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As most things are, this is Chris Chow’s fault.
He doesn’t look like an instigator for trouble, with his perpetually cheerful smile and the way he tends to drop everything so that he can try and solve problems. Even Islanders fans wouldn’t call him a troublemaker, with his reputation for waving at babies and sitting with his legs swinging on top of his goal. Only those who know him personally can see it, the sly smile when a plan starts to come together, that look of faux innocence when he sarcastically tells you he has no idea what you’re talking about.
William Poindexter is currently mowing the grass shirtless, sweat dripping down his back, and it’s all Chris Chow’s fault.
Derek didn’t ask for this, okay? The plan was he would go to Samwell, play some hockey, and emerge four years later with two degrees, one in English and one in Education. The next part of the plan was grad school, depending on how well his student teaching gig went. If he liked it, he’d look for a job as a teacher, if he didn’t, he’d do some more school and write on the side, possibly see about becoming a professor.
Chris Chow was not part of the plan. Or maybe he kind of was. Derek had wanted to make friends, had maybe fantasized a little bit about having that kind of close friendship with his hockey teammates like it’s always depicted in the movies. Chowder became his best friend within days, and over the course of four years, their friendship only grew stronger.
Will Poindexter, however, was not part of the plan.
Seeing a cute redhead on his campus tour and thinking oh he’s hot should have been the end of it. There were objectively hotter guys spotted on that day anyways (Justin Fucking Oluransi, anyone?), it should have just been a passing thought that never stuck. But Derek couldn’t let it go, couldn’t stop thinking about playing hockey with this hot guy and maybe making out in the showers after practice. It was inappropriate, and ridiculous, but he didn’t care all that much, because he didn’t even know this guy’s name, and he probably wouldn’t even see him again in his life.
Wrong.
Meeting William “Dex” Poindexter and being paired with him immediately on the ice was not part of the plan.
Arguing with him constantly, to the point of almost blows, was not part of the plan.
Letting Dex become his other best friend, was definitely not part of the plan.
The biggest flaw in the plan, of course, was that Derek didn’t consider the fact that he’d fall in love. Or well, he had considered it. Derek falls in love with strangers every day, falls in love with the color of the girl on the train’s hair and the slope of the person working the coffee cart’s nose. Falling in love is easy.
Falling in love with a best friend though, is hard.
Derek realized it the summer between sophomore and junior year, and promptly buried it deep down inside of him where his father taught him emotions are supposed to go. At some point during junior year, he thinks that maybe his feelings are reciprocated, but moves are never made by either party. So they live together for two years, essentially attached at the hip, and part ways at the end without ever speaking a word about the cuddling and the long talks and the way they can communicate without words.
So Derek goes back to New York after Samwell, gets a job teaching English to ninth and tenth graders while he works on getting his masters at night. He keeps in touch with some of his teammates from college, though really, Chowder is the only one. Of course it helps that Chowder was signed by the Islanders, and that he and Cait bought a bomb ass house out on Long Island.
But back to the point, his current situation is a direct result of Chris Chow and his sneaky plans.
It happens because Chowder gets bored during the summer, especially this summer, because the Islanders didn’t even have a chance at the playoffs this year. This is especially bad because Derek wasn’t offered a summer school job this summer either, which means that he’s been spending an inordinate amount of time sitting beside the Chow’s pool, watching Cait teach their one year old, Charlie, how to swim, while pretending to write an article for the journal he sometimes submits too. He’s worried about having a job in the fall, he kind of wants a change, but there’s not very many open spaces in this school system, and there’s so many new graduates hungry for a job.
He makes the mistake of venting about it to Chowder. It’s not really a mistake, per se, because Chowder is his best friend, and he likes talking to him about everything and anything. The problem is that he forgot that Chowder is a fixer. So it shouldn’t have been a surprise when Chowder shoves his lap top in front of him one day in early July, finger jabbing at the screen.
“East Greenwich High School has three openings in their English Department,” Chowder says without preamble. He’s eating peanut butter straight out of the jar, and Derek’s kind of jealous. He used to be able to do that (and he still does occasionally), but he doesn’t get nearly enough exercise for it to be maintainable. “You should check it out.”
“Where the f- heck is East Greenwich?” Derek asked, shooting a sheepish glance at Charlie sitting in his highchair at the kitchen table.
“It’s in Rhode Island,” Chowder says. “I think you’d like it there.” Later, Derek will look back on this instance and realize that Chowder’s face is suspiciously blank. But in the moment, he doesn’t give it a second thought.
“I don’t know… that’s far from here.”
“It’s not,” Cait laughs. “It’s like two hours, maybe three. Plus, you’ll be close to Jack and Bitty. And halfway between us and Shitty.”
Those are valid points, but it’s been almost four years since he graduated from Samwell, and with the exception of Chowder, he’s only seen his old friends a handful of times. They still have their group chat, but it’s much quieter than it was in college, and tends to have more pictures of babies and pets in it than anything else.
But he thinks about it anyways, and does some research, and decides that working in a school in a suburban town might be a nice change. In the end he knows he’ll want to go back to an inner city school, but the experience wouldn’t be bad. Getting the job would be a long shot, anyways.
Derek blames the fact that he gets offered the job on Chowder, and blames the fact that he accepts it on him as well. It’s only fair, seeing as Chowder pushed so hard for him to take it. At the time, Derek had been a little offended at Chowder’s eagerness to get him to move away from. But now, as he sits on a fucking porch swing, watching sweat drip down Will Poindexter’s spine, he’s more offended that he didn’t realize this was Chowder’s plan all along.
See the thing is… the thing is, Derek has barely spoken to Dex since the day they moved out of the Haus. There were a few texts exchanged that summer, and one weird phone call that included Derek shutting down after hearing a girl giggle in the background on Dex’s end (it was probably one of his cousins, but Derek doesn’t deal with emotions well to begin with). Their only communication has been through the group chat, and it always seems to work out that when the team gets together, one of them can’t make it. It’s not on purpose, at least on Derek’s side of things, but he can’t help but think about it sometimes, knowing that Chowder and Cait go up and visit Dex regularly, even now.
He probably should have thought about that when Chowder brought up the Rhode Island thing. It should have been obvious, the way he was pushing so hard for this. But Derek didn’t realize it, didn’t even consider it, even when Chowder announced he had found the perfect place for Derek to live.
“The guy that owns the place lives there,” Chowder says off handedly, seeming to be paying more attention to his twitter feed than the fact that Derek is currently attempting to change Charlie’s diaper. He doesn’t really know how to do this, but Cait’s at work, and Chowder is insisting that Derek ‘needs the practice’. “He’s good with his hands, you’ll never have to like, fix anything. Which is good, since you can’t even seem to handle changing a baby’s diaper.”
“Listen dude, I totally got this,” Derek lies through his teeth. Charlie seems to sense weakness and giggles, before promptly starting to squirm around on the changing table.
“You really, really, don’t.” Chowder swiftly pockets his phone and takes over, getting a new diaper on Charlie in thirty seconds flat. The kid looks kind of unhappy with the outcome, and Derek can’t really blame him. Diapers are probably the worst.
“How do you know this guy anyways?” Derek asks as he follows Chowder back out into the living room. For a brief moment Chowder gives him the Are You Fucking Kidding Me? look, before it’s swiftly replaced with that suspicious innocence.
Derek doesn’t figure it out until he’s driving his ass up to Rhode Island. He’s somewhere in the middle of the hellscape that is 95 Nortj through Connecticut, when he really starts to think about how weird this whole situation is. Like the fact that Chowder convinced him that he didn’t need to sign a rental agreement before he moved, or how Chowder handled every interaction with his future roommate/land lord. At the time he’d chalked it up to Chowder’s busy body tendencies and being bored in the middle of the summer. But now that he’s almost halfway to his new home, that he’s never seen, and his new roommate, that he’s never met… things are starting to freak him out a little bit.
So he calls the only person he knows will give it to him straight.
“Derek?” Cait says into the phone when she answers. “Is everything okay? It’s only been like, an hour.”
“Whose house am I moving into?” He asks, glaring at the minivan in front of him. “Please.”
“You… you seriously don’t know?” Cait sighs, background noise fading. He assumes she’s shutting herself in a bathroom or something. “I thought you were just letting Chris think he pulled the wool over your eyes.”
“I’m going in FUCKING BLIND! FARMER!” Derek screeches into the phone, not caring that the other drivers on the road can probably see him.
“First of all, I’m not Farmer anymore dude,” Cait says smugly. If she were here, Derek would certainly be sticking his tongue out at her and flipping her off. “Secondly, you’re an idiot. What kind of person lets their best friend plan where they’re going to live without even asking for their landlord’s name? Who does that?”
“Is it him? Just tell me, Cait, please.”
“If by him, you mean Dex, one of my very best friends…” She sighs again, and anxiety starts to curl in the pit of Derek’s stomach. “Then, yes.”
“Fuck,” Derek says, softly. It’s kind of weird, the way his hands are shaking with nerves but the churning in his stomach feels more like excited anticipation than dread. “Does he… does he know it’s me?”
“Of course he knows,” Cait says gently. “When has Dex ever just gone along with something without questioning every single thing? And I know Chris can be… he just misses college, honestly, but he would never do something like this if there was even a chance it would go badly.”
“I haven’t even seen Dex since we graduated. I don’t think he even knows who I am anymore.”
Cait snorts, which is just rude, though Derek doesn’t know if he’s offended for himself or for Dex. “That is so untrue bro, don’t even try that angle. You guys were best friends, it’ll be fine.” She goes quiet for a second, and Derek can envision her chewing on her bottom lip in his mind. “But like, if you’re seriously uncomfortable or anything at all, you can just come stay with us until we find you a new place. No questions asked. From me, anyways. I can’t speak for my husband. But he would be understanding, you know.”
Derek takes a moment to catalogue the way he feels. He thinks about how much he’s missed Dex, missed his little kind smiles and contagious laugh. The thing is he wants to see Dex, and even though this current situation is not very adult like at all, he can be an adult about things. If living with Dex doesn’t work out, then he can handle it. But he knows he would most definitely regret not trying.
“No,” he says. “I think… I need to do this. At least try. And I mean, if Dex was okay with it then…”
“That’s my boy!” He can practically hear Cait’s grin through the phone. “Go get ‘em tiger!”
“I hate you,” he lies, smiling at the sound of Cait’s laugh.
“Lies,” she says, still laughing. “Text me later, okay? And make sure you talk to Chris at some point, he’s kind of panicking that he went too far with this one.”
“Kay, I will.” Derek’s still smiling as he hangs up the phone, until he looks at the map on his phone and realizes that he’ll be seeing Dex for the first time in four years in less than an hour. He stares out the windshield at the endless Connecticut license plates surrounding him, and whispers, “fuck.”
His hands started to sweat when the GPS says he’s 20 minutes away, and by the time he’s down to 5, he’s seriously considering turning his car around and driving back to New York. Derek’s never been one to outright confront his emotions, and this right here, this feels like a hell of a big confrontation. It feels like a disaster waiting to happen.
Unfortunately, instead of a disaster, Derek gets Will Poindexter.
He’s not ready for the way Dex’s shoulders have gotten broader or how he’s put on even more muscle since senior year. Nothing could have prepared him for the dark red scruff covering his jaw, or the way Dex has let his hair grow out a bit on the top. The killer though, is the way Dex smiles at him when he climbs out of his car, his eyes lighting up in a way that makes Derek think of strawberry rhubarb pie and the feel of fresh ice beneath his skates.
There’s an awkward moment that includes a weird bro hug and an over use of the word man, but then Dex is jumping into action, and grabbing Derek’s bags from the car. Apparently some things never change. One of those things, apparently, is Derek ability to be distracted by Dex’s ass in a pair of tight jeans. He forces himself to take in his surroundings, the immaculate lawn and landscaping, the quaint little front porch and the fresh white paint covering the house. The inside is old but well kept, with parts of it obviously recently renovated. It suits Dex really well, actually.
He’s good with his hands, you’ll never have to like, fix anything… Chowder’s words echo in his head, and Derek has to fight back a scowl. Looking back, it’s so fucking obvious that this was about Dex the entire time.
“So this’ll be your room,” Dex starts, setting Derek’s bags onto the bed. Derek pulls himself out of his thoughts and nods slowly, feeling a little dazed as he looks around at the soft green walls and the sunlight pouring in through the window.
“This is chill, man,” he says, mostly to see Dex roll his eyes. “I like the color it’s… nice.”
“Aren’t you an English teacher?” Dex chirps, but there’s a faint blush painting his cheeks. “Couldn’t come up with a better adjective than nice?”
“Hey fuck you,” Derek grins, pushing at Dex’s shoulder and definitely not letting his hand linger there. “Just give me the tour or whatever.”
So Dex shows him around, from the bathroom they will have to share to the cozy living room and the newly renovated kitchen. They bring in the rest of Derek’s stuff from the car (Chris and Cait are bringing the big items up from New York for him in Chris’s truck the next weekend), and then Dex calls for pizza, bringing beers for the both of them out to the picnic table in the shaded backyard.
Catching up with Dex is easier than he imagined. Derek could probably blame in on the beer, but he knows no substance can come close to pulling him under like Dex’s Boston accent and the way he waves his hands around as he speaks. He can’t help but be charmed by how embarrassed Dex gets when he realizes his supposedly funny work stories aren’t really all that funny, or by the way Dex’s eyes go all soft when he talks about the cat he wants to adopt from the local shelter.
As he crawls into bed that night, Derek can’t help but think about how much things have changed. Everything seems soft and heavy, so different from the sharp edges and heated words that he’s always associated with Dex. Even though their relationship had smoothed out in their later years of college, the barbed chirps and roughhousing had never really dissipated. Maybe it’s because they’ve matured, or maybe it’s because the spark is gone. All Derek knows is that as nice as getting along is, he kind of misses it.
The feeling lasts for about two weeks, but after a lively visit from Chowder, Cait, and Charlie, and once he and Dex settle into a routine, Derek finds that they have certainly not left the petty arguing behind. It starts the morning after Cait and Chowder leave, when Derek and Dex had stayed up much too late finishing off the thirty rack of PBR Chowder had started with them, reminiscing about the good old days.
Derek wakes up hung over, more annoyed by the fact that he’s just twenty six but he already can’t drink like he used to, than anything else. The obvious solution would be to just stay in bed. It’s a Sunday, it’s raining out and the AC is cranking in his bedroom. If he were smart, he would just stay right there. But Derek has never been able to leave anything alone, so he drags himself out of bed, intent on finding Dex and praying that he’s worse off than Derek. He makes a pit stop in the bathroom, barely opening his eyes as he relieves himself, and kind of hoping the water he slurps out of the tap and the Advil he swallows down will do something to ease the pain pressing behind his eyes. (He knows, deep down, that the only cure for a hangover is a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich with hash browns from Annie’s, but they’re in the middle of fucking Suburbia, Rhode Island, and he doubts he could even drive down the driveway, never mind find a coffee shop).
Slouching back out into the hall, he pauses, a part of him knowing that he should just go back to bed. But there’s another part of him, the part that’s always itching for an argument, that lives off the adrenaline that comes from pushing other people’s buttons, that urges him down the hall towards Dex’s bedroom. Dex is curled up on his left side, face pressed into his pillow and hair sticking up in every which way. The covers are pulled up to his chin, but one of his legs is tucked over the top. Derek stares at the soft underside of Dex’s foot, the way his toes curls slightly against the quilt undoubtedly made by Dex’s mom or grandma. There’s something vulnerable about a bare foot, especially when Dex’s always seem to be covered in starch white socks and weathered boots.
Obviously, the next step here would be to tickle it.
Obviously.
He slips as cautiously as he can into the bedroom, swearing as his foot gets tangled in the little braided rug on the floor and he pitches towards the bed. The whole sneak attack thing goes out the window as he lands half on top of Dex, both of them groaning as hard edges hit soft parts.
“What the actual fuck,” Dex growls into his pillow.
“Mornin’ sunshine,” Derek attempts to sing, the voice coming out gravelly and cracking in the middle, completely ruining the effect.
“Why are you here, asshole,” Dex says, still grumpy, but Derek likes to think he can hear a hint of fondness in there somewhere.
“Misery loves company baby,” he replies, half smirking as he finally pushes himself up off of Dex and crawls over him, collapsing onto the empty space on the bed. “And you fuckin’ love cuddles when you’re hung over Poindexter, admit it.” Dex doesn’t deny it, and he doesn’t try to injure Derek when he scoots closer and slings an arm around his waist. Derek isn’t sure if it’s just because he feels too shitty to move or if he actually likes it, but he’s going to take what he can get. The peace lasts for about five minutes, the two of the breathing softly and the AC unit humming in the background. It reminds Derek of Samwell, when they’d drink too much at a kegster and spend the next day sprawled out on Chowder’s bed, drinking an inordinate amount of Gatorade and acting like they were going to start their homework at a reasonable hour.
But then Dex moans again, this soft, desperate thing that should probably serve as a warning that he’s going to puke. Instead, Derek’s body seems to translate it directly into something… sexual, and all of a sudden he’s breaking out into a sweat. The thing is, he’s a god damn adult now, okay, and he can handle things like uninvited boners and juvenile crushes, no problem. So when his stomach starts to roll and the sweat turns from vaguely annoying to the cold kind, he knows he’s in trouble.
“I think I’m gon’ puke,” he announces to the back of Dex’s neck. Dex doesn’t say anything back, so Derek assumes he fell back asleep, which is maybe what he should be doing too. But after a few seconds, Dex’s entire body goes ridged.
“Then why are you still laying here?” He hisses, still not moving from his position. “If you yak on me I swear to fucking God, I will actually murder you Nurse. If I have to clean up your puke, then it’s not going to be that big of a deal cleaning up blood too.”
“Whoa that’s harsh bro,” Derek whispers, squeezing his eyes closed in the hopes that maybe the queasy surging in his stomach will go away. It doesn’t though, as could be expected, so he finally rolls off the bed and stumbles to the bathroom.
He kind of loses track of time while the tile floor digs into his knees, contemplating life with his arms bracketing the toilet seat. At some point Dex must have gotten up, because he comes into the bathroom and sets a bottle of red Gatorade on the floor beside Derek.
“I’m gon’ make something for breakfast,” Dex says, his voice softer than usual. Derek shivers as a broad hand slides down his back, rubbing long, comforting strokes up and down. “Might do you some good too soak some of that alcohol up.” Derek groans into the toilet bowl, though he misses Dex’s hand as soon as it’s gone. “And brush your teeth first,” Dex says from the doorway, smirk evident in his voice. “You reek.”
Derek flips him off behind his back.
When he finally feels okay enough to head downstairs to the kitchen, he finds Dex frowning down at a loaf of bread. Derek watches him slice it, unable to look away from the thin t-shirt clinging to his broad shoulders and the way his sweatpants hang off his hips. Dex glances at him over his shoulder with a half-smile, and Derek’s chest suddenly feels too full, like his heart is going to explode out of his ribs.
Oh no.
“You’ve gone soft Poindexter,” he ribs, because Derek can never leave nice things alone. “Bringing me Gatorade, making me breakfast.” Dex’s smile turns to a glare, but his eyes are fond even as he rolls them.
“I did this for you in college too, you enormous dickhead,” he grumbles, pointing the bread knife in Derek’s direction in a rather menacing fashion. “You can cook your own damn breakfast if you’ve got so many opinions on it.”
“But everything tastes better when you make it,” Derek insists with a flutter of his eyelashes, letting his voice turn all sweet and syrupy.
“Oh fuck off,” Dex snaps, turning quickly back to the bread. To Derek’s immense please, he can still see the deep flush spreading down the back of Dex’s neck and up to his ears. Not for the first time, he thinks about tasting it, about following the pink across Dex’s cheeks, down his neck to his chest.
Not for the first time, Derek realizes he’s completely and utterly fucked.
Luckily for Derek, he’s done this before. He learned how to manage the whole Having a Crush on Poindexter thing when he was in college (though now he would prefer not to refer to this current disaster as a crush, okay? He’s too old for that shit). So he pulls back a bit on the chirps, and tries to spend a bit more of the time he knows Dex will be at the house out exploring. He goes to the beach on the weekends, finding inspiration in the crashing waves and the people shiny with sun tan oil and dropping their R’s when they speak. On weeknights he checks out local farmer’s markets and becomes familiar with the movie theater, returning home too late for a shared dinner and pretending he doesn’t notice the pout on Dex’s face.
In Derek’s own personal opinion, he’s managing the whole feelings thing pretty well. Dex works a lot, and Derek avoids him and any impulses to like, kiss his neck at random moments. It’s a pretty solid plan, even though he still finds his mind drifting to Dex even when they’re apart. He also notices that when they are together, Dex seems glued to his phone, texting furiously with a scowl and a blush warring for dominance on his face. Derek asked him, once, if he had a “friend” he wanted to introduce to Derek, but all he’d gotten out of that was an eye roll and a “fuck off asshole”.
About a week before school starts, Derek spends almost an entire Saturday at Blue Beach down in Quonset. He likes it there, quiet except for a few families with kids, most beach goers drawn to the bigger state beaches like Narragansett and Matunuck. The sun leaves him feeling that good kind of tired and overly warm, but instead of blasting the AC on the drive home he just rolls his car windows down. There’s a nostalgia in it that makes him think of summers spent traveling with his moms, how they’d always spend a couple of weeks at a tiny beach house on the Virginia coast, driving around in a rented car with too hot leather seats and an AC unit that doesn’t work. He misses the feel of sweaty thighs sticking to leather and the smell of his Mama’s perfume floating on the breeze from the front seat.
Needless to say, he’s more than ready for a couple of beers on the back porch. There’s Narragansett Summer Ales in the fridge when he gets home, and he pulls out two, unabashedly pressing the cool cans to his over warm chest as he heads for the back door. It takes him a minute, once he’s settled into one of the patio chairs and cracked open a can, to realize that the backyard isn’t exactly as peaceful as he expected it to be.
It’s not really the noise that bothers him, he thinks as he watches Dex push the lawn mower across the grass in unnervingly straight lines. No, the noise isn’t the problem at all. Derek grew up in New York City, and while there aren’t a lot of lawnmowers buzzing there, there’s plenty of other distractions. The problem here, is Will Poindexter.
The reality of the situation is that this whole thing is very much Chris Chow’s fault. He orchestrated this, Derek is sure, right down to the worn out jeans hanging low on Dex’s hips and the beads of sweat rolling down his freckled back. Derek doesn’t know exactly how Chowder made that possible (though he definitely had something to do with it) but it’s Chowder’s fault that he applied for this new job, and that he accepted it, and that he moved in with the guy he’s been lusting for since he was eighteen years old. Because only Christopher Franklin Chow would think that’s a good plan, and Derek is definitely planning on making Chowder deal with whatever disaster they end up with as the aftermath.
If Derek were smart, he would pack this little party up and head to the couch, or his bedroom, or anywhere other than here. But he hasn’t gotten laid in like ages, there’s really no harm in looking, and honestly, Dex is putting on a pretty good show. It’s not like sitting here and drinking a beer is going to do anything.
Right?
Derek doesn’t realize that Dex has stopped mowing until he’s about three feet away and smirking like some sort of asshole. If he’s just been daydreaming, Derek wouldn’t have even worried about it, but instead he had spent the last three minutes staring very intently at the cut of Dex’s hips and the coarse trail of hair disappearing beneath the waistband of his jeans. Back in college, Dex probably would have just turned tomato red and scowl-y if he ever caught Derek checking him out. But now, he seems to find it amusing, with only a hit of a blush on his cheeks that could be a result of the afternoon sun.
“See somethin’ you like?” Dex asks as he flops onto the swing beside Derek, swiping the spare beer off the porch railing. There’s a challenge flaring in his eyes and curling along the arch of his brow, and not for the first time, Derek is helpless to take it.
“Always, Poindexter.” It’s the truth, really, but he knows that his delivery means Dex will take it as a joke. He couldn’t even begin to count the number of times he had tried to low key hit on Dex with too long looks and compliments, only to have Dex roll his eyes and tell Derek to stop fucking with him. He’s expecting it this time, waiting for the almost means comeback to spark from Dex’s lips.
Instead he gets a long, slow look over the top of the beer can, Dex’s eyes almost orange in the sinking sun. “Yeah?” Dex asks, his face almost unreadable save for a slight tremble to his bottom lip. If Derek were as brave and as suave as he likes to think he is, he’d look Dex right in the eye and tell him exactly how he feels using all the flowery words that have etched themselves around and around his rib cage. Instead he glances down as his hands curled to too tight around his beer can, and tries to find his nerve.
“Well yeah Dex,” he admits finally, watching the way Dex’s entire body goes rigid out of the corner of his eye. “I’ve been like, stupid for you since we were eighteen.”
The sounds of summer become deafening as silence settles between them, broken only by the too loud thumping of Derek’s heart. Hopefully tomorrow he can blame this on the beer and the sun and this never ending summer, but right now all he can hope for is Dex to break the silence.
“Are you gonna look at me, or…” Dex trails off when Derek glances up, startled at the hesitant smirk pulling at the corner of his lips.
“I just confessed my fucking everlasting love you jack ass,” Derek grumbles, swatting at Dex’s arm. “The ball was in your god damn court.”
“I love you too, dork,” Dex laughs, his eyes impossibly fond. Derek just stares at him for a moment, trying to comprehend the fact that the guy he’s been pining over for years just casually admitted that he loves him. He reaches behind him to set down his beer, not really caring when he completely misses the porch rail and the whole can falls to the ground. Dex is still laughing when he reaches for him, their lips just barely brushing as Derek leans in for a kiss. It takes a couple of breathless tries for the laughter and smiles to die down enough for the kiss to turn into something real.
All it takes is the first brush of Dex’s tongue against his bottom lip for Derek to groan and tug Dex closer, the swing creaking and swinging wildly beneath him. Dex is sticky with sweat and smells faintly of gasoline and grass clippings, but Derek can’t get enough of him, can’t stop himself from dragging his fingers across all that bare skin and hard muscle.
It’s not long before their awkward position starts to make things uncomfortable and they break apart, Derek’s chest rising and falling more rapidly than it has any right too. He hasn’t felt like this in ages, light headed and jittery, like he could walk on water or fucking fly if he wanted to. Dex looks like he might be feeling the same way, eyes unfocused and lips shiny with spit, a red flush spreading from his ears down towards his chest. “So like,” Derek start, stealing Dex’s beer, which somehow managed to make its way to the floor without spilling. “How’d you like… get the courage to say something, or whatever?”
Dex grins, this honest thing that lights up his entire face. “Chowder’s been high key meddling for like, six months.”
“This is all his fault,” Derek whispers, staring blankly off into the yard. “That little shit.”
“I mean, I don’t know if we need to blame-“
“He sent me up here without even telling me who my new landlord was, Dex.”
“Well it’s not his fault that you’re an idiot, Nurse, jeez.” Dex laughs again, and Derek doesn’t have any choice but to kiss him.
“Yo this is like, mad kinky bro, I’m gonna fuck my landlord.” Derek grins at Dex, watching the complicated mix of disdain and amusement warring on his face.
“Okay first of all, if you say mad kinky one more time, you will never get the chance to fuck your landlord,” Dex starts, fighting to keep a smile off his face. “Secondly, how is that kinky, you fucking weirdo, get a real kink like the rest of us grownups.” He seems to realize his mistake within seconds, head already shaking as Derek opens his mouth.
“Are you kink shaming me bro? Come on now, I raised you better than this.”
“I fucking hate you,” Dex sighs, reaching for the beer and draining the rest of the can in one swallow.
“Nuh-uh, you love me,” Derek sings, peppering soft kisses across Dex’s cheeks.
“Unfortunately,” Dex says on a sigh, his calloused hands pressing against the sides of Derek’s face and pulling him into a real, soft, kiss.
Later, after they’ve talked and kissed and messed up Dex’s carefully made bed, they take a selfie to send to Chowder. It’s… kind of rude really, with both Dex and Derek flipping the camera off and Derek’s lips pressed against Dex’s cheek. It’s kind of cute too, honestly, and Derek will probably set it as his background. Derek swears he can almost hear Chowder screaming all the way from Long Island, and judging by the illegible key smashing they get in response, they’re not far off.
“This is my greatest life accomplishment,” Chowder practically yells over the phone when they call him, his breath coming in pants. “I can’t even believe – this has been a multi-year project you guys.”
“This is not your biggest accomplishment Chris,” Cait drawls in the background, sounding utterly bored with the entire situation. “Like, this is so fucking low on the list.”
“Hey, that’s unfair,” Derek cuts in, laughing when Cait scoffs. “Me and Poindexter are of prime importance here.”
“Prime annoyance, you mean,” Cait shoots back, but Derek can hear the smile in her voice.
“I feel like I deserve a prize or something for this,” Chowder continues, apparently not paying any attention to the rest of the conversation.
“I’ll make you a trophy babe, don’t worry about it,” Cait says.
“Hashtag relationship goals,” Derek chirps, grinning when Dex groans and let’s his head thunk back against the wall behind him. But when Dex looks at Derek from under his lashes, his eyes dark and the curve of his mouth fond, he can’t help but remember his Mama telling him marry your best friend, kiddo. He’s always been envious of the fact that Chowder got that with Cait, how she’s not only the love of his life but his closest confidant. Even though it took Chowder pushing him in the right direction, he thinks that maybe, just maybe, he might finally get to have that.
Cait: here you go babe
Chowder: WOW!!!!! BABE!!!!! I LOVE YOU!!!!! MY GREATEST ACCOMPLISHMENT!!! not counting marrying you!!
Nursey: did you literally find the only unattractive picture of me? I thought we were bros… #rude
Dex: ………. why am i friends with you people