Chapter Text
Ever since Ransom, Holster, and Lardo graduated, the Haus has hosted far fewer parties.
No, that’s not true.
They’ve hosted quite a lot of parties. It’s just that the style of entertainment is quite different from anything those three particular alums would suggest. (Shitty, Dex thinks, would appreciate them despite their not being kegsters.) People seem to come to the Haus like moths to a flame.
In this case, the flame is mostly Nursey.
They’ve had unofficial poetry slams in the living room. People sitting in a circle and singing songs Dex couldn’t name to save his life in the Reading Room. Curled up in a giant tangle of people watching some horse sport on the couch (all Dex can say for sure is that it is definitively not polo, they were dressed far too showily for that, and besides, it seemed to not be a team sport). Nursey’s crowd of friends gets bigger by the day (aided quite a bit by Chowder, who’s taken on Ransom’s role of being friends on Facebook with every current Samwell student and then some) and somehow, they all seem to know Dex. Or know of him, at least.
Not in the ‘we’re-old-friends-and-you-don’t-remember-me-for-some-reason’ way, in the “Oh, you must be Dex” way that every single one of them greets him when they walk into the Haus for the first time. In that ubiquitous tone of realization and importance that tells Dex that someone (and by ‘someone’ he means Derek Malik Nurse) has been talking about him quite a bit.
Dex would kill to know what Nursey says about him.
And it doesn’t help that every time some new person sees him in the Haus and says, “Oh, you must be Dex,” Bitty and Chowder, if they’re in the room, either stifle a laugh or utterly fail at stifling it.
Clearly they know exactly why Nursey tells so many people about him. Tango does too— he hasn’t asked a single question about it. And who knows about Whiskey, but going by the trend Dex would say Whiskey knows too. He’s just better about not making it utterly fucking obvious that he does.
Sometimes Dex wishes he could just walk up to Whiskey and say, “Teach me your ways. How do you have such a good poker face? How?” because Whiskey is also the reigning poker champion on the team and nobody knows how or why. (He’s somehow absolute shit at every other card game. Even Go Fish.) Dex would make good use of that poker face. He just doesn’t want to explain to Whiskey why he wants it.
And why does he want it?
Because every time someone with flowers embroidered on their flannel shirt or ink stains on their hands says “Oh, you must be Dex,” Dex feels that tiny spark of hope that maybe, when Nursey talks to his friends about him, he isn’t complaining.
It’s a slim chance, though. Try as he might to minimize outright antagonizing, they can’t seem to agree on anything. It’s gotten worse since they started sharing a room— Nursey wants the window open, Dex wants it shut. Nursey can’t write with the sound of Dex typing in his ears. Dex can’t code when Nursey paces around the room. Dex would like to go to sleep before midnight, thank you very much. Nursey wants to be able to sleep in past eight in the morning. Living in each others’ pockets just makes everything more difficult— Dex has no idea how Ransom and Holster managed it for so long.
Then again, Ransom and Holster are like two peas in a pod. Two halves of a whole. Practically soulmates, if such a thing existed. Whereas Dex and Nursey are more like apples and oranges, or something like that. Dex is running out of overused metaphors and he’s not the sort of person who enjoys trying to come up with more. Nursey is.
Today is another one of their Reading Room singalongs. Dex wouldn’t be surprised to go out there and find that they’d built a campfire on the roof and were roasting marshmallows as they sang along to some acoustic version of a ‘70s hit. Of course, he’d make them put it out— no matter how good an idea it might seem at the time, building a fire on the roof of the Haus is not a good way to prolong its lifespan— but it seems like the sort of thing that they would do.
He should probably check later. Right now, though, he’s comfortable and he doesn’t want to get up. He has a mug of coffee and some cookies (Nursey and his friends had taken the rest— Dex had barely managed to snatch enough that he could have a snack while he did his homework, although from the flurry of sound coming from the kitchen, Bitty is making more), and he’s achieved the most comfortable position of sitting on the couch with his laptop and it’s his relaxing time, okay? He’s been falling down the YouTube rabbit hole for about half an hour now and there are many more videos to go.
Dex is in the middle of watching some guy play Gershwin backwards on a trombone when all of Nursey’s friends, trailed by Nursey himself, come down the stairs. They seem to be getting ready to leave; they’re all putting on their shoes and jackets, and a good fifty percent of them have said “Bye, Dex!” as they walk past him.
“They can’t all have coincidentally decided to do that,” Dex says when the door closes behind the last person.
“They didn’t,” Nursey replies, already on his way back up the stairs. “‘Night.”
“Wait, what— Nursey?” Nursey has practically vanished up to the second floor. “Nurse. What is that supposed to mean?”
Nursey doesn’t respond, and when Dex checks the time on his laptop, he realizes he should probably go to bed too.
He briefly entertains the thought of further interrogating Nursey (how dare he be so cryptic and then just walk away) once he gets back up to the attic, but dismisses it. Nursey is the king of tuning things out and Dex would probably just wind up talking his own ear off as Nursey fell asleep.
Dex sighs, tucks his laptop under his arm, and heads up the stairs, avoiding the squeaky step that he probably won’t have a chance to fix until next Saturday. If he’s lucky, Nursey will be out of the bathroom by the time he gets there and he’ll fall asleep before he has a chance to judge Dex about the number of times he comes up with excuses to wash his hands with this hand soap that Chowder got him from Bath and Body Works. It’s jasmine and orange scented and is quite possibly one of Dex’s favorite smells on this earth.
(Nursey’s new shampoo is jasmine scented. Dex is pretty sure this is a coincidence, as Nursey’s shampoo is always some sort of floral. Last time, it was rose— before that, lavender. Throughout the whole year that they’ve been sharing the attic, Dex hasn’t noticed Nursey buy the same kind twice. It’s become a bit of a game for him: try and figure out whether Nursey’s changed his shampoo, and to what, without going to look in the bathroom. He’d gotten lavender, but not rose, which in hindsight had surprised Dex as he’s not even a big fan of lavender.)
“You’re irritated, aren’t you,” Nursey says when Dex gets into the attic. He’s changed into sweatpants and a t-shirt and he’s put on his fuzzy socks, which means he’s planning to go to bed soon, but right now Nursey is sitting cross-legged on the floor using his desk chair as a table. Why.
“A bit,” Dex says. “Why?”
“Oh, you know. If I don’t annoy you occasionally I feel like we’re not really friends anymore. Probably established a dangerous precedent freshman year, but what can you do?”
Dex rolls his eyes, because what else can you say to that, and heads into the bathroom. He can hear Nursey flop onto his bed (when they’d set up two twin beds instead of Ransom and Holster’s bunk beds, Nursey had immediately claimed the one by the window. Fine, Dex had responded. Get woken up by sun shining directly in your eyes every morning. So far, it’s worked out, though) as Dex gets out his toothbrush.
When Dex reemerges, Nursey’s fallen asleep on top of the covers on his bed, with the side of his face resting on an open notebook instead of his pillow. That must hurt. At least it’s not a spiral notebook. He’s got an uncapped pen in his hand, too— one of the ones that Nursey treasures like it’s a family heirloom. He makes an event out of ordering ink refills, and he would not appreciate it drying up if he fell asleep with it uncapped.
Dex sighs (he seems to have been doing that a lot lately) and crosses over to Nursey’s bed. “Hey, Nursey?”
“Mmghmfghfmmmgm?”
“Wake up, your fancy pen is uncapped and you fell asleep on your notebook and you’re sleeping on top of your covers.”
“Oh.” Nursey pushes himself up into a vaguely more alert position (he makes it look elegant, almost like a yoga pose) and opens his eyes, observing first the notebook lying flat on the pillow, then the pen he’s still clutching. “Thanks.”
Dex nods. “You’re welcome. You should try to sleep earlier.”
“Probably.”
Then, as Nursey locates the pen cap and bookmarks his page and puts his stuff back on his desk, Dex falls into his own bed and pulls the covers up to his forehead. At least he had the self-control not to read what Nursey had written.
“Thanks,” Nursey says again from across the room. Judging by the lack of footsteps, he’s done putting his notebook and pen away. “My pen definitely would’ve dried up by morning.”
Dex shrugs, although it’s dark enough in the room that Nursey probably can’t see it, especially not with him under the covers, and says, “Yeah, well, none of us want to see you upset, Nurse.”
Fuck. That was far too sappy. Why did he even— never mind.
Nursey laughs then, a low chuckle that rumbles in his chest. “Sure. ‘Night.”
“‘Night.”