The Mixtape // a Heartstopper one-shot

Nick

Me and Charlie are in my mum's car, she's driving us to the milkshake café. She doesn't know about us yet.. or me even, so I told her we're meeting other friends there. I don't like lying to my mum, but I had to.

"OK boys we're here!" she says as we arrive at the café. "Call me for pick up when you want to." I smile at her "We will mum thank you" then Charlie says "Thank you for driving us Ms. Nelson"

We step out of car and make our way towards the booth. While we wait in line Charlie asks me "do you want to share a milkshake...?" I love his voice when he's nervous ״You know what, sorry, never mind you probably don't want to anyways. You don't have to just because I asked. Sorry." He apologizes when he did nothing wrong like he always does. "Hey hey hey. Stop apologizing. You have nothing to be sorry for. I would love to share a milkshake with you. I mean, we have to." He looks back up to me with a slight smile and asks "we do? Really? And why is that?" "That's what you do on dates." I try to sound as confident as I can be but I can feel my face turning red, are we really on date?

"What's your favorite flavor?" I ask him as we come up to the counter. "Chocolate fudge is probably my favorite" I smile at him and then say "OK. hello One large chocolate fudge milkshake please." the worker smiles at us and says " hello, sure, anything else?" I nod. "here's your change" she gives me a slight smile and moves her eye towards Charlie who was looking away, "Have a good day."

We get to a table and start drinking. We talk about school, tests, rugby. Trying to avoid talking about my mates or the situation between us. "Oh my god move your straw!" Charlie says. "It always bumps into mine, I can't drink. And stop drinking so fast." "Well I'm sorry. I have to grow my 'strong rugby arms'. And stop judging my drinking!" "Shut up".

After we finish Charlie says slowly "I have something to give you" "Oh OK. What is it?" I say in surprise. "You know how you told me that you found your mum's old Walkman? And you said it's supposed to work but you wish you had some mixtapes to play in it?" after a few moments I say "Yeah... wait, no way!" "I went to some old vintage music store and made you one!" I am smiling so hard. Did he just make me a playlist? On a mixtape? And he remembered me talking about the Walkman. "Wow Charlie thank you!" He takes the tape out of his backpack, its wrapped in blue wrapping paper and a green ribbon. "Thank you. This must've been so expensive, you didn't have to" I smile at him and look directly into his eyes. "But I wanted to" he chuckles, "And it wasn't that expensive. I put songs that made me think of you" and he smiles. He is so cute. I grab his hand under the table.