Nurseydex maybe w hurt comfort maybe smth w dex needing comfort??? Thanks
I don’t think this is really what you asked for/what you necessarily wanted but this is what happened when my fingers hit the keyboard and I hope you like it anyway. :)
(brief alcohol/drug mention, but otherwise very PG)
“You ever been in love, Nurse?”
The question caught him totally off guard, hand pausing from where he had been snuffing out the end of their joint on the tiles of the rooftop. He took a second to process what Dex had just asked him, staring at the remnants of ashes by his feet before the wind blew them away and his gaze shifted to the boy sitting next to him.
Nursey probably stared at Dex longer than he should have. Maybe it was the haziness from the weed or the slight buzz from the alcohol they had had earlier, but Dex looked different to him for some reason. He looked vulnerable, almost.
Dex, who was always so hot-headed and determined and intense. Dex, whose shoulders would always stiffen whenever someone asked him if something was wrong—who, every time, would look him dead in the eye and insist that it was nothing. That same Dex was now fiddling with a hole in his jeans, looking out across the street in a way that felt almost distant.
The two of them had never been close. Not by any definition that would make sense to anyone else but themselves. But maybe this is what it meant to be close after all—with the moonlight reflecting off of Dex’s hair, the freckles on his forehead wrinkled as he lost himself to his thoughts, and Nursey’s lips curling up into a slow, soft smile as he watched the boy sitting beside him.
“I think so,” Nursey finally answered, his voice quieter than he had meant it to be—more unsure—before he added, with more determination, “Yeah, I have.”
Dex’s gaze shifted to meet his faster than Nursey had expected it to, amber eyes delving into green in a way that felt so familiar but also so very new.
The moment lasted only for a second before it was broken when Dex let out a huff of breath and a short laugh before looking away, “Of course you have,” he said.
Derek didn’t have it in him to be offended at that. Instead, he just asked, “You haven’t?”
Dex pulled both of his knees up to his chest, wrapping one arm around them while letting the other comb a hand through his hair. Derek’s fingers itched to do the same.
“I don’t know,” Dex eventually answered, voice softer than it had been before, “Maybe.”
Dex’s eyes met his again, but this time it was to give him an incredulous look.
“C’mon,” Nursey coaxed, lightly bumping their shoulders together, “I never get to hear what’s going on in that head of yours. Tell me what it’s like to ‘maybe be in love’.”
Dex gave him a hard look. It was that same look he would have before his jaw set and he determinedly gave some sort of dismissal, but this time was different—this time he was honest.
“It’s scary,” Dex admitted.
That wasn’t the answer Nursey had been expecting and he felt a frown pull at the corner of his lips. For him, love had been a lot of things but he had never thought of it as something to be afraid of.
For Nursey love was seeing the first rays of sunlight peeking out over the horizon after an entire night spent writing. Love was getting off an airplane to see the smiling faces of his moms after a semester of being far from home. Love was when the leaves changed color or when the sun was out, but it was still raining. Love was the sound of skates gliding on ice, of a pen scratching on paper, the puck hitting the back of the net.
And Nursey was pretty damn sure it was love whenever he and Dex seamlessly connected a pass on the ice, accompanied by that sly smile he would find on Dex’s face—the one that Nursey would swear Dex reserved only for him. Love had to be the way his skin buzzed whenever their arms would rest comfortably together on a bus ride home. He knew love was the genuine surprise he felt every time Dex said something unexpectedly funny, the sick feeling he got in his stomach when he saw a guy flirting with Dex at a kegster only an hour before, and it was definitely the way his heart softened when he realized that Dex was totally oblivious to the fact that someone was hitting on him.
For Derek, love had been a lot of things—both good and bad—and this moment was neither, but it was definitely love.
“Yeah,” Dex said, breaking his gaze away from Nursey’s to stare up at the night sky, “It’s like—I have no control over my head. Or my heart. Or anything else. I do shit without thinking and that’s—that’s not like me. I always think shit through but lately…” he paused, “I don’t know, man. It’s just, scary.”
The silence stretched longer than it should have. For once in his life, Nursey couldn’t find the words he wanted to say. He just watched the way Dex’s eyes stared up at the stars, the way they became more distant as he got more lost in his thoughts, and the only thing that felt like the right thing to do was to reach out and comb his fingers through Dex’s hair.
He didn’t know what he had expected Dex’s reaction to be, but he didn’t respond so Derek didn’t stop. They sat like that for a long time—Dex staring up at the stars and Nursey running his fingers through his hair.
“I’m not even sure when it happened,” Dex’s voice was quiet, as if it was a part of the air and the energy surrounding them as opposed to actually coming out of Dex’s mouth, “All I know is that suddenly there wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t think about you.”
Nursey’s hand stilled in Dex’s hair, freezing as he let those words wash over him.
There wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t think about you.
He felt Dex tense up beside him and when he looked down he saw the fear in Dex’s eyes that his own admission had caused. And for what felt like the first time, Nursey understood how love could be scary. Because love could be misunderstandings and uncertainties. Love could be unreciprocated feelings or come in disproportionate amounts. Love, inevitably, would always lead to loss.
But it didn’t have to be that way. Not in this moment anyway—because Nursey’s hand was still in Dex’s hair and he let it fall to his cheek, moving his thumb against the freckles that rested there. His eyes felt heavy and his brain felt foggy but his heart was swelling in his chest because the words ‘there wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t think about you’ were on repeat inside of his head.
Nursey let his eyes fall down to Dex’s lips and he felt the heat spreading across the other boy’s cheeks when he closed his eyes and pressed their lips together.
When he pulled away, he was met with amber eyes that were much brighter and he couldn’t help the smirk that spread across his face as he said, “Yeah, I wish you would get out of my damn head too, Poindexter.”
Before Dex even had time to respond, Nursey was already covering those lips again with his own.
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