Wake Me Up When September Ends (Nick Nelson/Charlie Spring)

Wake Me Up When September Ends

There were no calls today from work.

Usually, he wakes to one or two, asking him for input, but the message banks on both the home phone and his mobile are empty. It only takes a moment for his eyes to flick to the calendar to find out why and he knows his axis will be off for the rest of the week.

His boyfriend kisses his cheek, just like he does every morning before he goes to work, but today, Charlie doesn't reciprocate, just watches the Autumn leaves as they float down from the trees that surround the stone cottage they live in, hearing the door close safely behind him before he sinks lower into the windowsill, still wrapped in his dressing gown.

If it had been a normal day, he would have been dressed by now, but it's not a normal day. It's September 4th. Charlie's no longer 17, but 26 and it's been seven years.

How had it been 7 years already? He almost shudders to think that's how much time had passed when it still felt like yesterday to him. He can still close his eyes and see himself as a teen, still that lanky, depressed and frankly asinine young boy with a life ahead of him.

Now he's in that life, but he hates it. If younger Charlie could see him now, he'd think all his dreams had come true. The picturesque country lane house nearby the biggest city in Britain which was a steal, the two university degrees hanging on the far wall, a Dalmation named Toulouse at his feet, the live-in boyfriend, the office with a view, it was perfect...

...at least for Charlie before Nick, that was.

When Nick appeared in his life, a placeholder for the world he was passing through in shades of grey and monochrome, he hadn't expected that he'd have such an effect on him.

He didn't expect to fall in love with him, go on seaside dates, late-night sleepovers, hookups in the school library that he didn't feel guilty about, he didn't expect to suddenly...he didn't expect a lot of things when he fell for Nick, it seems.

Speaking of expected, he waits until he can see the last drop in his teacup before he finally rises, Toulouse following behind as he dumps it in the sink and writes a note to tell his boyfriend where he is in case he's not home when he gets back before he pats the goofy spotted gatekeeper of the house and goes upstairs to change.

The look he gives him back almost reminds him of Nellie, in a way.

The train station's crowded when he gets there, but he doesn't mind too much, adjusting his glasses as he boards the Southeastern line and settles in for the almost 2-hour ride down to Herne Bay. Usually, he would have driven as it's not that far away from his place, about the same distance, but it's been too hard the last few years to come back when he's there.

The sky is a pale shade of blue today that almost sends him into the back of his mind to a place he desperately doesn't want to visit, eyes squeezing shut to prevent the course it's on and most likely making him look like the biggest idiot to everyone around him as he gasps and holds onto the seat like he's about to tear out of it.

Most of them probably think he's just afraid of trains, given it all. He lets them think that.

The fear is still clutching at him even as the train finally rolls into the station and he shakily gets off, shoulder bag still under white-knuckled fingers as he leaves the station just before Herne Bay, known as Whitstable and walks a very familiar, but strange path down the hill from it, already traced in his brain and head for the last 5 years or so, but no less daunting.

When he was younger, still present in the town over and not untethered like he feels as he looks around the still unfamiliar streets, he would have fled and run off to go home, to his mother and bury himself in her arms, forget about all of this.