A Collection of Heartstopper Oneshots

Just Another Bookstore Meet-Cute - ZookeeperHere

Summary:

An exhausted Nick Nelson, moved without warning from teaching his favorite little year-twos, into teaching year-six, is desperate to find the right book to read to his class to help them learn emotional regulation.

Charlie needs the same book Nick is looking for as part of a research program he is doing on children's literature and mental health.

They end up in a flirt-off in the young adult fiction row at their favorite local bookshop that ends very well for both of them.

Plus, a miserably bored Tao makes an appearance.

*Or: An adorably awkward Nick mistakenly asks grad student Charlie for help in his local bookshop, not realizing he doesn't work there. As luck would have it, they both need the same book. How will they decide who gets it? *
Notes:

Raise your hand if you have ever been personally victimized by Where The Red Fern Grows.

It was a rhetorical question. We're all victims.

Many decades later, I am still not over my 5th grade teacher reading this out loud to my class, and for some reason I just know in my bones that Nick Nelson isn't either.

So this is just a weird little one-shot that I put together to grease the rusty hamster wheel in my writing brain, before I delve into a heavy writing project for work this week.
(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:
Nick

Nick Nelson is aggravated.

It's Friday afternoon, he is in a terrible mood, and he is standing in the young people's literature section of his favorite local bookshop as he lets out a dramatically heavy sigh.

He checks the shelf once.

He checks it again.

Where the Red Fern Grows is NOT there. Of COURSE it's not. Because why would anything go his way today?

He had even called ahead to be sure they had a copy and was told that they don't do phone holds, but this very copy had been sitting on the shelf forever so it wouldn't be a problem.

Yet, here he stands, growing grumpier by the second as said book is decidedly NOT on said shelf. The little black cloud that had followed him here began to expand with each deep breath he took to try and calm himself.

It was unlike Nick to find himself in this kind of mood generally, but nothing about the last month had been easy. It was bad enough to find out at the end of the summer holidays that he would no longer be teaching his beloved year two's, but it was downright terrifying to learn that he was being moved to teaching year six.

He had allowed himself a day or two to freak out, and then gotten himself together, changed his mindset, and chosen positivity for this new adventure.

(Even if that meant having to learn a whole new curriculum and outfit a totally different type of classroom for older kids with only a week's notice.)

He gave it his best try. He really did.

He tried SO hard.

But, after a month of teaching the wild, self-centered beasts that populated his classroom, he had decided he couldn't even do his job of teaching them ANYTHING until he found a way to help them learn how to properly process their emotions and treat each other (and him) with respect.

To that end, backed into a corner and out of options with nowhere to turn, he had come up with a desperate plan.

He was going to use Wilson Rawls' Where the Red Fern Grows as a class read-aloud.