Music sounds better with you

Um, it was... did you just call me baby?

They head out and Nick hurries to lock the door, then they hurry downstairs to meet the rest of the gang.

It's not a long taxi ride into town, and once they get there they head straight to Wetherspoons for their first round of drinks. Predictably, one of the bouncers stops Charlie entering without showing ID first, and everyone coos and boos as he fumbles to pull his green license out of his wallet.

"Alright," the bouncer says gruffly, after he's given Charlie a good once over and returned his license to him. "Baby face and all that."

"Charming," Nick scoffs as he leads Charlie inside. Charlie giggles and shakes his head.
"Come on, I was expecting it. You can't tell me you weren't."
"I mean, you do have a baby face, but I don't think the bouncer needed to tell you you do."
The table they find themselves at is actually several tables put together, sticky with the remnants of earlier drinks and what looks like (what Nick hopes) is salt.

Everyone hurries to order drinks on the app as the bar queues are hideously long, so Nick orders two beers for himself and a pitcher of some fruity cocktail for Charlie.

"That looks disgusting," he tells him when it arrives. "Should anything consumable be that colour?"
"Probably not," Charlie says with a bemused grin, but he drops his straw into it and slurps away at it happily. "It tastes alright. Certainly better than whatever you were drinking last night."
"Let me try some." Nick shifts his seat forward and wraps his lips around the straw, frowning as the taste of pure sugar and unmixed vodka hits his tongue. "Okay, gross."
"Stick to your beers then, rugby lad."

Nick does indeed stick to his beers, sinking five pints (as well as a couple of sambuca shots) before they head out to the club. It's coming up to 11pm so it's pretty chilly, but none of them ever wear coats out because it'll be too hot in the club and the alcohol blanket tends to keep them in check.

Having said that, Charlie balls his hands into the long sleeves of his shirt to the point where Nick can't hold his hand. Instead, he keeps an arm slinked across his shoulders as they stumble through the busy streets, lined with people queuing and stumbling out of various other bars and pubs.

It's not a long walk to their club of choice, and by the time they get there, everyone is ready for a dance and another drink.

Charlie presses himself close to Nick in a bid to keep warm, but he still makes conversation with the rest of the group, laughing a goofy drunken belly laugh when Holly tells him about another not-so-proud moment of Nick's uni career, where he'd fallen asleep in a booth at the back of the club.
Having assumed he was high or something, the bouncer had kicked him out, only for Ben to find him because he was in the queue to get in. Ben had taken him home in an Uber and he shows Charlie the video he'd taken of Nick asleep on his shoulder, snoring away at an alarmingly loud volume.

"You're all fucking bullies," Nick grumbles. "I swear to god, Charlie, if you bring any baby pictures up or anything next time you come up..."
"You'll what? Break up with him?"

Holly sounds so incredulous that the entire group burst out laughing. It makes Nick break character and smirk, feeling a bit smug about the fact that all his friends can tell even after just three days that he and Charlie are endgame.

"I'll text his mum in a bit," Charlie stage whispers, then presses himself up on his tiptoes and presses a sloppy kiss to the corner of his mouth, then stares at him rather intensely with wide, earnest eyes. "Love me."

Nick sighs dramatically, shrugging his shoulders like he doesn't care, like his hand isn't tucked into the waistband of Charlie's jeans. "Who are you again?"
"Shut up," Charlie whines. "I'm cold , love me."
Nick may be drunk and trying to be funny, but protective boyfriend mode will always trump everything, so he shuffles behind him and wraps him in a full body embrace.
"You okay? This okay?"
"Yeah." Charlie's teeth are chattering a bit. "It's fine, we're almost at the front."