A Collection of Heartstopper Oneshots

Happy Birthday! PS - Marry Me? - CadburyOreo, Coach1305, eli__writes

Summary:

Nick suspects that Charlie is keeping a secret from him in the run-up to his birthday. Charlie hopes that with a little help from their friends, Nick's big day will become Their Big Day. Can he pull off the biggest surprise of their lives?
Notes:

For hrtstcppr.
eli__writes, Coach1305, CadburyOreo have put together a fluffy story for hrtstcppr's birthday today. When asked for a prompt, a wedding was what we were asked for (not that they know that we did this), and a wedding is what we wrote.

Happy birthday hrtstcppr! This fic was written especially for you, and we hope that it makes you smile! We wrote you a Nick birthday party with a twist, because who doesn't love a surprise wedding?! We love you!
(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:
NICK

Charlie is being really weird. I know him well enough at this point—after twelve years together —to know when he's saying all the things I want to hear because he actually has one thing that he doesn't want to say. I've tried asking him outright, I've tried the veiled approach, and I've tried to get him to tell me in his weakest moments. Underhanded, maybe, but it's bugging me. The only thing I can think of is that he's got something up his sleeve for my birthday, which is coming up. Except I already know there's a party, so that's not a surprise.

I probably should just let him have it, whatever his secret is; acknowledge that if he wants to do something special for my birthday (and I'm going to stick to thinking that's what this is about because it'll save me spinning for other explanations), then he should have the space for that.

Charlie and I have been together since secondary school. I know what you're thinking. No one meets their person in Form during their GCSE year. Even if they do, they definitely don't survive going long-distance throughout university and come out of it with no one having cheated or gotten bored or just simply caved under the pressure. No one then manages to tie their newly adult personalities back together, and organise their lives back into the same city, and move in together and never look back. Yeah, usually I would absolutely agree with you. And yet here I am telling you that Charlie and I are those people, and at this point the forever of it all is simply a fait accompli. We've talked about marriage and kids and retirement to the country, and we bought the flat we live in now after scrimping for years as we both worked our way up our respective career ladders.

I teach primary school, which was always going to be a vocation and not a highly lucrative career. Charlie, though, he writes. He writes beautiful poetry and he's been published and I am so so proud of him for all the lives that he's changed by sharing his sometimes heart wrenching words with young people who need to feel seen and are finally seeing themselves reflected in print. We live pretty comfortably off the royalties from his books and my salary, and Daisy, our golden doodle, is kept well fed.

Anyway, that was a lot and I can't actually remember what we were talking about. Oh yes, Charlie is being shifty, and I am working harder than I'd like to be okay with not knowing why.

ELLE

Charlie is glancing up at me, big blue eyes over a soup bowl-sized mug of oat milk latte. He always looks beautiful but ever since he and Nick moved in together, adopted Daisy and started their forever, he has been completely glowing, contentment working like some inordinately-expensive face cream. I love to see it.

Still, are you really friends with someone if you don't meet up to share a moan with them?

"Nick is being a pain in the backside about his suit, you know!" I start to fill-in Charlie with a laugh before taking a sip of my own coffee. "I texted him and told him that I could borrow something nice from the samples at work for him to wear on his birthday this year. Straight away he replied, saying thanks but not to bother. He would just wear 'jeans and a nice shirt'. Like OMG, no, Nick!"