If they thought about it too much, it sent them spiraling.
Sometimes Charles thought about how unfair it was to mourn someone longer than heâd actually known them. The math of it made his chest ache in a way he couldnât untangle. Everything hurt, all the time, this quiet, constant sadness humming under their skin like something permanent. Teddy had filled a space in his heart that Charles hadnât even realized was broken. When Will died, Charles hadnât handled it well. Not even close. Most of his coping mechanisms had been ugly ones â blood smeared across bathroom tile, too many nights drunk with people who were more than happy to keep handing him another bottle, drifting through life without any real sense of direction. Heâd been reckless with himself, careless in ways that had felt easier than actually dealing with the grief.
When he met Teddy, they hadnât expected anything different. By then he wasnât quite as self-destructive as heâd once been, but he still wasnât exactly healthy. At first Teddy had just been a cute boy who fed his ego, someone easy to flirt with. That had been the story Charles told himself, anyway.
It hadnât been the whole truth, obviously.
Charles had known pretty early that Teddy was different. Maybe it was clichĂ© to say it like that, but it had barely taken a few months before something deeper started taking shape, feelings that Charles didnât quite know how to hold. Heâd tried to deal with them the only way he knew how â ignoring it until the moment he took Teddy to Aspen, and finally letting himself have that happiness instead of questioning it.
Theyâd never been so happy in their life.
Anger had always lived inside him, sharp and ready to surface at the smallest push. Right alongside it was the quiet belief that he was too fucked up to deserve anyoneâs affection in the first place. After all, it had been their fault Will died. Theyâd been the one driving. That fact never really left him. Teddy had made him feel happy. Had told him he deserved better than the kind of friends who only stuck around when things were easy. Teddy had introduced them to Evan because he genuinely believed Charles deserved people who cared about them.
Teddy was sweet in a way that Charles never quite knew how to handle â funny, warm, painfully kind. Too good, sometimes. Too good for someone like Charles, and definitely too good for the shit that happened to him. Charles still remembered the conversation with Evan after everything fell apart. Blame had been easy to let seep under his skin. Evan blamed himself for letting Teddy move out. Charles blamed himself for not noticing sooner, for not having the right instincts when Teddy didnât show up that night.
Itâs fine, theyâd told themselves. Probably just traffic.
Charles didnât look that different these days. His hair was still the same messy length, the same stupid glasses perched on his nose. There were a few more scars now, though. And he still felt guilty about how badly heâd fallen apart that night â about being so fucked up that the only person he could manage to call was Evan, asking him to call 911.
The first year had been brutal. It was strange, in a bitter sort of way, that something so awful had ended up forging a stronger friendship between him and Evan. Charles was pretty sure they wouldâve completely lost it if they hadnât had him.
The knock at the door jolted him awake â they blinked, disoriented, then murmured a sleepy apology to the cats sprawled across their chest as he carefully shifted them aside. He hadnât been expecting anyone. Was it Evan? Maybe Link? Though both of them had keys, and heâd told them a hundred times to just walk in instead of knocking.
They hadnât slept well the night before â they didnât sleep well most nights anymore. Charles opened the door with a yawn, rubbing at his eyes behind his glasses â and his heart immediately dropped. For half a second he assumed it was just his vision, that maybe heâd knocked his glasses crooked or something. But when his hand fell away and the world sharpened again, the figure was still there.
The door slammed shut. A beat passed. Charles stared at the wood in front of him, breath caught somewhere in his chest, before he slowly pulled the door open again. Teddy was still standing there. His hair was longer now, darker somehow, and the expression on his face looked just as wrecked as Charles suddenly felt. Tears were already gathering in their eyes.
Charles didnât say anything. They couldnât. He just stepped forward and grabbed him.
His arms wrapped around Teddy like he was afraid he might vanish if he didnât hold on tight enough, and the moment he did, everything inside him shattered. His fingers tangled in Teddyâs hair, the motion painfully familiar, and the sensation of it â real, warm, alive â made something in his chest completely give out. Their knees buckled and Charles collapsed onto the pavement, dragging Teddy down with them as sobs tore out of their chest. He pulled him impossibly closer, like he could press him back into the space heâd left behind two years ago.
âOh â my God â Teddy â â he choked out between broken breaths. Heâd worry about how embarrassing this was later. And if this somehow turned out to be a hallucination â if grief had finally pushed his brain too far â then that was fine too.
At least theyâd gotten one last hug, right?
