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Dex downloads Tinder three times. The first time was when he first moved onto campus his frog year; his sister told him everyone does that sort of thing, you don’t have to, I’m just saying it’s an option if you want it. He’d deleted it in the spring after a date that had left him with a sunburn of the words “do me ;)” on his back. The second time, a fluke, while searching for a fake fire app to prove a point to Nursey who still believed the lighter app was the pinnacle of coding.
The third time he’s a junior in the Haus rolling out dough for a pie, and Nursey downloads it for him.
“What the fuck are you doing with my phone,” Dex says. He pats flour onto his rolling pin.
Nursey says, “Nothing,” in the sort of tone that means something . Dex glares at him. “It’s really hard for you to pull off ‘intimidating’ when you have flour in your hair, you know that right.”
Dex sets the rolling pin down, leaning across the table, and sees the flame icon slowly loading on his home screen. He spares a second to be grateful that this is all Nursey’s doing. He doesn’t have any incriminating photos or anything — on his normal camera roll anyway, Snapchat is a different story — but still?
He says, “You trying to get me laid?”
Nursey scoffs. “‘Get you laid,’ pshaw. I’m trying to get you romanced.” He pauses. “But I mean. Yeah, I am.”
Dex rolls his eyes. Nursey taps through the app deftly, navigating the setup buttons like he’s done it a million times. Dex knows for a fact he has. He’s witnessed enough dramatic declarations of deleting Tinder to know Nursey has redownloaded at least fifteen times in the last three years. Probably more over the summer.
Nursey hums merrily as he nitpicks Dex’s pictures, nixing a snap of Dex on his uncle’s lobster boat in favor of Dex staring up at Nursey on the roof during a kegster. Dex goes back to his pie crust.
It’s not — unusual, this sort of thing, sitting around the table while they’re doing their own things. It’s not even particularly weird that Nursey has his phone once he thinks about it. He and Nursey have known each other’s passcodes since they moved in, because after that one weekend when they were both hungover, it was easier to text from each other’s phones than to move to get their own. Laziness necessitates the sharing of passwords. Now and then Nursey will take Dex’s phone out of his pocket to type something into YouTube for him to watch later. Dex usually returns the favor by pulling up obscure sea shanties that Nursey ends up whistling for a week after.
“Your bio sucks,” Nursey comments a few minutes later. Dex glances up in time to see Nursey’s tongue poke out of his mouth as he types, forehead creased like he’s gonna unlock the universe if he can get the wording right. Something warm swoops into Dex’s stomach.
He takes the pie out of the oven at the same time Nursey finishes his bio. It says, Big ears, bigger heart. Dex shakes his head but he doesn’t change it. Nursey laughs. It’s a beautiful sound.
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He doesn’t delete it right away. He should, really — it’s not the best time for this anyway, they’re getting close to midterms, Dex has a billion projects coming up, he has hockey to think about, he keeps thinking about Nursey’s tongue sticking out while he’s thinking — but in spite of these variables, Dex finds himself swiping through profiles now and then. Maybe because of these variables, Dex messages a few people. Possibly out of a desire not to think about these variables, Dex agrees to meet Anna for a date.
“Do I look okay?” he asks on a Friday evening, turning in a small circle in the middle of their room. His heart feels like it’s sitting too high in his chest.
Nursey’s gaze on him is a physical thing.“What’s got you looking so fancy?”
Dex doesn’t bother to argue that jeans and a nice sweater can’t constitute as fancy if all they’re doing is going to a somewhat nice bar.
“I have a date,” he says, and he thinks Nursey’s eyebrows raise briefly before settling in a neutral expression. “We’re going to Nick’s.”
“Oh, because the bar top—“
“Isn’t disgusting, yeah.”
There’s a pause. Some part of him is much too aware of how Nursey’s looking at him like he’s something to figure out. Like if Nursey could just read him like a poem, it’d make sense. Dex pretends to check the fly on his jeans to avoid it. He feels halfway to unsteady standing on this solid ground.
Dex clears his throat seven heartbeats later, aiming for calmly nervous instead of asking Nursey what he sees when he looks at him like that. “So. Um. Do I — do I look alright?”
Nursey shakes his head slightly like he does when he’s snapping out of a daydream. “Yeah,” he says. “Yes. Sorry. I was just thinking.” He clears his throat. “Let me know if you need the room when you get back, okay? C’s been talking about rewatching Miracle, I can just go over there.”
“Does romance usually put out on the first date?”
He catches the pillow Nursey throws at him, laughing.
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It’s not the best date. Dex goes through the motions of asking where she’s from, if she has siblings, what she’s studying. When she answers, she’s looking literally everywhere but at him. Dex privately decides to stay long enough to finish his fries before coming up with an excuse to leave. He’d feel bad for the deception if she hadn’t called him Wally five times.
Nursey laughs at him later and Dex flips him off instead of analyzing why, exactly, his heart sped up. Almost like something big could happen, if he wanted it to.
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The weeks pass. He goes to class. He plays good hockey. In the evenings, they sit on the rug in their room and Nursey swipes for him, having said something like you need some help don’t you. Dex wants to ask him why he’s even bothering with this. Why it matters if Dex is getting laid or romanced or whatever.
They make something of a game out of it. Drink for every “here for a good time, not a long time.” Drink for every “looking for the Jim to my Pam.” Drink for every time someone’s photos are just group shots where everyone looks the exact same. Nursey gets wasted almost immediately every time they play.
“You have the alcohol tolerance of a newborn baby,” Dex says. He can’t tell whether the warmth in his body is from the beer or from the way Nursey’s leaning against him like Dex is the only steady thing in the world. A not-so-small piece of him thinks it might be both.
Nursey tilts his head up and Dex looks back and for a wildly breathless moment he thinks Nursey is about to kiss him. Time seems to slow until everything in the universe is concentrated here, now, in this moment where Nursey is studying his irises like he’s trying to memorize them. Dex sees it when Nursey’s eyes flick to his mouth. Slowly, carefully, Dex sucks in his bottom lip.
For a wild, breathless moment, Dex knows he’d let him.
“You have the eyes of, like,” Nursey says, “a robot. You know how in Iron Giant the giant has these glowing eyes.” He pats Dex’s cheek. “They’re beautiful. You’re beautiful.”
Dex laughs without sound. “And you’re drunk.”
Nursey shrugs and Dex feels it against his chest. “I’m drunk. You’re beautiful. What else is new?”
Dex’s phone buzzes before he has to answer. He picks it up, feeling much too warm for it to just be from the alcohol, and opens the message. He stares at it for a beat too long.
“What is it,” Nursey says, and all at once he sounds much too sober.
It says, Hey! What’re you doing tonight? :) Dex tilts the screen so Nursey can read it. He is much, much too caught up in the way Nursey’s face seems to fold inward by the end of the second sentence.
Nursey says, “Ah,” and sits up. He takes most of the heat with him when he goes. Dex feels the loss.
“I don’t have to say anything.” Dex puts his phone down. “I don’t have to go.”
“No, you should,” Nursey says. He keeps pulling on the tassels of their rug the way he does when he needs something to do with his hands.
There’s a lot to say to that. It sounds like there’s a lot Nursey meant to say with that. Dex doesn’t know where to start, so he starts simple.
“Why?”
Nursey frowns. “Why not?”
“Not about tonight,” Dex says. “Why’d you want me to download Tinder again?”
“What? I just — I mean —” Nursey trails off. Dex waits while he makes several false starts. Nursey swallows hard. “I just. You seemed stressed out? I guess? And — I don’t know, I thought, maybe, this could be good for you. Stress relief.”
He knows Nursey is lying and he thinks, maybe, Nursey knows he knows. The long and short of it is Dex hasn’t been stressed out this year. He’d thought they’d be worse off rooming together than they are, that they’d somehow burn the Haus down and the fire would somehow burn down the whole world because they’d be bickering too much to put it out.
When that hadn’t happened — even on a small scale — Dex had settled. They’d found a rhythm. Nursey pushing him to go on dates is throwing the whole thing off.
“I think that’s bullshit,” Dex says, and the way Nursey pulls harder on the tassels tells him he’s right. “I think there’s something else and you don’t want to tell me.”
“There isn’t.”
Dex covers Nursey’s hand with his own. “Nurse—”
“Dex.” There is something hurt and hard in the corners of Nursey’s eyes. “That’s all it is, okay? Just a d-man looking out for his d-man.”
“I don’t believe you,” Dex says, and now Nursey frees his hand.
Something quiet and painful fills the space between them. Dex feels unsteady; he wants Nursey to lean on him again. He wants a lot of things.
Nursey’s voice is quiet when he speaks. “It doesn’t really matter if you believe me or not, okay? That’s the way it has to be.”
He sounds like Dex has just taken his heart and crumbled it in his hands and Dex wonders how long, exactly, he’s had the power to do that. He can’t pinpoint the moment when something this big shifted between them.
“I’ll go if you really want me to go,” Dex says quietly. “I promise I will. But I think there’s a part of me that’s a little in love with you, and I want you to tell me to stay.”
“Dex,” Nursey whispers, and his name sounds loved in his voice. Dex holds his breath. Nursey’s eyes are soft when he says, “I want you to stay.”
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“What’re you thinking about?” Nursey asks after, hand resting lightly on Dex’s knee.
“Just about how I—” and here Dex tilts Nursey’s chin up for a long, lazy kiss. “—am going to romance the shit out of you.”
“Bold words.” Nursey smiles at him. “How’re you gonna pull that off?”
Dex shrugs. “I’ll guess you’ll have to stick around and find out.”
“I guess I will.”
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Dex deletes Tinder three times. Sitting in the sun next to Nursey, Nursey’s body warmth pressed against his chest, the delicate curve of a fading hickey half hidden under the collar of his shirt, the earth steady under him, Dex knows he won’t need it.
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