Falling (a Heartstopper fanfiction)

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For the second game, Charlie put everything out of his mind but how much fun it was to be hanging out with his friends, and with Nick. Elle and Nick seemed to get along well, and Nick and Isaac actually spent some time talking about Isaac's current book. Tao refused to look at Nick, but he was his usual self otherwise.

Elle won the second game, jumping up and down at her final strike. "I win! I win!"

"Why am I so bad?" Tao exclaimed dramatically, looking up at the scoreboard. He had lost, again, by a lot.

"Well, your arms are basically twigs," Elle told him.

"Ah! How dare you? I am a very muscular individual." He tried to make a muscle, but it wasn't happening.

"You wish."

Charlie turned to Elle. "How did you do that?"

"I don't know."

"You're really good at it."

"Thank you." She smiled. "I think I just got in the rhythm, you know?"

"Yeah, I pretty much failed at that." Charlie shook his head.

"Maybe next time."

"Maybe." If there was a next time. He hoped there would be.

Isaac came up with tokens, handing them out to Elle and Charlie.

"What are you going to start with? Oh, my God, what about the dance machine?"

"I'm so scared of it," Charlie said. "I can't dance. Like, at all."

"Well, what do you want to play?"

"I don't know."

They all headed for the arcade together, but Isaac quickly moved ahead, going off by himself, as he did. Tao grabbed Elle's hand and pulled her off to the dance machine, bumping his way between Nick and Charlie in the process.

This left Nick and Charlie alone together, which neither of them were unhappy about. Nick ended up in a battle royal with a claw game. Having lost once, he seemed determined to prove he could do it. Since Charlie didn't care what he did as long as he was with Nick, he was fine with standing there and laughing as Nick proved completely incapable of manipulating the game.

Failing for at least the fifth time, Nick turned to Charlie. "Okay, I'm almost out of money now."

"Don't look at me," Charlie told him. "I'm not giving you more just so you can lose again."

Nick looked at him in exaggerated disappointment. "Fine. I see how it is."

Charlie laughed.

Leaving the claw machine to its undisturbed glory, both of them turned round and leaned back against it. After a moment, Nick said, "So, I, um ... I kind of overheard you and Tao in the bathroom earlier."

Well, that explained the hug. "Oh."

"I wanted to say sorry. About the date with Imogen thing."

Charlie looked at him in hurt surprise. He hadn't really believed that was something Nick would do, not without telling him, and to find out it was ... "You actually went on a date with her?"

"No! No. She just ... asked me out, and I was so surprised, and all our mates were watching and expecting me to say 'yes' and ... I was such an idiot, I just blurted out 'yes' because I didn't know how to say 'no' without embarrassing her and confusing all our mates. And then her dog died. And I felt really bad for her and ..."

He wanted to be okay with it. The whole story the way Nick told it made sense—Charlie could imagine the big deal Harry and the others would make of that situation, and Nick was the kind of guy who wouldn't want Imogen to be made to feel bad, not in front of all of them, and her dog dying did make it harder. But it still hurt Charlie that all of this had happened and Nick hadn't told him about any of it.