Heartstopper | Between Silence

Chapter 1: Song

(POV Charlie):

After a small argument with Nick, Charlie, feeling sad and a bit frustrated, made his way to the school aula—his usual retreat. The drums were there, and as he sat behind them, he felt his anger vanish into the sticks. A hard hit, then another. "Nick, you idiot," he thought to himself.

With intense focus, he kept playing, while water splashed onto his face from the leaky roof above. The rhythm helped him push away the restlessness that had been building up inside of him.

"Maybe we’re strangers, maybe we’re not," he whispered to himself as he shifted into the repetitive, fast movement of the drumming.
"I don’t even know who I really am sometimes... or a lot."

The drums had never helped him find clarity as much as they did now. He closed his eyes and began to sing softly, the words flowing out of him without thought.
"I’m lost in what we are, in what we could be. I try to understand, but I can’t define this feeling…"
The rhythm grew more intense as he flew across the drums with the sticks. The song he played was more than music; it was his whole soul—an attempt to sort the complicated emotions he had never been able to put into words.
"Is it love or something like?" he asked himself, as his hands paused for a moment in the fast drumming rhythm. "Your smile gives me hope, but my heart is confused."

He had never talked to Nick about what was really between them. There were no clear words, no final answer. And that hurt him.
"We never say it, we never talk about it, but I feel you in everything I do."

In a moment of stillness, he held the sticks crossed in his hands. A deep, freeing feeling overtook him as he spun them loosely in the air. The weight on his shoulders seemed to lift, and a smile crept onto his face.
Then he tried to finish the song: "I can’t stop my heart, can’t stop my heart… can’t stop my heart from… you?" He hesitated. The feeling just wasn’t right.

A loud crash from outside broke his train of thought.
Startled, he jumped up and looked around. But there was no one. Just a shadow quickly passing by.

"What was that?" he muttered, staring in the direction where the figure had disappeared. A strange unease began to settle in him—was it Nick? Or just his imagination, still fixated on Nick?