rough enough for love
it was em @adambirkholtz's birthday two whole weeks ago and she asked me for a nurseydex ficlet inspired by orbiter my noah kahan! i'm so sorry this is two weeks late, em, but i hope you enjoy dex finally singing to nursey!
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“You're gonna choke.”
Even with his head hanging upside down off his bed, Nursey can see the amused smile sitting on Dex's lips clear as day. Dex is leaning back on his hands on the floor of Nursey's childhood room, his feet close enough for Nursey to consider wrinkling his nose, but ultimately, he's choosing peace. They had a lovely day, culminating in watching the Macy's fireworks, no need to ruin it. Besides, Nursey's smelled worse in the locker room.
The locker room he hasn't set foot in since they kissed the ice at graduation two months ago, will never see from inside again. Nursey draws the line at crying upside down, so he swings himself up and turns around to look down at Dex.
He takes his spoon, now entirely free from any remaining peach ice cream, out of his mouth before he replies, “Aw, Dex, are you worried about me?”
Dex snorts, never looks away from Nursey. “Only always.”
“Chill,” Nursey says around a grin and deposits his spoon into his empty bowl with a clatter. Instead of the eye roll he expects, Dex smiles again. It suits him, Nursey decides. His cheeks are tinged a little pink where he must've been too lax with reapplying his sunscreen, but it's kind of cute. Objectively. Nursey's happy to admit when his bros are cute. Besides, it's probably just the orange light from the lamp that Nursey's read next to enough times to earn him a pair of glasses. That lamp makes everything softer, Nursey figures, including turning the light brown of Dex's eyes into a near-honey color that Nursey isn't sure he’s ever noticed before. Surely, he must have, right? Yeah, Nursey decides, he must have. It's just the two beers he’s had and the residual summer heat clinging to him.
Instead of dwelling on it, Nursey stands up, collects his bowl and their two empty cans of beer and heads downstairs to grab more beer.
When he gets back into his room, he finds Dex lying on his back, his hands crossed underneath his head. His hair's standing up this way and that and his eyes are closed, but his lips are pulled into a smile that tells Nursey he's probably not passed out yet. His shirt has ridden up, though, and Nursey finds fewer freckles than he'd assumed, based on the sheer amount on Dex's cheeks and arms. Nursey blames the beer again when he wonders, briefly, if that's a trend he'd find up his back, across his shoulders, underneath his shorts too.
Nursey clears his throat, which makes Dex pop open an eye. He sits up again and accepts the can Nursey offers him. Cracking his own beer, Nursey plops down the ground next to Dex, leaning his back against his bed.
“Cheers,” he says, bumping his can against Dex's.
They're quiet for a couple of sips of gloriously cold beer, but then Dex bumps his calf with his foot. Nursey hums, settling his gaze on Dex, his cheeks now a slightly darker pink. It's still cute, but Nursey recognizes it as his tipsy flush now. “Thanks for inviting me,” Dex says.
“Glad you came,” Nursey replies.
He'd floated the idea of Dex coming down to the city for the Fourth the week before graduation, so Nursey could show him some iconic fireworks on the East River and introduce him to the city that makes Nursey's heart beat a little stronger, the city Dex would be moving to anyway at the end of the month. It took a little arguing, but most things with Dex do. In the end, it was the argument of efficiency—this way you're already there and you'd be moving down like two weeks later anyway, so just make it easier and stay with me—that made Dex sigh, give in, and show up at Nursey’s doorstep with his suitcases yesterday evening. He'll spend the next two weeks being shown the ropes of living in the city by Nursey, getting acquainted with the biggest tourist spots and hidden gems, and then he'll move into an apartment in Brooklyn. Nursey's staying in the city too—Columbia accepted him into their master's program a bit after Dex had already signed the lease on that place in Brooklyn, so Nursey spent the following week moping and complaining about their missed chance of rooming together again, but they both know he's going to pester Dex whenever he can anyway. Besides, they’re only a subway ride apart. And who knows, maybe they'll find another chance at being roommates again when Dex's lease is up next year.
“How are you finding the city?” Nursey asks eventually, swirling the last sip of his beer around and around in the can.
Across from him, Dex tips back the last of his own beer and his lips split into his firmly-tipsy smile. “It's alright,” he says, all languid and chill the way he rarely is. There's nothing of the ever-present tension in his shoulders. Vacation's a good look on Poindexter, Nursey decides. “I like my tour guide, even though he says chill a bit too much.”
“Fuck you, Dex,” Nursey throws back without a laugh, “you just said you like me.”
“That I did,” Dex confirms, wiping at his can's condensation. “What about it?”
Nursey grins. Getting Dex to talk about his feelings is an ordeal on a good day. “Nothing, bro. I love you too.” To drive the point home, Nursey presses his big toe into the meat of Dex's calf. Nursey's not sure what does it, but something about this day, about this moment, makes him itch to bug Dex again, find a button and press it but without the drive to make him mad. “Hey, Dex,” he says then, running his toe along Dex's leg in the way he knows Dex hates, “sing to me. I know you're hiding some set of pipes over there.”
Across from him, Nursey thinks Dex flushes even deeper. “How would you know that?”
Nursey shrugs. “Heard you singing in the shower every now and then. The Haus walls… were pretty thin.”
Dex pulls a face that tells Nursey Dex is remembering just how thin the walls really were, especially when they still lived just a bathroom away from Chowder’s room that housed both C and Farmer more nights than not. Or Bitty and Jack down the hall. It makes Nursey bark out a laugh and Dex doesn't trail far behind
“So then why do you need me to sing to you if you've heard it already?” Dex asks, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye.
“That doesn't count,” Nursey explains, gearing up his best pleading eyes. “You didn’t sing to me. Even though I've been asking you so kindly for literal years.”
Nursey expects more arguments, like every time he brings this up, expects Dex to be difficult just because he can be and then shoot him down for the fourth year in a row. He doesn't expect Dex to sigh, smile, and say, “Yeah, okay.”
Thrill shoots through Nursey and makes him sit up ramrod straight, his face breaking out into a grin again. “Wait, really?”
“Yeah,” Dex says. He shrugs, but Nursey's known him long enough to know that this attempt at casual is about as real as his own chill. “You got a guitar in this fancy house somewhere too or…?”
“You gonna pull out all the stops to woo me?” Nursey asks as he jumps off the floor and heads to the door. With his hand on the doorknob, he throws a wait here over his shoulder before Dex can get a reply out.
He rushes out of his room and down the hall into his sister's to grab the acoustic guitar she wanted to learn but never got past the first few chords of. This moment feels fragile, like Dex will take it back if Nursey's gone for too long, so quickly plucks the guitar off its hook on the wall. He’s almost by the door when he hears something crash to the floor behind him, but he figures this can wait until the morning; it’s not like his sister will be staying in her childhood bedroom anytime soon. He'll have plenty of opportunity to pick up whatever this was, but the timer on Dex’s offer to finally sing to him is ticking. Probably.
Once Nursey’s back in his room, he finds Dex sitting on the edge of his bed, wringing his hands in his lap and snapping his eyes to Nursey when the door clicks shut. “Here,” Nursey says and offers up the guitar.
“Oh,” Dex says as he takes it with a careful hand on the neck and one on the body. He runs his fingers along the shiny, dark brown wood with a gentle reverence that Nursey, for a split second, wants to know the feeling of. “It’s, uh, really pretty. And, like, really good quality. Where’d you—?”
“My sister,” Nursey supplies quickly, “she was gonna learn how to play, but now it just sits on her wall, LOL. She didn’t take it with her when she moved out.”
Dex doesn’t roll his eyes or anything, his gaze still trailing along the guitar. He situates the body in his lap and Nursey doesn’t wonder what it would be like to take up that space too, a leg on either side of Dex’s hips. Dex places the fingers of one hand along the strings on the neck and strums with the other once, twice, pulling Nursey back into the present. He frowns, like he does at the oven or the dryer when one of them is on the fritz again and he’s trying to figure out what’s wrong this time and how he can fix it. Then he twists the key things at the top a few times; it looks precise and calculated and entirely outside of Nursey’s wheelhouse of skills to know what he’s aiming for, but it’s fascinating all the same.
“I, uh, I don’t know a lot of songs,” Dex says once he seems satisfied, eyes trained on the strings his fingers are fidgeting with. “None that you’d know, I guess. Probably.”
Dex could play him the fucking alphabet song and Nursey would be elated anyway, so he shrugs, sits down on the floor, leans back on his hands, smiles. “I don’t care. Hit me, Poindexter.”
“I—Well, okay. Here goes, I guess.” Dex offers him another smile, small and twitchy, before he drops his gaze down to his knees and starts to play.
Nursey vaguely recognizes the melody; he’s sure he’s heard it before in the Haus when Dex was in the bathroom or studying or, later on, baking up a storm in the kitchen. He figures it’s safe to say it’s some of the dad rock that Dex loves so much, but Nursey would be hard-pressed to put a name or title to it with any sort of confidence. Bruce Springsteen? Probably? That sounds about right, anyway.
Dex’s gaze sticks to his knees when he starts to sing the lyrics, something somber and maybe kind of sad about lost love, Nursey’s mouth drops open. He knew that Dex could sing, that’s just a fact. It’s why he’s been begging for Dex to sing to him ever since he learned that Dex used to sing at church back in Maine. But he wasn’t prepared for it, he realizes now. Dex’s voice is fluid, a little raspy around the emotion of the song that’s venturing into hopeful and romantic the longer it goes on. Nursey’s staring, he knows, but how can he not?
Nursey can see it: Dex as a teenager, sitting on his bed in his room with his own guitar practicing the chords again and again with a determination to get it right that Nursey’s extremely familiar with from him. He can see Dex around a bonfire, more stars above than Nursey’s ever seen in New York or Andover or Samwell, singing this song to a swooning girl. Something clenches in his chest, just for a second, but Nursey doesn’t for the life of him know why. Dex isn’t even into girls; not that it matters.
“The road is dark and it’s a thin, thin line, but I want you to know, I’ll walk it for you any time,” Dex sings, his deft fingers working the strings. But then Dex lifts his gaze for the first time since he started playing, looks directly at Nursey as he continues to sing. “Maybe your other boyfriends couldn’t pass the test, well, if you’re rough and ready for love, honey, I’m tougher than the rest.”
Nursey watches, floored, the way Dex’s cheeks flush deeper again and his gaze quickly drops from Nursey’s eyes down to his knees again as he finishes out the song, his voice never wavering. Oblivious to the fact that Nursey feels glued to his spot on the floor, his mouth agape just slightly. The emotions of the song flood across Dex’s face in a way Nursey isn’t used to but it tugs at his chest now, seeing Dex so unguarded like he rarely ever lets himself be around other people.
Nursey wants to reach out, hold his face in his hands, pull him into a kiss. Nursey… Well, fuck. Nursey’s in love with Dex, isn’t he?
In retrospect, it’s kind of obvious. All the chirping and the button-pressing, all the wrestling and pushing just to touch him, the late nights in either of their rooms at the Haus and on the phone despite the both of them yawning after every other word. The relief when Nursey found out Dex was coming here too, still close by, still within arm’s reach. The disappointment that felt disproportionate and crushing at the time when he and Dex realized they wouldn’t be able to live together in the city. The way his thoughts have been drifting tonight and, if he’s entirely honest, a handful of times all throughout their senior year. Why none of his relationship attempts since his spring semester of junior year really went anywhere even though Nursey couldn’t quite put his finger on why when those people were perfect for him on paper.
Well, fuck. Nursey’s definitely in love with Dex and has been for well over a year.
In front of him, Dex finishes the song, his skilled fingers plucking the last few chords before he clears his throat and sets the guitar down gently by his feet. “So,” he says, his eyes darting across Nursey’s face, never settling anywhere for long. “That everything you were hoping for, Nurse?”
“I—” Nursey says, his heart leaping into his throat now. Quite frankly, he’s not even sure where to start. His world and everything he thought he knew about himself just tilted to the side by a few degrees. He’s in love with Dex. He’s in love. With Dex. And Dex… likes Nursey too? Maybe? Probably? He said he doesn’t know a lot of songs, sure, but. That was intentional, surely? It must have been; Dex, for all his temper and short fuse, has his moments of thinking his actions through. He wouldn’t take something like this lightly, Nursey knows.
“You? Speechless?” Dex chirps with a grin that looks about as weak as Nursey’s knees feel. “Should I mark it in my calendar?”
“Chirp fucking chirp,” Nursey finally manages, sitting up straight. “You just made me realize I’m in love with you with some dad rock song and you have the audacity to chirp me right now?”
Dex’s grin grows bolder, tipping into smirk territory, and that alone is kind of everything to Nursey. All that confidence is betrayed, just a little, by the white-knuckle grip Dex has on the edge of Nursey’s bed, though. “Gonna—” He clears his throat again. “Gonna do something about it then, Nurse?”
And, yeah, Nursey thinks as he gets up off the floor, he is going to do something about that.
