#d’you ever write smth in a fic and wonder ‘why am i putting this in a fic that would be a NICE book line’ ?

[peaceoutofthepieces]

will exercise restraint and will not start posting the fic but i will however post this:

Charlie tries not to read into it. This. These moments they have. He tries not to catalogue the minute separations in the categories of Nick’s smiles and twinkling eyes. He pulls extra layers over the skin that tries hardest to memorise Nick’s touch. He thinks over the top of the words Nick has given so freely that have embedded like precious jewels in his mind.

He flirts and calls it friendship, stuffs his care and his want and his love into an innocuous, ignorable, platonic-patterned box and gives all of it—all of him—readily, knowing Nick will never open it to see the truth of its insides.

At least, it’s been five years, and he hasn’t.