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The moment he felt the snowball connect with the back of his neck, Dex knew—it was on.
He turned around and sure enough, there was Nursey, standing on the Haus lawn, wearing nothing more substantial than a multi-colored striped Patagonia sweater and holding an armful of pre-packed snowballs. “ Nurse!” Dex called out. “You are so dead!”
“Oh, yeah. Definitely.” Nursey readied another snowball. “You’re totally about to hashtag-wreck me.”
Nursey didn’t get a chance to throw the snowball he was holding. Dex set his backpack down on the sidewalk in front of the house, bent down to scoop up a snowball, and threw it at Nursey’s hand as hard as he could. It exploded as soon as it came into contact with Nursey’s fingers, knocking Nursey’s snowball to the ground and making him sputter as bits of snow flew into his face. Bingo.
“You’re going down , Nursey,” Dex grinned.
Dex was raised in a household of five kids in the middle of Portland, Maine. Knowing how to participate in a snowball fight was less of a talent and more of a survival skill. If you didn’t know how to pack a snowball in under two seconds flat, there was no way you were going to be able to defend yourself when your older sisters decided to ambush you on your way home from school. Dex was a snowball fight professional. Nursey had no idea what he’d gotten himself into.
With practiced hands, Dex scooped up two more snowballs and threw them with deadly accuracy, aiming straight for Nursey’s face. One of them hit Nursey’s chest, but the other hit its mark perfectly. Was it playing fair? No. But was it satisfying? Hell yes.
“Ow! Shit! That was savage, man,” Nursey said, wiping snow out of his eyes. “You aren’t messing around, are you?”
“Nope,” Dex said. “You gonna fight back or what?”
“Hell yeah, I’m fighting back.” Nursey said. “Come at me, bro.”
And so he did.
They started at a standoff, neither one of them moving first, neither wanting to lose the advantage of the retaliation shot. Then Dex pounced, and it was all chaos from there. After about five minutes, Dex managed to force Nursey to take shelter behind one of the trees on the east side of the Haus yard, which actually ended us serving as a fairly decent fortress for Nursey. It put Dex on the offensive, trying to figure out a way to get at Nursey without putting himself in a vulnerable position. In the end, he managed to fool Nursey with a decoy snowball while he ran around the other side of the tree and attacked Nursey from behind.
“Oh, fuck!” Nursey cried as Dex hit the small of his back with a particularly well-packed snowball. “Fucking shit! Fuck, Dex!”
“You started it!” Dex said. He threw another snowball at Nursey’s chest, but he dodged it. Damn it. Now he was out of ammo. As Dex bent down to scoop up another snowball, Nursey managed to peg him in the shoulder. “Hey!”
Nursey grinned. “Who’s dominating now, hm, William?”
“Not you.” Dex barreled towards Nursey and tackled him into the snow.
Wrestling Nursey was more fun than he could have anticipated. After just a few minutes of grappling, they both dissolved into laughter—sprawled out on the icy ground, soaked to the bone, and attempting to shove snow in each other’s faces. He tried to keep Nursey down, scooping in snow from either side to bury him, but it didn’t last long—pretty soon, Nursey had them flipped so Dex was the one with his back in the snow and Nursey was the one hovering over him, dumping piles of snow into his face. Dex found himself with Nursey straddling his waist, Dex’s right arm twisted behind his back with his left trapped above his head under one of Nursey’s hands. He struggled uselessly as Nursey proceeded to gleefully cover his neck, his collarbones, his chest and shoulders with freezing snow. Fuck , it was cold.
“Get off, get off , you asshole ,” Dex cackled.
Nursey just grinned. “Never.”
“Motherfucker.”
“C’mon, Dex. Chill,” Nursey said, smirking. He shoved a handful of snow down Dex’s shirt.
“ Fuuuck!” Dex yelped. “As soon as I get out of this, your ass is mine , Nurse!”
“Sure it is. As soon as you get out of this,” Nursey said. He sat further onto Dex’s chest, applying more pressure and knocking some of the air out of his lungs. Dex squirmed, managing to free the arm stuck under his back, but almost as soon as the arm was loose Nursey was grabbing his wrist, pinning it above his head right next to the other one. It was no good—he was completely trapped under Nursey’s weight, and there was nothing he could do about it.
“C’mon, what do you want me to say? Uncle?” Dex panted. Nursey just shook his head, grinning down at him a little wolfishly.
“Nah, I think I’ll gloat in my victory a little bit more first,” he said. Dex hazarded a look up, blinking some of the snow out of his eyelashes, and stared at Nursey’s face framed against the gray winter sky.
Nursey looked...frustratingly perfect, if a little disheveled. His hair was flecked with bits of snow, the dark curls slightly matted in some places but otherwise as effortlessly tousled as ever. Nursey’s brown cheeks were tinged pink from the cold, and his eyelashes were clumped together a little, and his eyes were looking a bit more green than gray today, and... God, Dex wasn’t really sure where all this was coming from. He was suddenly exceptionally aware of how helpless he was in this position, his arms still trapped under Nursey’s grip. Nursey hadn’t stopped straddling his waist, either. Dex started to feel slightly dizzy.
“C’mon, man. Let me up,” Dex said quietly. Nursey stared at him for a moment. His smile faded a little, his expression becoming unreadable, and then he rolled off of him.
“So, I guess this means I won,” Nursey said as Dex sat up in the snow, trying to brush as much as he could off his chest. “Guess you’ve gotta admit I’m better at snowball fights than you.”
“Psh. I’m still a better shot,” Dex said absently. He felt a little dazed, a little off balance.
“Didn’t do you much good, though, did it?” Nursey teased. Dex flicked a bit of snow at him halfheartedly.
“Hey! You kids done yet?” called a voice from the Haus porch. They both turned to see Bitty, wearing an apron over a tank top and pajama shorts. “‘Cause if you’ve finished trying to suffocate each other with snow, I’ve got some cookies and hot chocolate that I’m not going to finish all by myself. Y’all best help out, or it’ll go to waste.”
“Sweet! You’re the best, Bitty!” Nursey called back. “Thanks, man!”
“Yeah, thanks Bitty!” Dex said.
“I’ll see you boys inside. Don’t wait too long—I don’t want you to freeze to death,” Bitty turned around and closed the door to the Haus behind him.
“Guess we should go back inside,” Nursey said, getting to his feet. He offered Dex a hand, and he took it.
“Yeah, I guess so.” Dex sighed, letting Nursey help him to his feet. “Pretty sure my clothes are more ice than cotton by now.”
“Yeah. Same. You slammed me hard, man.”
“Pretty sure I got it worse, in the end,” Dex replied. Nursey hummed.
“Maybe,” he said. Then he fixed Dex with another one of those unreadable expressions, his smile slightly…wistful? Dex wasn’t sure.
“Race you back to the porch?” Dex said.
“Sure.” He winked. “Go!”
And Nursey bolted
“Hey, not fair!” Dex said, racing after him.
Nursey beat him to the porch, but only just barely. “You totally cheated,” Dex said. “That was not a fair race.”
“Eh. I can live with that,” Nursey grinned back.
Together, shoulder to shoulder, they walked into the warm threshold of the Haus. Dex managed to set aside his strange new emotions for the moment. He could deal with them later, he decided. Today was just one day. Whatever this was could wait until tomorrow.