"‘I’m weird too,’ I say, because saying ‘I love you more than anyone too’ back to him doesn’t feel quite adequate, even though I honestly love him more than anyone else in the entire world. Nick squeezes me and says, ‘Yeah,’ because he already knows.” - Nick and Charlie by Alice Oseman
Summary: They have their pairings. Now they have to figure out how to introduce themselves. Are first impressions all that they are cracked up to be. How much of themselves will people reveal in their first letter?
Rating: General Audiences.
Read on A03 - https://archiveofourown.org/works/89181721/chapters/239653311
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The first line took Charlie almost half an hour.Not because he didn’t know how to begin, but because every beginning seemed to reveal something about him. Dear Kurt felt too formal. Hi Kurt felt too casual. Hello from England sounded as though he were writing a postcard rather than introducing himself to someone who, until yesterday, had been nothing more than a name printed on a slip of paper.By the time he reached his third attempt, the evening light had begun to fade across his bedroom floor.His history textbook lay open beside him, abandoned after approximately six minutes of pretending to revise. The bin beneath his desk was slowly filling with discarded drafts, each one containing some variation of the same sentence before it had been crossed out in frustration.A knock sounded softly on his bedroom door.“You’re allowed to come in,” Charlie called.Nick stepped inside carrying two mugs of tea, his hair still slightly damp from showering after rugby practice. He took one look at the pile of crumpled paper covering the floor and smiled.“How many?”Charlie sighed dramatically.“I don’t want to talk about it.”
Nick handed him a mug.
“I’m guessing these are your letter attempts? Surely it can’t be that hard?.”
“I’ve written three different openings and scraped all of them.”
Nick glanced at the blank page on the desk.
“You’re writing to a person, not applying for a job.”
“That’s easy for you to say.”
“Is it?”
“You’d probably write one draft and be done.”
Nick looked genuinely offended but laughed it off.
“I would write at least two.”
Charlie laughed quietly, the tension in his shoulders easing a little.
Nick sat on the edge of the bed, watching him for a moment.
“You don’t have to tell him everything,” he said eventually. “He’s a stranger.”
“I know.”
“So just tell him something true.”
The words lingered in the room after Nick had spoken them.
Something true.
Charlie looked back down at the page.
That, at least, he could do.
The following afternoon, the English classroom had been transformed into an unofficial writing room.
Mr Ajayi had left the door open during lunch and told the exchange students they were welcome to work there if they wanted somewhere quieter than the canteen. Almost everyone had turned up.
Sunlight streamed through the open windows, carrying with it the sounds of students talking outside on the field. The room was calmer than it usually was during lessons, filled with the scratch of pens across paper and the occasional rustle of envelopes.
Tao was staring suspiciously at his page as though it had personally offended him.
“I’ve been looking at this sentence for ten minutes,” he announced.
Elle didn’t look up from her own letter.
“You’ve also been drawing in the margin for ten minutes.”
“It’s called presentation.”
“It’s called procrastination.”
Across the room, Darcy had somehow acquired a set of coloured pens and was decorating the border of their letter with tiny stars, planets and what appeared to be a cat wearing sunglasses.
Tara looked over.
“You know they’re judging you on the writing, not the artwork.”
“They’re judging me on everything,” Darcy replied solemnly. “I’m giving them a complete experience.”
Sahar had headphones resting around her neck while she scribbled a list of songs onto a separate sheet of paper.
“I’m including a playlist,” she explained when Imogen glanced over.
“In a handwritten letter?”
“Exactly.”
Imogen smiled.
“I accidentally wrote two pages.”
“Accidentally?”
“I didn’t realise I’d written that much until I turned the paper over.”
Nearby, James was quietly folding a completed page while Isaac continued writing with remarkable concentration.
“How are you already finished?” James asked.
“I had ideas.”
“You always have ideas.”
Isaac looked up briefly.
“That’s true.”
Christian wandered over to Charlie’s desk carrying his own half-finished letter.
“I’ve somehow written about rugby, my little brother and the fact that British weather is a scam.”
Charlie smiled.
“That sounds like a good introduction.”
“Does it?”
“Yes.”
Christian looked relieved.
Harry was sitting by the window with his chair tilted back precariously, his letter untouched.
“This is ridiculous,” he muttered.
“You’ve been saying that for twenty minutes,” Tao replied.
“It’s still true.”
“Have you actually started?”
Harry looked down at the blank page, sighed dramatically, and uncapped his pen.
“There. Happy?”
“Immensely.”
Charlie looked back at his own letter.
This time, the words came more easily.
Dear Kurt,
I’m Charlie. I live in a town called Kent in the southeast of England, which is less exciting than it sounds. I’m seventeen, I like books, music and running, and I’ve already rewritten this first paragraph three times, so I hope you don’t mind if I’m a little awkward.
He paused.
Then, almost without thinking, he continued.
By the time Mr Ajayi announced that lunch was nearly over, Charlie had filled two pages.
He read them through once, folded them carefully, and slid them into an envelope.
Kurt Hummel.
The name looked unexpectedly familiar in his own handwriting.
For the first time since the exchange programme had been announced, Charlie found himself genuinely looking forward to the reply.
Thursday afternoons at McKinley High were usually reserved for rehearsal.
Today, however, the choir room had been transformed into something quieter.
Instead of vocal warm-ups and choreography, New Directions had been given the period to write their first letters to their British pen pals. The usual energy of the room had softened into a thoughtful silence, interrupted only by the occasional laugh, the scrape of chairs across the floor, or the sound of someone asking for another sheet of paper.
Sunlight spilled through the tall windows, casting long rectangles of light across the piano and the rows of desks that had been rearranged into a loose circle. The room felt strangely different without music filling it, as though the absence of singing had made everyone a little more aware of themselves.
Kurt had come prepared.
Of course he had.
He had chosen cream stationery with a subtle blue border that he had been saving for an occasion that felt important enough to justify using it. Somehow, writing to a stranger in England seemed to qualify.
The page in front of him was still mostly blank.
He had written Charlie’s name several times before deciding that his handwriting looked too dramatic and starting again. The discarded attempts were lined up neatly beside him, which somehow felt even more embarrassing than if he had simply crumpled them up.
Blaine glanced over from the desk beside him.
“You’ve been staring at that page for five minutes.”
“I’m thinking.”
“You’re overthinking.”
“There’s a difference.”
“There really isn’t.”
Kurt rested his chin on his hand, staring at the blank space beneath Dear Charlie.
“I don’t know how much of myself to put into a first letter.”
Blaine considered that for a moment before putting his own pen down.
“You’re writing to a person, Kurt. Not an audience.”
Kurt looked at him.
“I know.”
“So write the way you’d talk.”
“That’s a terrifying suggestion.”
Blaine laughed softly.
“You’ll be fine.”
For a few minutes they wrote in companionable silence, interrupted only by the faint scratching of pens across paper. Kurt noticed that Blaine seemed unusually focused, his handwriting steady and confident as it moved across the page.
“You’ve already written that much?” Kurt asked.
Blaine looked down at the letter.
“I think so.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Always.”
“What are you writing about?”
Blaine hesitated, then smiled.
“Do you want me to read part of it?”
Kurt nodded.
Blaine cleared his throat with exaggerated seriousness.
“Dear Nick,”
He glanced up briefly before continuing.
“I’m Blaine, and I live in Lima, Ohio. I’m seventeen, I spend an unreasonable amount of time singing, and I’m writing this from my school choir room where everyone else is also trying to figure out how to introduce themselves to strangers.”
Kurt smiled despite himself.
“I don’t know what kind of person you are yet, but I hope you don’t mind that I’m probably going to ask a lot of questions. I’ve always liked finding out what makes people laugh, what music they listen to, and what places feel like home to them. If you ever come to Ohio, I can at least promise that someone here will make you sing at some point.”
Blaine lowered the letter.
“I haven’t finished it.”
Kurt looked at him for a moment.
“That’s… really good.”
“It’s honest.”
“That’s the part I’m struggling with.”
Blaine folded the page slightly between his fingers.
“I think maybe Nick and Charlie are probably just as nervous as we are . You don’t have to impress Charlie, it’s just a first letter.”
Kurt looked back down at his own blank page.
Maybe Blaine was right.
Maybe the point wasn’t to sound interesting.
Maybe the point was simply to sound real.
Around the room, the rest of New Directions had settled into their own rhythms.
Rachel was already halfway through a second sheet of paper.
Mercedes walked past and glanced down.
“How many pages?”
“Two.”
“Rachel.”
“What?”
“This is the first letter.”
“I’m simply being thorough.”
“You’re writing Imogen a novel.”
Rachel looked down at the page.
“…I can probably remove the paragraph about my preschool musical career.”
“That’s a great place to start.”
Santana was writing with surprising concentration, occasionally crossing out entire sentences before beginning again. Every few minutes she would pause, stare out of the window, then return to the page with renewed determination.
Brittany was drawing stars around the edge of her envelope.
“She likes stars,” Brittany explained.
“You don’t know that,” Santana said.
“I have a feeling.”
Sam was carefully copying the names of several songs onto a separate page.
“I’m making Sahar a playlist.”
“You’ve never met Sahar,” Finn pointed out.
“I’m getting ahead of the friendship.”
Artie was enthusiastically describing a film he thought Isaac might enjoy, while Tina was writing much more slowly, pausing every so often to look out of the choir room windows as though trying to imagine what Kent might look like.
At the back of the room, Quinn folded a completed letter and smoothed the envelope carefully with the palm of her hand. She had rewritten it twice before deciding that honesty sounded better than perfection.
Puck was still staring at a blank page.
“This is impossible.”
“It’s a letter,” Finn said.
“I know.”
“You literally just write.”
Puck looked at him.
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
Eventually, even Puck began writing.
Kurt looked back at his own letter.
He stopped trying to sound impressive.
Instead, he wrote about Ohio in autumn, about his dad, about music and fashion and the strange comfort of the choir room after everything New Directions had been through. He admitted that he tended to overthink things and that he hoped Charlie wouldn’t mind if his handwriting became increasingly dramatic halfway through the letter.
When he finished, he realised something had changed.
The letter wasn’t perfect.
But it sounded like him.
He folded it carefully and slid it into the envelope before writing Charlie Spring across the front.
The name looked elegant in ink.
At the front of the room, Mr Schuester collected the envelopes one by one, stacking them carefully into a cardboard box that had somehow become surprisingly important.
By the end of the period, twelve letters from Ohio sat neatly together.
Across the Atlantic, twelve letters from Kent had been placed into another box.
Neither group of students knew what the other had written.
They didn’t know which jokes had been included, which confessions had almost been crossed out, or which small details would become the beginning of entirely unexpected friendships.
As evening settled over Ohio and the first stars appeared above Kent, two sets of letters began the same journey.
One from McKinley High.
One from Truham and Higgs.
And somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, twelve conversations quietly began.
