Work Text:
Dex is at Marshalls doing his monthly comb for clearance UnderArmour when it occurs to him that he should start looking for a birthday gift for his mom. Naturally that means stopping by the jewelry department, and he’s perusing the little boxes of “inspirational jewelry” with, like, symbolic stones and shit when something else catches his eye: a gold necklace with a little dinosaur silhouette dangling from it, slotted into a card that says, “You’re ROARsome!”
It makes him think of Nursey.
Not in a weird way. It’s just that Dex is usually the one who takes in the mail, and he’s noticed that Nursey’s sister likes to send him postcards with dinosaurs? So presumably Nursey likes dinosaurs, and he definitely likes puns, and he also definitely wears necklaces, so it just makes sense to toss the thing into his basket alongside a hideously yellow compression shirt and three pairs of slightly defective boxer briefs. He barely even thinks about it. Like, whatever, maybe Nursey will laugh and throw it in the back of the closet and never look at it again, or maybe he’ll love it and wear it all the time. Makes no difference to Dex. Sometimes a bro just buys a bro a necklace. No biggie.
So when he tosses Nursey the box and says, “Hey, man, I saw this and I thought of you,” he’s not expecting a thunderous expression to darken Nursey’s face, and he’s certainly not expecting Nursey to bite out a terse “Fuck you.”
“Um.” Dex feels like he did the time he drunkenly descended the Haus stairs in the dark and he misjudged where the last step was. “What?”
Nursey is looking at Dex with genuine anger. “You’re such a dick.”
“I… what?”
Nursey steps very close — so close Dex can feel Nursey’s breath cascading across his own face — and mutters, “I don’t know how you found out, but if you tell anyone, I’m seriously gonna kick your ass.” Then he strides out of the kitchen and out of the Haus, slamming the door behind him, leaving Dex wondering what the hell just happened.
He’s still wondering hours later, when he’s lying in bed in their shared room. They have early practice tomorrow and Nursey is serious about his sleep, so the fact that it’s midnight and his bed is still empty is definitely significant. For some reason, Dex’s gift really pissed Nursey off.
Maybe Nursey hated the pun? It wasn’t exactly a brilliant bon mot, but it hardly seemed abhorrently bad. So it must be something specifically about dinosaurs. But his sister is always sending him those postcards! But, Dex realizes, Nursey never sticks the postcards up on the fridge or their wall; he seems to just grab them from the mail pile and toss them directly into the trash. And he’s definitely described his sister as a “pain in the ass” more than once. So he doesn’t like dinosaurs, he… dislikes them?
Dex searches his mental storage for “Nursey” cross-indexed with “dinosaurs,” and retrieves two more memories: One, Nursey saying that Toy Story was his least favorite Pixar movie; Dex had assumed it was because of the gender imbalance, but there was a dinosaur in that, wasn’t there? Two, Nursey stopping by the Haus last year while Holster and Ransom were laughing over a looped video of some dinosaur mascot totally wiping out; he’d clenched his teeth so hard Dex could see a muscle in his jaw twitch, and then walked right back out of the TV room.
The postcards. Toy Story. The YouTube video. The necklace. Suddenly it’s all so obvious: Nursey is afraid of dinosaurs.
He has deinophobia, as Dex discovers it’s called after some googling. It’s a legit phobia and everything. According to the internet, most people with deinophobia develop it as children when they learn about dinosaurs and they mistakenly assume that dinosaurs still exist. So Nursey has been silently suffering this entire time — withstanding his sister’s cruel taunting, letting his teammates do things that trigger him — all because he’s worried that, what, if people found out they would make fun of him?
And now he thinks Dex is making fun of him, which makes Dex feel terrible. Sure, he and Nursey tend to… poke at each other’s bruises, literally and figuratively, but mocking someone’s phobia? That’s a level of assholery that even Dex wouldn’t stoop to. He needs Nursey to understand that. And now that he knows about Nursey’s phobia, Dex is going to make damn sure that nobody on the team does anything to trigger him. They’re linemates, Dex rationalizes; anything that affects Nursey’s focus will also affect Dex.
Dex’s thoughts are interrupted when the bedroom door opens and Nursey slinks in, looking surprised and maybe a little disappointed that the lights are still on. He walks over to his desk and starts taking books out of his messenger bag, his back a silent rebuke.
After a few minutes of awkward silence, Dex clears his throat. “Hey, man. I’m sorry.”
Nursey glances at Dex warily. He isn’t looking Dex in the eye, though; his gaze is somewhere around Dex’s collarbone.
“You know,” Dex continues, “about the whole, um. Necklace thing. I didn’t think—”
“It’s fine,” Nursey interrupts. “As long as we never discuss this again.”
“Sure,” Dex says, although he feels a little pang of disappointment that Nursey apparently doesn’t trust him enough to confide in him. “I won’t tell anyone about it, either.”
Nursey nods with a look of relief. Then he hits the light, strips down to his boxers, and collapses into bed, and that seems to be that.
_X_ _X_ _X_
It shouldn’t be an issue. Dinosaurs are extinct, after all, right? It’s not like being afraid of spiders, which are everywhere. Only it turns out that dinosaurs are also everywhere, it’s just that Dex never noticed them before.
First, a bunch of the guys go into Boston to watch Jack play against the Bruins, and while they’re in town they decide to go to the Museum of Science. Which is awesome, obviously — the Poindexters used to take weekend trips to Boston every Spring, and Dex has many fond memories of running around the Hall of Human Life as a hyperactive little kid. Except, when they’re all crowded around a wind power exhibit, Shitty ranting about environmental laws and the “fuckin’ corporate shills at the EPA, man,” Dex realizes that the next stop in the museum is an entire room full of dinosaur skeletons.
He can practically hear a clock ticking down as Tango finishes reading the last informational plaque aloud and the group starts to migrate toward Triceratops Cliff. “Guys!” Dex blurts out. When everyone turns to look at him, he checks his watch. “Uh, I just realized the IMAX movie on China starts in like five minutes, and I really want to see it, so I’m gonna… go do that. Anyone else wanna come?” He waits a second, then nonchalantly adds, “Nursey?”
“Huh?”
“D’you want to see the China movie with me?”
Nursey looks confused. He’s probably unaware of the fate awaiting him in the next room. “Uh… sure?”
“Okay, cool, let’s go,” Dex says, grabbing Nursey’s arm to pull him along before realizing that that’s kind of weird and letting him go. “You guys just keep moving around the museum, we’ll catch up with you later on the second floor.”
The team murmurs a collective acknowledgment but Dex is already hurrying toward the escalator, grateful that Nursey is at his heels.
“So are you, like, into China?” Nursey asks as they wait in line for tickets.
“Um, not really?” Dex says. “But I think I could be, so why not find out, right?”
Nursey gives his usual noncommittal shrug, but he elbows Dex aside to pay for their tickets.
The China movie turns out to be really cool, which is good, because it means Nursey is so busy exclaiming about the Terracotta Warriors afterward that he doesn’t notice they’re skipping the entire first floor of the museum. Dex wants to make sure he doesn’t have to see the enormous T. Rex.
_X_ _X_ _X_
And then, not even two weeks later, a bunch of them are gathered in the TV room, trying to decide on a movie to watch, when what does Chowder suggest? Jurassic Freakin’ Park. Eight heads swivel in unison to stare at Dex questioningly when he yells “No!” in response.
The ninth head belongs to Chowder, who cheerily says, “Oh, never mind!”
“What’s your problem with Jurassic Park, man?” Whiskey asks.
“I don’t have a problem with it,” Dex says. He can feel his face turning red as he avoids looking at Nursey. “I’ve just seen it way too many times. One of my brothers was, like, obsessed with it, and watched it every day for a few months.”
“That’s fine, we’ll watch something else!” Chowder chirps, as Tango furrows his brow and says, “Weren’t you listening to the Jurassic Park music the other week while you were studying?”
“No,” Dex lies, “that must’ve been someone else.” (John Williams is good for information retention, okay?)
“Boys,” Bitty says, “let’s stop interrogatin’ Dex and pick another movie, all right?” Dex shoots him a grateful look as Ford and Tango start arguing about the merits of various Die Hard movies. Nursey is staring at Dex quietly from across the room.
_X_ _X_ _X_
And then there’s the random, everyday stuff that Dex had thought of as totally innocuous before he knew about Nursey’s phobia.
He changes his phone wallpaper so it’s no longer the photo of his two little brothers in matching pajamas, because he looks at it one day and notices the PJs are covered in dinosaur silhouettes. He only dares to catch up on Dinosaur Comics when he’s sure Nursey is in class. He stops playing Mario Kart with Chowder because Chowder always wants to be Yoshi, and Dex is pretty sure Yoshi is a dinosaur. He’s about to pull on an old Firefly t-shirt when he realizes that it has dinosaurs on it. How many times have I blithely worn this in front of Nursey? he wonders as he shoves it to the back of his sock drawer.
He’s become so attuned to dinosaurs that he starts to see them where they aren’t, in rocks and reflections and, one memorable time, a pecan pie. (He briefly considered throwing the pie away, before realizing that Bitty might literally kill him.)
_X_ _X_ _X_
And then, of course, everything goes to hell.
Dex is going to his cousin’s birthday this weekend and she’s apparently into pop-up books, but the only decent pop-up book he could find at the shop was, naturally, about dinosaurs. He buys it, grudgingly, and plans to hide it under his mattress until he can remove it from the Haus altogether. Except when he gets home Bitty is just taking a batch of chocolate chip cookies out of the oven, and everyone knows chocolate chip cookies are a thousand times better when they’re freshly baked, so he dashes up to his room and tosses the bag onto his bed before heading back to the kitchen. He forgets about it entirely until an hour later, when Nursey gets home and they both head upstairs to read for class.
Nursey, because he has no respect for privacy, immediately makes a beeline for the bag. “Cool, what’d you get at the bookstore?” he asks, reaching into the bag and pulling out the book.
“No!” Dex cries, frantically reaching out to slap the book away from Nursey. But he’s too late: Nursey has cracked open the book, and there’s a pterodactyl popping off the page into his face.
Instead of shrieking and dropping the book, Nursey smiles. “Cool!” He turns the page and his grin grows wider as a stegosaurus waves its tail back and forth. He accordions the book open and closed, studying the paper mechanisms, oblivious to Dex gaping at him noiselessly.
Eventually Dex manages to speak. “Did you— did you, like, go to therapy or something?”
Nursey looks flabbergasted. “Did I what?”
“Like, exposure therapy. For your phobia?”
“My… phobia?”
“Yeah.”
“What phobia?”
Dex is starting to feel a little frustrated. “Look, I know you said you didn’t want to talk about it, but it’s a little insulting for you to pretend that you don’t know I know. You can just tell me to leave it alone and I’ll—”
“Dex,” Nursey interrupts. “What do you think I’m phobic of?”
“Dinosaurs,” Dex replies confidently.
Nursey’s face registers surprise, then confusion, then amusement. “Why on earth would you think that?”
“Because you got angry when I gave you that necklace! And you don’t like Toy Story, and your sister is always sending you postcards you hate with dinosaurs on them, and...” Dex stops talking as Nursey collapses into hysterical laughter. It is possible that Dex jumped to conclusions with insufficient evidence. He feels heat creep into his cheeks.
“Wait,” Nursey says, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye, “is that why we skipped the dino exhibit at the Museum of Science?”
“I thought you didn’t realize!”
“Bro, I went to Andover. I think we took class trips to the Museum of Science, like, once a month. I could probably navigate that place blindfolded.” Nursey snaps his fingers and points at Dex. “Wait, you also hid your Firefly shirt in your sock drawer.”
“How did you know about that?”
“I borrow your socks sometimes.”
“Dude,” Dex says. “Not cool.”
“Whatever. What else did you do?”
“Huh?”
“What else did you do to, y’know, avoid exposing me to dinosaurs?”
“Um.” Dex’s ears are turning bright red; he can feel his pulse in them. Fucking traitors. “I changed my phone wallpaper. I hid Chowder’s copy of Mario Kart. I kicked away a rock that looked kind of like a T. Rex head?” Nursey is chuckling and shaking his head, looking at Dex with a cryptic expression. “I, um, stopped the guys from watching Jurassic Park.”
“Oh my god!” Nursey exclaims. “I knew you were lying about your brother watching it every day!”
“Well, I thought it would traumatize you!” Dex says. “I was trying to be subtle because I knew you didn’t want any of other guys to know about your phobia, except apparently you didn’t have a phobia, so I was just panicking over nothing like an idiot, and now you’re—”
Dex doesn’t get to finish his rant, because Nursey is kissing him. It’s quick and soft, and so completely unexpected that it’s over before Dex’s brain can even process what’s happening.
“...What,” he says dumbly as Nursey takes a step back.
“Sorry,” Nursey says. “I just really wanted to do that all of a sudden.”
Dex’s brain is still ricocheting around inside his skull. “It. You. Huh.”
“Was it a terrible idea?” Nursey asks, looking uncharacteristically nervous.
“I. Don’t know?”
“Okay.” Nursey nods. “You don’t have to know now. Or, y’know, ever. We can just forget it ever happened, if you want.”
He starts to turn toward the door, but something occurs to Dex and he blurts out, “Wait!”
“Yeah?” Nursey asks. He looks at Dex the way someone looks at a cardboard box with air holes poked in it: intrigued but wary.
“So if you’re not deinophobic”—
“You looked up the term?”
—“then why did the necklace make you so angry?”
Nursey sighs gustily and runs his hands down his face. “You promise you won’t tell anyone?”
“I swear, Nursey.”
Nursey walks to his desk and flips open his laptop, typing something before beckoning Dex over apprehensively. When Dex comes to a stop next to Nursey and looks at the computer screen, he sees the same mascot fail gif that Ransom and Holster were watching that one time.
“I’ve seen this. It’s pretty funny.” Dex smiles involuntarily as the dinosaur’s tail droops at the end of the video. Wah-wahhh.
“Yeah, well.” Nursey looks up at the ceiling. “It’s me.”
“It— what?”
“It’s me. In the costume.”
“Like… it’s you. In this video?”
“Yes,” Nursey says.
“I don’t understand.”
Nursey makes an aggravated noise. “I earned some pocket money in high school by dressing up as the mascot for a minor league hockey team. Then the basketball team needed someone to play their mascot, so I figured why not? And then they asked me to do it on rollerblades, and I figured, rollerblades are pretty much just ice skates, so I agreed, but then they made me go down the stairs, and the suit started deflating, and I couldn’t see anything, and…” Nursey trails off, sounding like he’s actually fighting off tears.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you that I was an international laughing stock? Gee, why wouldn’t I want you to know that?”
Dex looks back at the computer screen, at the looping gif. The dinosaur’s mouth is flapping comically as the skater — Nursey, apparently — scrambles for purchase on the polished court. Then then spectacular face-plant. Then the wah-wahhh tail droop. Then it starts all over again.
Fuckin’ Nursey, bringing joy to millions of people around the world, and here he is looking like he wants to sink through the floor. Fuckin’ Nursey, with his tribal armband tattoo and his perfect stubble and his surprisingly soft lips that Dex is totally, 100% going to kiss right about… now.
Nursey makes a soft noise of surprise and brings a hand up to stroke the back of Dex’s neck, giving Dex goosebumps. Dex ends the kiss with a shiver, pulling back only far enough to catch his breath.
“So, not a terrible idea?” Nursey whispers.
“Apparently not,” Dex whispers back. “And, by the way, I happen to like dinosaurs.”
Nursey laughs and hides his face in Dex’s neck. “You know, I think I might be coming around on them.”
_X_ _X_ _X_
They redecorate their room, which is to say they push their beds together and Nursey starts hanging his sister’s mocking postcards up on the wall. Dex changes his phone wallpaper back. They watch Jurassic Park and Ford talks about how the velociraptor scene gave her nightmares for a month when she was 12.
Nursey wears the necklace every day. Whenever anyone asks him why he has a dinosaur necklace, he slings an arm around Dex’s shoulders and says, “Because my boyfriend’s roarsome, obvs.”