A Collection of Heartstopper Oneshots

(Falling in) Love's - loveinisolation

Summary:

Nick is maybe ever so slightly enamoured with the cute boy who comes by the Love's where he works every weekday morning. If only he could get up the nerve to do something about it.
Notes:

Just something short and fluffy. Based on a tweet (linked in the end note).
(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:
Nick was obsessed. He knew it was ridiculous to be so completely gone on someone whose name he had learned by sneaking a peek at the guy's credit card after that first week when he had come into the Love's where Nick worked three mornings in a row and Nick had been immediately enamored. And okay, Charlie had told him his name a week later, but by then Nick had already been mentally testing out combinations of their last names in his head, daydreaming about silly arguments about the superiority of being the Nelson-Springs rather than the Spring-Nelsons.

Nick knew by heart the times when Charlie would come by. Almost every weekday morning, Charlie would come in between 8:00 and 8:10, always buying coffee and something to eat. On Mondays, he topped up the gas in his car. On Fridays, he didn't come through until 10:00, and he would splash out on a breakfast pizza instead of his usual muffin.

He also knew which car was Charlie's when it appeared on the screen that showed the vehicles coming and going from the gas pumps. It didn't matter that the video feed was in black and white, Nick knew the way the navy paint looked on the monitor, and he recognized the scrape across the front driver's side corner of the bumper from where Charlie had gotten just slightly too close to a wall while maneuvering into a narrow parking spot.

And then Charlie would be there in full colour in front of him, wavy, jet black hair fluttering around a tan, angular face, and eyes that shifted from blue to grey depending on the lighting.

Nick knew everything about Charlie. Any bit of information that had ever been offered to him, no matter how off-hand, had been carefully filed away in his brain, which was increasingly filled with nothing but Charlie.

But he tried not to be weird about it. He knew he was just the guy behind the counter at the gas station convenience store. Charlie was ... Charlie. He was clearly brilliant; he went to the university down the street, where he was studying math. MATH. Who aside from literal geniuses studied math at university?

He also played the drums. In a rock band. Nick had seen pictures of him in his tight, ripped jeans and cropped t-shirt, his hair and face glistening with sweat, and his arms a blur of motion. It was possibly the single hottest image Nick had ever seen in his entire life.

And he had looked at a lot of porn.

Charlie seemed perfect in almost every possible way. In fact, Nick was becoming increasingly certain that Charlie had been put on Earth with the sole purpose of tormenting him with his proximity.

***
Charlie didn't need to stop by the gas station every morning. In fact, he had never planned to make it a habit. That first morning, he had stopped at the Love's near campus to put gas in the car, knowing he would forget if he left it until after classes. The second morning, he had been running late and was desperate for a coffee before his 8:30 lecture. Assuming (correctly) that the gas station convenience store would be faster than the campus Starbucks, he had run through in a near panic, garnering an amused smile from the blond behind the cash register.

The third morning he just felt like it. He had survived his first full week of university, despite his horrendous schedule that meant he had early classes four days a week, and he wanted to treat himself. Besides, the coffee had been surprisingly good!

That third day, Charlie realized that it was the same boy behind the counter all three times he had come in, and he noted the name "Nick" on the name tag pinned to his hoodie.