate surviving the first day back. Surely you can’t be busy the first night of term, right?” Her tone was hopeful and her head tilted the slightest bit in question.
Charlie wished he had the time to resent her implication while his brain scrambled for excuses. What was it he’d told her last time? Right, his mum had asked him round for dinner. It was the best one he had in his arsenal. Who could say no to their mum asking them for dinner? But he couldn’t use it twice in a row
“Sorry, I can’t, I-” think, think, think! “-have to get a haircut.”
Her face fell immediately as he resisted the urge to make a face at his own ridiculous excuse.
“Oh,” she said, “that’s too bad.” She was quiet for a moment, fiddling with the pleats in her skirt. “You couldn’t reschedule it?”
“N-no,” he said, shaking his head much more confidently than his words sounded. “My barber is…super busy, so I was lucky to even get in today.” It wasn’t technically a lie. His mum was really busy. Her ladies film club was watching Mamma Mia! that night.
She nodded and began to back down the hallway. “Maybe next time then?”
“Yeah, maybe,” he replied flatly in the most non-committal way possible, praying she might actually take the hint and beg off from asking him again.
Her beaming smile didn’t give him much hope that would be the case.
When she was out of sight, Charlie let his head bang against his classroom door. Shit, now he was actually going to have to get a haircut. And just when it was starting to lay so nicely again after the last one.
He let himself into his classroom and breathed a small sigh of relief, taking a moment to enjoy the quiet in the last few minutes before the first bell.
Picking up a piece of chalk, he began to write the day’s journal prompt on the board. He’d kept a journal as a teen, and he hoped to encourage the habit in his students as well. He never read what they’d written, only requiring their participation, and after a few days of grumbling at the beginning of the year, most of his classes took to the practice rather well.
He was halfway through the sentence when a knock came at his door, his hand stilling on the tittle of an i. Frustration flared at the fact he couldn’t even finish one task before being interrupted yet again. “Come in,” he called, not even attempting to hide the annoyance in his voice and refusing to give whomever it was his attention until he had finished writing.
“Ah, Mr. Spring. Could I have a moment of your time?” It was the voice of Mr. Shannon, the head teacher, and Charlie dropped the chalk in surprise.
He spun around, watching it roll away from him while his heart raced as he wondered what the head teacher could possibly need from him before school even started on the first day of term. After all these years, the man still made him extremely nervous.
The chalk kept rolling and Charlie scrambled after it until it stopped against a pair of rather large trainers that belonged to someone standing close to his door. It was only then that he vaguely noticed there weren’t just one pair of extra feet in the room, but two.
His mind was still mostly on the chalk, because of course he wouldn’t be able to focus on anything actually important like a normal human being, so he crouched down to retrieve it, only to come into contact with someone else’s hand.
The hand belonging to the person with the trainers, to be precise.
Charlie’s fingers brushed against skin, and he nearly jumped at the jolt of electricity that ran down his arm at the contact. His eyes flew up and he felt his world turn upside down.
Warm brown eyes clashed with his. Eyes that belonged to a handsome face with a strong jaw and a scruffy beard with a hint of red in it. Dirty blonde hair sat atop his head, pushed perfectly to the side as if it didn’t need a salon’s worth of product to do so, and his neck gave way to a pair of the broadest shoulders Charlie had ever seen.
Fuck.
“Hi,” the man said with a boyish grin.
That one word felt like it held the key to all of life’s problems.
“Hi,” Charlie responded, his voice coming out as a breathy mess.
“I think this belongs to you,” he said next, chalk held out in the palm of his hand.
Charlie nodded like an idiot and took it with trembling hands, wondering if it was possible to instantly fall in love over chalk.
Seemed plausible.
The man straightened and stood and Charlie forced himself to breathe while he pushed up on shaky legs. He tried his best not to shamelessly ogle the man in front of him, only allowing himself a moment to take in a casual outfit of loose joggers and a cozy looking Adidas hoodie. He was very tall, at least a handful of centimeters above Charlie, and Charlie wasn’t exactly short.
Charlie also happened to notice the man was still smiling. At him.
Mr. Shannon cleared his throat and Charlie turned towards him, face undoubtedly flushed from a healthy dose of embarrassment and attraction.
“Charlie, I wanted to introduce you to our new PE teacher, Nicholas Nelson. Nick, this is Charlie Spring, he’s one of our best English teachers,” the head teacher said and Nick stuck out his hand for Charlie to shake.
He took it, enjoying the warmth that spread once again from his hand to his arm. It caused his mouth to move before his brain could think to stop him.
“PE? That would certainly explain the outfit,” he said.
Mr. Shannon looked at him with a raised brow, but Nick laughed. “Only perk of the job,” he said and Charlie smiled, immensely enjoying the sound of his voice.
“Yes, well,” Mr. Shannon interrupted, appearing perturbed at Nick’s comment, “attire aside, I thought you might want to know that Nick has volunteered to be your co-sponsor for the Paris trip this summer. He speaks fluent French, so I thought that might be of use to you.” He looked entirely pleased with himself, as if he’d managed to solve a Millennium Problem all on his own.
“Y-you speak French?” Charlie asked, unable to keep the impressed sense from his voice.
He watched as Nicholas Nelson’s perfect mouth formed the word, “Oui.”
That one word proved absolutely nothing. Every person who’d ever spent a lick of time in school in the Western world knew that one particular word in French. But Jesus, Mary and Joseph, help him.
The bell rang and Charlie had never been more grateful in his life. To think twenty minutes ago he had dreaded the start of class felt about as far away as whatever new reality he’d fallen into.
He needed space and time to breathe and remember what it was like to function normally when he was attracted to someone.
Had he ever been so attracted to someone? No. No, he certainly hadn’t, and he’d only exchanged a dozen words with the man.
Poor Geoff was definitely going to be earning his money at their next session.
The head teacher excused himself, and Nick started to follow but he paused and turned back. “It was really nice to meet you. I’ll see you around?”
Charlie was surprised it had the same hopeful ring to it that Margaret Campbell’s ‘maybe next time’ did just a few minutes before. But this time, Charlie’s answer was entirely different.
“Yes, definitely.”
Nick gave him a smile and a wave and then slipped out the door as students began to filter in.
For the rest of the day, Charlie did his best to force down images of the new PE teacher speaking French in Paris. Of them holding hands and watching the Eiffel Tower light up as they strolled along the Seine. Of Nick leaning in to-
Oh, he was fucked. Charlie was entirely fucked.