and we have all the love in the world to set alight

[kaydeefalls]

I finished the thing! Missed my self-imposed deadline, but whatever, literally no one but me cares. I have no idea how a simple canon divergence about teenagers falling in love with barely any plot somehow hit 70k words, but hey, this means I've hit my personal word count goal of 100k+ for the year, so I'll take it. And 1.5 million words posted on AO3! Fun with statistics.


and we have all the time in the world (to get it right) (70529 words) by kaydeefalls
Chapters: 6/6
Fandom: Heartstopper (TV), Heartstopper (Webcomic)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Nicholas "Nick" Nelson/Charles "Charlie" Spring, Minor or Background Relationship(s), James McEwan/Charles "Charlie" Spring
Characters: Charles "Charlie" Spring (Heartstopper), Nicholas "Nick" Nelson, Tao Xu, Isaac Henderson (Heartstopper), Elle Argent, James McEwan, Tara Jones, Darcy Olsson, Sahar Zahid
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Romance, Mutual Pining, Friends to Lovers, Falling In Love, Mental Health Issues, past charlie/james, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, as per canon, First Love, not so much slow burn as two idiots standing around on fire, queer found family is so important
Summary:

Charlie: NICK NELSON KNOWS I WAS IN HOSPITAL?!?!?!?!?!
Elle: It's ok Charlie I promise! He was really worried when you went awol this summer, it didn't feel right to lie to him
Isaac: srsly it was like kicking a puppy!! we just couldn't any longer
Isaac: Tao even lets him sit with us at lunch sometimes now, that's how bad it got.

In which Charlie's friend group adopted his impossible straight boy crush while he was in hospital, and now he might just have to deal with the fact that Nick is…maybe not so impossible after all.

(Canon divergence AU: Charlie already has a proper boyfriend when he first meets Nick in year 10. It changes some things. They still get there eventually.)