August to October, 1958: Will Poindexter learns about fear. Derek Nurse is wildly fucking terrifying.
Above ground the heat was thick and syrupy and pooled on your lower back in salty drips of sweat, and the streets in town were deserted. There were clothes strung up between houses, the Company ones in rows that were near identical. The quiet deafened, quite literally -- that ringing noise unique to late summer drought enveloped all -- and some weather was coming. The almanac and old women’s creaking bones said there was, anyway. It was August 23rd, and a Saturday, and in Springhill in Cumberland County on the mainland of Nova Scotia the heat had forced everyone inside where the oppressiveness of it all was lessened by the shade. Or -- well, if it wasn’t, then it was an illusion no one dared disturb.
Down below things were not much better. In fact they never were.
“He’s new,” Archie Scott the foreman said when Will arrived to the pit head. It was his last night shift for a week, and beginning Monday morning he wouldn’t see much of the sun again for another six days. “Take him down with you.”
The man, a stranger, was in crisp work clothes that had not yet seen a speck of coal dust, and he stood against the dirty lamphouse wall with his hands in his pockets and a light round his hard hat. He seemed to be about Will’s age, maybe, though he didn’t look as old and worn as Will felt at 19.
“Why me?” Will asked. By the wall, the new man didn’t move his gaze.
“He’s renting out a room in your parents’ house,” Archie said. Archie was a first cousin once removed on Will’s mother’s side, and had been working in the pit since his ninth birthday some fifty years ago. He was a rough man who, when he coughed, coughed black as much because of the dust as because of the tobacco he chewed constantly. “And because I goddamn told you so.” He had a bump of chew in his lip now.
“Alright,” Will said, because one day he wanted Archie’s job.
The man followed him up the cart tracks without a word and made noise only when he tripped on a rock and caught himself before he fell. The days were getting shorter and soon it would be dark this time of night, and cold. Will wondered if he was going to have enough to buy a new coat from the company store. His was old and threadbare with holes in the elbows and had been inherited, anyway. He had a hard time still considering it his own. It wasn’t the only thing.
“Name’s Derek Nurse, by the way,” the man said before they joined the others on their way into the mine, the number 2 colliery. They said it was one of the deepest collieries in the world. It certainly felt like it when you were down there.
Will looked at him, and his green eyes that felt deep too. It would be a shame, Will thought, that if he stayed in the mine they might one day go blind from the darkness.
i’m almost certainly never going to go any further with these, so here they are. feel free to add on.
this was meant to be a sequel to row upon row, where dex tries to pull away from derek because he’s been talking to scouts and doesn’t want to ruin his chances, but i wrote and rewrote it maybe four times until i lost the thread so, here is what i got to. featuring everyone’s fave lil girl ava.
Looking back, it feels to Derek that he had, for the first year of knowing and living in constant, pulling opposition with Dex (because he was Dex then, not Liam quite yet), taken Dex’s body – big, tall, wide, hard, heavy, and sharp like a knife – and filled it in with hunches and expectations. Unstructured rhyme schemes and romantic literary devices and the like. Well, romance in the sense that it was – thrilling, maybe, to be the focus of such intense attention. Nevermind if most of those months they were always at each other’s throats, then the rest spent thinking of them (the throats, and what they might look like with lip-prints like trophies painted across them), then a small period of time just getting words caught in them.
He’d like to think he’s gotten past that now, that he finally sees Liam as he is, and not as an antagonist or a love interest or even the main character to Derek’s story. Actually, he thinks he’s maybe even gotten past seeing the whole thing as a story at all. Maybe because the Haus is one rotting pillar away from being condemned, and that Derek’s neighbour in residence plays League of Legends until 3am every night and isn’t quiet about it and the whole floor smells like dirty socks anyway, and neither places are actually ideal settings for grand romances (in the sense of true love).
The seaside though, and Dex’s little autumn-coloured town, that’s another story entirely – so to speak.
Derek goes with Dex in the spring, after classes are done and Dibs are secured from Ransom and Holster, like everyone knew they would be. Only for a few days – it’s Sandy’s 50th birthday, and there’s a surprise party at the firehall – then he’ll go to New York for the summer and work for his mom. A receptionist at the accounting firm, like he did last summer.
But for now, he goes with Dex. He hasn’t actually been since Thanksgiving, and the difference is stark – the village is awake now, if a little muddy, seagulls circling overhead. There are more cars, more OPEN signs in shop windows. It smells like spring, but a cleaner and sharper spring than Derek’s ever experienced.
“You can tell which ones are the summer homes,” Dex says, still a little sleepy from the nap he took while Derek drove. He points to an enormous house up on a hill, facing the harbour. “The shutters are still closed.”
“And you know who everyone is anyway,” Derek says. He too feels alive with the town. He takes Dex’s hand and kisses his knuckles one by one as he drives through, then takes the street where the Poindexters live. It’s begun to feel familiar, and he has time now to memorize the details of the town. The red house on the end has a weather vane on its gable shaped like a cat, its tail pointing northward. Next door, there’s still a wreath hanging under a window, looking worse for wear but still somehow intact. The potholes have grown since the ice melted, and the white line is nearly invisible, rubbed away by the salt and the slush. “Who lives there,” he says, pointing to a beige duplex with an impressive tree in the front yard and a little garden bed with blooming crocuses.
Dex laughs. “On one side it’s Glen and Lisa Carter and their big-ass Bernese Toby, and I’m actually not sure who’s on the other side anymore. It used to be the McTavishes, but I don’t recognize the car.”
“Maybe they got a new car, William,” Derek says. “Or someone’s visiting.”
“Maybe,” Dex murmurs. He’s smiling, and smiling at Derek, which isn’t that new anymore but hasn’t gotten old yet. Right now, he doesn’t feel like it ever will.
“Do you think Ava will like the paints I got her?” Derek asks, because he wants Dex to keep looking like that.
“You don’t have to get her something every time you see her, you know,” Dex says. His face still unchanged, bright in its happiness. At Thanksgiving, Derek had gotten her a miniature hockey stick with a rubber ball as a puck. “You’re starting a potentially expensive tradition.”
That Dex thinks of it as a tradition is – well. The main reason Derek decided to set the precedent at all.
“I’m just trying to be the favourite uncle, here. And I missed her birthday, so let me live.”
“You’re not even her real uncle. And anyway, I built her an actual dollhouse for Christmas, so like, I’ll be super offended if you become the favourite.”
“We’ll see,” Derek says.
When they pull up to the soft yellow house, dilapidated swing set still out in front (having weathered another winter), Ava is already on the step waiting for them, hopping up and down impatiently with her grandmother smiling from behind her. Derek honks the horn when they park because he knows it makes Ava laugh and Sandy shake her head.
“Hello!” Dex calls as he steps out of the car and stretches his arms out, loosening his muscles after being cooped up all afternoon. Ava runs towards him, but makes a detour at the last second to go to Derek, who laughs and catches her as she trips on a crack in the pavement and falls into his waiting embrace.
“That was a close one,” he says. She shrugs and hugs him tighter. Over her hair, he sees Dex roll his eyes.
“She takes after you,” says Dex, and Derek says nothing -- probably wise, he thinks. He lifts Ava and drops her in her actual uncle’s arms instead.
--
“You boys have any plans for tonight?” Sandy asks while they’re tucking into supper -- spaghetti and meatballs, though Derek’s plate is meatless, and nearly spotless. It’s just Will, Sandy, Dex, Derek and Ava tonight, because Katie’s doing a welding apprenticeship in Bangor and will only make it down tomorrow for the party, and Jake and Mel have claimed that they’re needed in Boston at a pharmacy conference. In reality, they’re spending the night at a friend’s house in town. Jennifer will come up tomorrow too.
“I think --” Derek starts, but is cut off by Will’s gruff voice
“Liam, we’re at the supper table.
There’s a clatter as Dex drops his phone on the floor, which means he’s been looking at it under the table, and Ava flinches at the sound.
“Sorry, I’m just -- just waiting for an email,” Dex says. Derek frowns. He hasn’t heard of any email.
A motherly click-click of a tongue from Sandy. “It’s past six on a friday. You’re not getting any emails now. Put it away.” She stares at Dex as he bends down to pick up the phone and makes a show of putting it on silent and in his pocket. “Great. Now what were you saying, Derek?”
“Oh. Just that I think Liam said something about meeting up with his friends.”
“Which ones?” Sandy asks. “Where are you going?”
“Mom,” Dex says. “Does it matter?”
“Liam,” Will says, a warning clear in his tone.
“Just some guys from my old team and their girlfriends. Like, whoever’s around. Going down near the gravel pit.”
Derek catches Ava’s eye from across the table and makes a funny grimace at her, and she giggles, sweet-sounding and soft.
“Are you going to be drinking? You better not be driving if you are. Neither of you are 21, anyway. You shouldn’t be drinking at all.”
“Mom,” Dex says, stops, then sighs. “We’ll be fine.”
“Liam,” Will says again. “Your mother is allowed to worry.”
here’s the first 600 words of a nursey/rans slowburn thing i’m working on
(i don’t know fuck about hockey)
The clock on the tiled wall is ticking steadily closer to the end of Nursey’s shift, but the night feels interminable. From the kitchen he can see through to the small diner, then out the windows, where the city is beginning to wake. His hands are wrinkled and gross from the scalding hot water he’s been using to wash the dishes all night, and he’s tired, and hungry, and he doesn’t remember why he’s doing this. Why it wouldn’t just be easier to say fuck it, and do what his parents want him to. Why he can’t just quit and move back to New York and live for free instead of whatever the fuck he’s doing here, in Boston, in this city that doesn’t belong to him. Or him to it. Whatever.
All the reasons seemed better back when he was just freshly graduated and he saw daylight for more often than a few hours a week.
He turns back to the dishes he’s been stacking. Only an hour to go before he can go home and sleep.
“Hey, kid,” says Mike, Nursey’s favourite cook, a few minutes later, “someone out front for you.”
Nursey frowns but wipes his hands and unties his apron anyway. Gotta be Ransom, on his way home from his shift at the hospital. He’s halfway through his pediatrics and gynecology clinical and sometimes stops by for food.
It’s a slow night, and Kerry the waitress nods at him from where she’s reading Cosmo behind the countertop as he passes by. Sure enough, Ransom is sitting at a booth, his head in his hands and his phone on the scratched linoleum tabletop.
“What’s that?” Nursey asks, pointing to a stain on the chest of Ransom’s student scrubs. Ransom’s head jerks up.
“Huh? Oh. Uh. Just. Babies are messy,” he says. His eyes are bloodshot and there are dark circles under them.
Nursey slides in across from him. “You order anything? You look like shit, bro,” he says.
Ransom just shakes his head and pushes his phone over so Nursey can read it. There’s a text up on the screen, unopened.
Chowder @ SGH 2016 [2 hrs ago]
OMG Holster ur gonna LOVE california
“He didn’t -- he didn’t tell me,” Ransom says. He’s folded in on himself, small. “We knew they were. Uh. We knew they were discussing it. But we didn’t know -- hoped Hartford would, maybe, because that’s only a bit further than Providence so he could still, he could still. Live here with me.”
The door jingles and someone comes in, and Nursey watches as Kerry puts her magazine away and goes to greet the new customer.
“Maybe he doesn’t know yet,” Nursey says, but it sounds weak to his ears. “You know Chowder like, obsessively follows the San Jose teams. And the time zones, right. Maybe. Maybe he just doesn’t know.”
Ransom closes his eyes. There are dirty dishes on the table next to them Nursey needs to pick up, and Mike and Nursey like each other, but he can’t spend too much time out front until his shift is over.
“I’m happy for him,” Ransom says. Throat dry, barely more than a whisper. “He will love it. But I never really thought -- I didn’t think.”
“He want anything?” Kerry says to Nursey as she walks by, her pad of paper and pen still out.
“Um. Yeah, a number three with -- over-easy, right, Rans?” Nursey says, as gently as he can manage. Ransom nods and Kerry writes it down silently, then gives the table over, the one with the dishes, a meaningful look before heading to the kitchen.
“What am I gonna do,” Ransom says once she’s gone, eyes still closed tight. He puts his head in his hands and his nails are bitten down to the quick. “What am I gonna do.”
“It’s fucking over, Nursey, for fuck’s sake! Stop arguing with me about this.”
Jack enters the living room with his arms crossed and an impressive scowl. Dex thinks maybe he styles his eyebrows on purpose to make his face look more intimidating.
“Go the fuck to bed,” Jack says. Dex also thinks Jack wouldn’t hesitate to maim a man if he interfered with his sleep schedule. “We have practice in the morning. You don’t even live here.”
“Sorry, man, we were just--” Dex begins, attempting to grab Nursey’s arm and pull him away. Surprisingly nimble, Nursey steps out of the way.
“Just having a bit of a debate. A doo-doo dilemma, if you will,” Nursey says.
“I won’t,” Jack says.
“A crap controversy. A potty problem.”
“Jesus fuck, quit while you’re ahead,” Dex hisses. Jack clenches his jaw.
“A commode contestation. A turd tiff. A cubicle combat.”
Sighing, Jack rubs his hands in his face. “Are you done,” he says. It’s not a question.
“Uh, wait, almost. A restroom row! There.” Nursey smiles. “Got it out of my system.”
Dex wants to sink into the floor. “Who the fuck let you out of your bedroom this morning,” he grumbles. Nursey soldiers on.
“So maybe you can help us, Jack.”
“Will you leave after?”
“Absolutely.” Of course, Nursey is unaffected by Dex’s glare and keeps talking, which he knows is no where near as effective as Jack’s, but he’s been practicing so it’s supposed to be alright. “Do you prefer your toilet paper to roll over or under?”
Jack’s answer is prompt in a way that makes Dex suspect he’s thought about it before. “It’s more efficient if you leave the roll on the back of your toilet and just reach back and get it.”
“Damn.” Nursey looks crestfallen for a moment, and Dex takes the opportunity to grab onto his arm and pull him out of the room.
“Goodnight, Jack, thanks for your help, Jack, we won’t bother you again, Jack,” he mumbles on their way out, ignoring Nursey’s protests.
“He didn’t help us at all!” Nursey cries once they’ve reached the door.
“Nursey,” Dex says, heaving a long-suffering sigh. Because he’s going to be suffering for the next four years, which is practically an eternity. “Wipe your ass with a leaf for all I care. I know I’m right.”
“I’m a fucking mess, William,” Nursey says, though it’s muffled by the fact that he’s got his head on the Haus kitchen table, not quite banging it but thumping gently. “Have you been to my room lately?”
“No,” Will says, “you won’t let me.”
“Exactly. You know why? Because it looks like a goddamn hurricane has passed through it. Me. Hurricane Derek. I’m the hurricane.”
“So clean it,” Will says. He shrugs and goes back to his laptop.
Nursey wails. “Augh! I don’t have time! I’ve got three mid-term projects due before Friday, and four exams next week, and practice tonight and tomorrow, and a fucking obligatory poetry reading Thursday. I barely have time to eat! I don’t even remember the last time I had fruit that wasn’t in pie form,” he says, lifting his head up slightly so his cheek is plastered to the wood instead of his mouth and nose.
“Well,” Will says, “at least I know you won’t get scurvy.”
“All I want to do is take a nap,” Nursey says. He sighs shakily.
“Okay, listen,” Will says. He snaps his laptop shut and turns to Nurse. “You need motivation, right?”
“Desperately.” Nursey’s cheek is squished unattractively.
“And I’m willing to make a sacrifice for the good of your time management.”
“Oh no. What?”
Will looks around to make sure no one else is near then leans in close. “No sex until you finish everything you have to do, and clean your room. That includes taking out the garbage and changing your sheets. And,” Will continues, smirking now, “no jerking off in the shower. I’ll time you if necessary.”
Nursey gasps. “You wouldn’t!”
“You sure about that?”
“Fuck.” Nursey sits up and pulls his laptop closer again. “You’re goddamn evil, you know that? Balls of fucking steel, too.”
“I’m taking one for the team. Now get to work, soldier, or else I’ll throw in kissing too.”
“Augh! Okay! Okay!”
Nursey’s tongue sticks out in concentration and his fingers fly so fast over the keyboard Will can barely see them, and Will wonders if maybe he’s made a grave mistake.
Sometimes, Nursey thinks, you just have to lay in a pile of leaves. Sometimes you have to pretend there’s no one else in the world but you, nothing but the notebook in your hand and the tree above you and the breeze whistling all around but not enough to disrupt your bed. Sometimes you have to let yourself go soft and pliant and let the words come out without forcing them, let them play with the branches and the decay and the ink on your page. Sometimes you have to close your eyes. Remember why you’re here. Sit back and enjoy the earth. Take a deep breath and lay in a pile of leaves.
send me a word and a character/pairing and I’ll write 100ish words
There’s something beautiful about the before-space, Derek thinks, about the anticipation, the dance they’re doing around each other, the way their hands reach out for each other on their own. It’s like -- the moment before an orgasm, before the crest of the hill. Full of potential and tentative smiles and hope.
“Nursey? You gonna eat that waffle?” Dex asks, a lump in his cheek from a half-chewed strawberry. He’s got --
“You’ve got --” Derek reaches over to wipe away some dripping-red juice from Dex’s lip, letting his thumb linger for a second longer.
He could live like this, in this feeling, if he didn’t want to get to their destination more.
send me a word and a character/pairing and i’ll write 100ish words
PART ONE // AO3 (there’s some good analysis in the comments)
j’ai beau dire avoir su, dans l’fond j’le savais déjà
(i can say had i known all i want, deep down i already knew)
- avoir su, lisa leblanc
“Your boy came by again yesterday,” Kelsey says when Derek’s tying his apron around his waist to get ready for the morning. He kind of wants to pretend he doesn’t know who she’s talking about -- it could be his roommate Jeff, or Bitty who comes by whenever he’s in the city for a Falconer’s game, or any number of men he’s chatted up while behind the counter over the last couple years. But it’s been a week since he’s seen Dex and a week since Kelsey’s been pressing him for details and a week since he’s thought about anything, anyone else. Hasn’t been sleeping very well either, because all it took to reopen a six-year-old wound that never really healed, rip it wide, tear it ragged, was ten minutes, a latte, and a post-it note.
He should have told Dex not to come back. But -- well. He called and got ESPN re-added to his cable package instead.
“He’s not my boy,” he says.
Kelsey raises an eyebrow at him. “Right. Whoever he is, he gave me this for you.” She holds out a piece of paper and he takes it probably too eagerly. It’s a business card for a restaurant a few blocks over, and on the back there’s today’s date and 7:45. Not in Dex’s handwriting, which is. A relief.
“Christ,” he breathes, staring at it. He’s lucky he has to work for the next eight hours and won’t be able to spend his day obsessing over it.
“You gonna go?” She reaches up to get a bag of coffee beans to grind.
“No,” he says.
“Get the mushroom risotto, it’s good,” she says.
Derek sighs. “Yeah, alright.”
Dex is overdressed in a suit that probably costs more than anything he would ever have allowed himself to even consider back at Samwell, and he looks uncomfortable and awkward when Derek sits across from him.
“Shit. I wasn’t actually expecting you to come,” Dex says. His eyes are wide.
“Fucking hello to you too,” Derek says. The two shots of tequila he took before coming warm his cheeks and loosen his limbs and he’s tap-tap-tapping on the table just for something to occupy himself.
“Sorry. Uh, hi. It’s nice to see you again,” Dex says. He looks down then up again, straight into Derek’s eyes. “You don’t know how nice.”
They stare at each other until the waitress comes by to take their drink orders -- water for Dex who’s in the middle of his season and a double rum and coke for Derek, because like hell Derek is paying for this drink and this meal.
He’s aware of Dex’s eyes on him, lingering on the floral sleeve peeking out from under his shirt, taking stock of all the ways he’s changed in the same way Derek had done last week. Derek feels distinctly self-conscious before he can tell himself not to care -- his hair is shaved short now because in the grand Nurse tradition his hairline began receding three years ago, and he wears his beard full these days, maybe to make up for the lack of hair on his head. He still looks good, he knows, not quite as muscular as he used to be, but Dex looks -- even the scar doesn’t detract from how he looks. Fuck. Derek is fucked.
When he gets his drink he does his best not to finish it in one shot, and instead sips gingerly, unsure how to break the silence. He orders the risotto like Kelsey said to and Dex gets a steak. Medium-well. Things haven’t changed that much.
“How have you been,” Dex says so Derek doesn’t have to. He hasn’t stopped looking yet.
Derek fights the urge to snap back something nasty and takes a deep breath. “Fine,” he says. “I teach English as a second language at a community college not far from here.”
“And the coffee shop?”
“Yeah, well. Rent is expensive.”
Dex frowns. “I thought -- huh.”
So Dex hasn’t been following news about the Nurses either. Fair enough.
“You talk to C?” he asks instead of offering details. The story’s all over the internet, anyway, if he really wants to know.
Dex finally looks down. “Yeah. He invited me up to Winnipeg this summer.”
“Told you.”
“Yeah.”
They fall into silence again and it’s heavy, and hard-edged and sharp, like any wrong word could cut and bruise them some more. Derek is so tired.
“What about you,” Derek says.
Dex speaks at the same time. “You deserve an explanation.”
The clink-clink of cutlery and the voices of the other diners roar in Derek’s ears when he sits back and crosses his arms. “Yes,” he says. Because he does.
Dex bites his lip and looks down at his hands, big and square and calloused as they were before. “You’d think I’d have had this figured out. Like, what to say.”
The waitress comes and brings their food before he can go on, and Derek thinks it’s something of a relief, because he too needs to take it slow. Breathe. Gather his energy.
The rice is good, anyway.
“You, um, still a vegetarian?” Dex asks, gesturing to Derek’s plate. Derek just raises an eyebrow. “Right. Fuck. Sorry. Um. Okay. This isn’t like, an excuse or anything, it’s just an explanation, and I don’t expect you to forgive me for it but--”
“William.”
“Right. I guess I was just scared.”
Derek swallows his food loudly. “Scared,” he says. It comes out softer than he’d wanted.
“Yeah. Like, I was this twenty-year-old kid, moving to the other side of the country. I didn’t know anyone. And I got there and, I don’t know, most of the guys were nice but some said some shit, and…” Here Dex lowers his voice and looks around. “Fuck. You know I’m not a first-liner or anything, I benched more than not my first year -- first three years -- and like, it’s not that they didn’t respect me, but. I couldn’t just, like, ask them not to say homophobic crap. It’s the NHL, you know? I got scared that they’d find out. About us. Me. I don’t know.”
“So you thought, what, out of sight, out of mind?” Derek focusses on his food, trying to taste it, trying to quell the nausea bubbling in his stomach every time he looks at Dex’s face. He blames it on the scar and the booze.
Dex closes his eyes. “I didn’t say it was a good decision. And it never -- you didn’t stay out of my mind.”
“No. Just your life.”
“I’m sorry. I’ve regretted it every day since, I fucking swear.”
Derek signals to the waitress for another drink, even though his hands are starting to feel weird and tingly like they always do when he’s drunk. “Parse came out, like, four years ago,” he says once she’s delivered it and they’ve sat in silence for a few minutes. “And then Jack, and then that guy from the Aeros, what’s his name?”
Dex clenches his jaw and looks down. Opens his mouth for a second before speaking. “Samson.” His voice is quiet, barely audible over the hum of the restaurant.
“Right, okay. Cool. That’s -- every day, huh? Good to fucking know.” Shaking his head, Derek takes a too-big gulp of his drink, feels it burn on the way down. He kind of feels like laughing at this whole damn situation. Remembers that time he and Dex took Dex’s piece-of-shit pick-up truck out to the woods on the outskirts of town with the plan to get high and camp out in the box all-night, until it started hailing and they had to grab everything and get back in the truck and leave. They lost a pillow to the storm, then went to get greasy pizza at a crappy 24-hour hole because they forgot to get munchies, and were still laughing so hard when they got back to the Haus it took them 15 minutes just to get undressed. Derek blew raspberries against Dex’s thighs before sucking him down and they fell asleep the wrong way up on the bed. Woke up early to pancakes Chowder and Farmer made, then went to practice. Fucking happy.
“I’m sorry.”
“You said.”
“I got help,” Dex says.
Derek’s head jerks up. “What?”
“Last year, after, um, Samson did his press conference -- I started seeing someone. Like, a psychologist. ‘Cause I was angry a lot, you know?”
Derek snorts. “Yeah, I fucking know.”
“Yeah. Right, sorry. I wasn’t doing well, anyway. And Jack gave this interview around that time, about how he sees a therapist and takes medication and how all this internalized homophobia and the media and shit contributed to his anxiety for a long time, so I thought what the hell, right? I’ve got nothing to lose. I was so unhappy.”
“Why are you telling me all this,” Derek says, once Dex has taken a breath. “We don’t know each other anymore.”
Which is like -- fucking harsh, he knows. But it’s easier like this, probably. Maybe. It goddamn hurts to say -- but.
“Yeah, I know,” Dex says, fanning out his hands. His eyes are wide and earnest. “I know. I just -- I’m trying to be honest. Okay? I wasn’t well for a long time, since even before Samwell, and before the Avs, and I’m still not 100%, but I’m getting there. I had an appointment with a new therapist today. So, like, cards on the table, I know you probably don’t want anything to do with me after this, which is fine, but if you do, then know that I’m trying to be better.”
Derek finally gives up on his plate of half-eaten food and just settles with finishing his drink. “You’re different now.”
Dex huffs. “Well, aren’t you? It’s been a while.”
Suddenly Derek can’t be here anymore. It has been a while. What the fuck is he doing? He told himself he wasn’t even going to come, that he was going to throw out the post-it note with Dex’s number on it, that he wasn’t going to watch the highlights from his first game. He told himself he was done years ago. He pushes away from the table with a clatter.
“Bathroom,” he bites out, then practically runs to it, desperate for some fucking space. It’s empty, thank God, so he slams into a stall and sinks down on top of the toilet seat, head in shaking hands, breathing deep.
God. Why did he think he could handle this? It’s like he’s nineteen years old and pining again, wanting to touch Dex but not yet understanding why his hands stretch out when he’s near him. Waiting for a sign, anything that says you’re doing alright, Derek, keep going. Except Dex is older and bigger and more mature and softer-spoken and just fucking gorgeous and this time the puck’s on Derek’s side, possibly, if he’s understood correctly. For an English teacher, he does that a lot, misreading situations.
He doesn’t realize how long he’s been sitting there, trying to calm his heart, when he hears the door swing opened followed by “Nursey?” so maybe Dex hasn’t changed that much after all, and knows just how to push Derek until he snaps.
“You alright?” Dex asks. His feet appear below Derek’s stall door. “Nursey. If you want me to go pay and leave you alone, you just gotta let me know.”
Derek decides to shoot on net.
In an instant he’s got the stall door open and he pulls Dex in by his lapel, and Dex’s reflexes must have gotten better because he doesn’t hesitate a second before crashing in Derek with his mouth, hot and wet and so fucking good Derek thinks he might be dreaming.
Actually, he has dreamed about this, and it’s better in real life. Better than he remembered, even. He was afraid before that he’d been building it all up in his head for six years but -- Dex’s weight is heavy against him and mouth finds the exact spot under Derek’s ear that no one’s been able to find since the last time. They’re panting, hands everywhere, and this is everything, everything Derek’s ever wanted but tried so hard to forget. His heart feels like it’s going to jump out of his chest onto the bathroom tiles.
“Remember that time -- mm -- we went to that volleyball party --” he pants into Dex’s ear, grabbing his ass and pulling him close.
“Couldn’t keep our hands off each other,” Dex whispers. “Got you off in that pantry.”
“Hit into that shelf --”
“-- April walked in on us -- “
“-- got flour everywhere -- “
“-- made us clean it -- oh!”
Derek’s has gotten his hand in Dex’s pants, going straight for his dick, hard and weighty and hot in his hand and good despite the angle, like he’s in a trance. Unaware of anything but this. This smell -- different, but he could get used to it -- this taste -- the same, he had almost forgotten it -- this feeling -- half-new half-familiar, he could live in it.
Until the bathroom door opens again and a deep voice swears before the door sounds again, steps retreating, and it pulls Derek out of his twilight so fast he stumbles against the toilet and falls onto it. Dex braces himself against the wall, his dick fucking sticking out, breathing hard and staring down at Derek, who’s shaking again.
“Shit,” Dex says. “Shit.” He rubs a hand over his face before tucking himself back in and zipping up, readjusting so it’s not as uncomfortable. “I can’t -- fuck. That could have been anyone. Can we --”
“You’re still scared,” Derek says. His voice is rough and raw because he’s got a lump in his throat the size of Dex’s fist and he’s still fucking turned on, because Dex is so close, his suit rumpled and his hair wild and his cheeks red red red.
Dex closes his eyes. “Not of this. Not of you. But I just -- it’s a new team. I can’t, not yet.”
“Yeah,” Derek breathes. “Yeah. I get it.” Wills himself to think of gross things -- the subway, the Haus’ green couch, a thousand roaches, that thing his roommate left in a tupperware in the back of the fridge neither of them have had the balls to clean out yet.
“We should --”
“Yeah.”
Derek goes first, sits at the table alone and catches his breath, tells the waitress everything is fine and could they have the check, thank you. Dex comes back while she’s bringing it and hands her his credit card, his hair wet around the edges like he splashed water on his face.
“I don’t really get recognized a lot,” he says quietly to Derek, carefully. “Especially not here.”
“Andrée loved your autograph. She brought it to school for show and tell.”
“Really? I’m glad.”
The waitress brings their receipt and Dex’s credit card and he scribbles in the amount for a tip on the slip, which Derek knows is higher than necessary because Dex has always tipped well.
“Do you want to come back to my apartment,” Dex says. Careful.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Oh. Uh, why not?”
Derek shakes his head. “I need -- time. Fuck, man, you just barge into my life like you never left and you disrupt it like this, expect me to fall right back in love. It’s not fucking fair, Dex. It’s not.”
“You were in love with me?” Dex asks.
“That’s not the point! I’ve got a life. What if I had someone already?”
“Shit. Do you?”
“No, but --”
Dex grips the table cloth. “I never asked you to fall in love with me again. I just want -- I just want a chance.”
“In secret.”
Their eyes meet and Dex’s hold a fire Derek hadn’t known was missing. It’s thrilling. “You can’t ask me to come out before I’m ready, because I won’t. This isn’t like coming out to the Samwell team, this is -- Sonny sometimes needs a security detail in Houston now, you know. Besides, Bitty and Jack hid it for like, five years. It’s not impossible.”
“Well, you can’t compare us to Bitty and Jack.” Derek sighs. “Shit. Okay.”
“What? Okay?”
“Yeah. I’ll -- give you a chance, or whatever.”
“You sound like you’re going to say that it’s chill.”
Derek almost laughs -- instead he lets the corners of his mouth lift up indulgently. Dex’s answering smile is goddamn radiant. “Let’s just, like, get to know each other again.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Derek, I’ll be ready eventually. I think.”
Derek nods. “I know. I won’t rush you, I won’t.”
Dex stands, because they’ve been sitting at the table for longer than they should have been since paying, and grins widely.
“Alright,” Dex says, holding out his hand for Derek to clasp. “Hi, I’m William. Can I walk you to your door?”
