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Nursey may be drunk.
For once, he’s fully aware of it, which means the Derek Nurse Table Dancing Control Committee (DNTDCC) gets the night off. Lardo has used that as an excuse to disappear with a bottle of something and a girl from her sculpture class, and Shitty appears to be educating a lax bro in the finer points of binary gender presentation in an increasingly nonbinary culture. It’s comfortable like only Haus parties can be, that weird mix of familiar and ludicrous that seems to be in everything he’s found at Samwell.
He wanders through the hall with a solo cup, pausing to tuck a blanket over Chowder passed out on the couch. The way his bangs flop over his eyes makes him look like a kid in the best kind of way. Nursey takes a second to picture little Chowder, a juxtaposition of chubby cheeks and gangly limbs, and then makes a mental note that tub juice makes him sentimental. Through the window, he can see a group on the porch. Ransom and Holster are attempting to explain the concept of Fire Boppit to a group of unimpressed tennis team girls, Bitty is wrapped up in a too-big jacket, and Dex—
Oh.
Dex is talking to a girl with hair like a waterfall, ducking his head and rubbing the back of his neck. His smile is the one he reserved strictly for when his siblings call, so bright that it takes Nursey a second to tear his eyes away. He most certainly is not jealous, because Derek Malik Nurse is, above all things, chill. He doesn't want Dex getting hurt is all.
“I'm not jealous,” he says aloud, and a passing sorority girl gives him an odd look.
“You good?”
Before he can answer, she's swept back into the flow of the room, leaving Nursey staring out the window again. The girl is extraordinarily pretty, from what he can see of her (which, admittedly, is mostly her back), and the tips of Dex’s ears are pink in an unbearably cute way.
Suddenly, the party isn’t really doing it for him, so before long he finds himself in a room he’s semi-sure is his. The stairs were so much longer than usual that he needs to lie down as soon as possible. Tonight, his bed feels much softer and has an unnecessary amount of blanket, but it smells too homey to kick it off. It's cuddly. When the door bangs open, he pretends to be asleep in case waterfall girl is there, but instead there's a shove at his back and a “Get the fuck up, Nurse” above him.
“Five more minutes, Mom,” he mumbles, pulling the sheets further around himself. “Warm.”
“Nursey, you're on my bed. Get up. My ma knitted me that blanket, and I don't want you drooling on it.”
Nursey cracks one eye open to see a fairly disgruntled blur of freckles leaning over him that eventually he realizes must be Dex. He’s not smiling anymore, but his ears are still pink and it’s still cute. Eventually, Nursey realizes what Dex said and looks down. “This isn’t my blanket.”
“No, it isn’t.” Dex crosses his arms. “Move.”
Nursey continues staring at it. “I don’t even look good in maroon.”
Rolling his eyes, Dex reaches out to yank the blanket away. “You look fine, now give it back.”
Instead, Nursey rolls away, wrapping himself into a blanket burrito. “You’re right,” he muses, “I do look good in maroon. I mean, I’d like to think I look pretty good in everything. Do you think I look good in everything, Dex?”
“You’d look better if you moved.”
“I think I look pretty good in your bed.” Tub juice is probably making him braver than usual, and he slips into his sultriest voice. “Care to join me, William?”
Dex stutters over his words, and it’s so cute Nursey can hardly stand it. “I don’t—I mean I can’t—”
Stretching his arms over his head, Nursey shrugs as nonchalantly as he can. “Dude, it’s chill, I was kidding. You don’t have to do the gay-panic thing here.”
“No, Christ! I couldn’t give less of a shit that you’re gay.”
“Pan.”
“Pan, sorry. But, like, I don’t really care who you sleep with.”
“Why not?” Nursey sounds a little more affronted than intended, and it surprises him. He’s struck with a sudden image of Dex thinking about him with someone, maybe even getting off on it, and rejects it immediately as drunken stupidity. Dex doesn’t have to care if he doesn’t want to.
“Not really my business, man. You do you. Or, like, anyone else you want to.”
“Oh.” There’s a weird sense that they’ve bonded, albeit awkwardly. Nursey shifts back and forth for a second before throwing off the blanket and scooting back. “Hey, come join me. Celebratory bro-cuddle.”
“What are we celebrating?” Dex asks, his mouth twisting into the beginning of a smile.
“The fact that you’re not homophobic? I’m fucking wasted and it’s cold, Dex, now get in bed and cuddle me.”
“Shitty would probably have something to say about this,” mumbles Dex, but he clambers awkwardly into the bed and pulls the blanket over both of them. Nursey curls toward him, drinking in the way his hair falls into his eyes without his hat.
“Hey,” he starts after a second, “wanna hear a really awful joke?”
Dex nods. “Sure.”
“What cut of meat is always the cheapest?”
“What?”
“Deer balls.” He pauses for effect. “‘Cause they’re under a buck.”
There’s a second of nothing, and then they’re both laughing too hard to speak. “Deer balls,” Dex wheezes, wiping away an imaginary tear. “Oh my god. Nursey, that was so bad.”
“I told you it was terrible,” he manages, and then they’re off again, laughing until Nursey’s stomach hurts and Dex starts to cough. When they settle down, Dex is so close to Nursey that he can see the faint freckles on his lips. Nursey can’t help staring for a second, and his own lips part unconsciously.
“What are you thinking about?” Dex’s nose crinkles when he says it, flush rising on his cheeks. Nursey means to quote Gibson or Whitman, something cryptic, or maybe crack a joke about Fireball and fiery hair, but what comes out is,
“I love you.”
Immediately, Dex draws back, and Nursey misses the heat he didn’t realize he was pressing into. He reaches out for Dex, who grabs his wrists and sets them on the pillow. “You’re drunk.”
“Dex—”
“Derek.” Dex’s voice has gone flat, the way it does when someone messes with him during finals. Nursey hates the way his eyes dart away. “You need to go to sleep. Take my bed, I’ll sleep somewhere else tonight.” He sits up and shifts to the edge of the bed. “See you tomorrow.”
On a whim, Nursey grabs his hand and presses it to his lips, not kissing so much as breathing Dex in. Even his knuckles are freckled. Dex stiffens a little without pulling away, but his forehead wrinkles in a way that Nursey wants to kiss away. His words are a little too muffled to be clear. “Stay, please. I mean it.”
Dex stays, if reluctantly. His shoulders curl over like they do before a play, on the line between explosion and collapse. “It’s okay,” he says after a moment, and the quiet devastation in his tone kills Nursey. “Nursey, you don’t have to mean it. I’ll leave and we can forget about this tomorrow. But I don’t want…” He falters, blinking hard. “Look, I don’t want the only time I hear it from you to be when you’re wasted. Don’t do that to me.”
Letting go of Dex’s hand, Nursey flops over onto his back and tries to get his head straight. In the pause, Dex presses his face into his palms. Finally, Nursey sighs and rolls back. “Dex, look at me.”
It takes a moment for Dex to respond, but he wrenches his eyes off the floor to look Nursey in the eye. His eyes are so bright against the ginger of his hair, and Nursey would rip off Robert Frost and write a thousand poems about fire and ice if it just meant Dex would never stop looking at him. But Dex is waiting for a response, so Nursey pushes metaphors aside and gets out, “I’m drunk.”
“Yeah, Nursey, we’ve established that.”
“No, no, you don’t understand.” Nursey scrubs his fists over his eyes. “Let me start over. You like facts, right?”
Dex doesn’t answer, but he looks even more concerned. “Are you okay?”
“Go with me, okay? You don’t like poetry, you like facts. So right now it’s a fact that I’m drunk and maybe danced with a lax bro tonight but it’s also a fact that you smell really fucking good, like spring green, and it’s a fact that you sleep with the windows open because you like too many blankets and you drink your coffee black, which is disgusting, and the way you bite your lip when you’re coding drives me kinda crazy and I always want to touch your hair because it looks really soft and you're basically the best thing since sliced fucking bread—”
“Nursey, you're gluten intolerant—”
“Also a fact, but shut up a sec, I'm in the middle of a thing. Since we’re stating facts here, I love you and I’m still going to love you tomorrow when I’m sober if the inevitable goddamn hangover doesn’t kill me first.”
The silence that stretches between them is the scariest thing Nursey’s ever heard. He almost thinks Dex just isn’t going to answer, but he purses his lips after a few seconds. “Okay.”
Nursey waits for more, and when it doesn’t come, prompts, “Okay?”
“Okay,” Dex repeats, “we’ll see if that’s still true in the morning. And if it is, we see where we go from there.” He peels himself off the bedspread and heads for the door. “I’m gonna grab some ibuprofen and some Gatorade. Don’t move.”
“You’ll come back, right?”
“Course I will.”
It feels like forever until Dex gets back, but when he does, Nursey pats the mattress beside him and does his best to conjure puppy-dog eyes. “Share with me?”
They both know it’s not really a question, just the opportunity to bow out. Dex nods and settles in like he belongs there, while Nursey throws an arm over his waist. “You’re pointy,” he notes, shifting where Dex’s hipbone digs into his forearm.
“Fuck off,” Dex answers, but it isn’t aggressive. “Get some sleep.”
Nursey’s last conscious thought is that Dex’s freckles look like he danced naked under God’s pepper shaker, and then he doesn’t remember anything else.
Morning comes too early and Nursey is definitely going to die.
This is the first thing he notices. The second is that he’s much warmer than usual, and that his nose is smashed into the collar of the softest flannel he’s ever felt. The third is that he never, ever wants to move from here, from bony arms around him and tiny snores above. Dex is still asleep and maybe more relaxed than Nursey’s ever seen him. Nursey takes a second to appreciate it, pressing a little closer, but he can’t ignore the fact that he has to pee like a goddamn racehorse. He removes Dex’s arm from his shoulder as slowly as possible and stumbles to the bathroom, and when he returns, Dex is rubbing his eyes.
“Hey,” Nursey says.
“Hey yourself,” Dex replies. “How’s the hangover?”
Nursey shrugs. “I’ve had worse. Might cut back on the shots next time, though. I feel like an elephant shat in my mouth.”
Dex tosses him a Gatorade. It’s lemon-lime, his favorite. He pops some ibuprofen and swallows, trying his best to ignore the urge to paint the carpet in ten shades of vomit. Next to him, Dex gives him a look like that’s what you fucking get and gestures for him to sit down, which he does.
“So what exactly do you remember?” Dex is trying and failing to be casual, bringing it up like this. Nursey might as well have a little fun with it.
“Tub juice. And a lax bro, and Fire Boppit, which is a terrible idea.” He's enjoying messing with Dex a little, letting his voice turn coy to gauge the reaction. “I remember you coming in here. And, uh… Am I missing anything?”
It's the wrong thing to say; Dex’s face falls and he starts to turn away. “Nah, that's about it.” His tone is light, but the way he swallows and bites his lip might just break Nursey.
“Wait,” he blurts, grabbing Dex's shoulder to turn him back, and then “Dex,” and then that hand is clutching Dex's collar and the other is on his face and they're kissing.
In all honesty, Nursey might be as surprised as Dex. He expected Dex to kiss like he talks, hard and fast and a little on edge, but Dex's lips are slow and honey-smooth, like lazy summer Sundays without obligations. For lack of a better word, it’s chill.
It’s also probably the best kiss he's ever had, but Dex doesn't need to know that right now.
Dex pulls away first and Nursey thinks for a second that he messed up, but Dex laughs a little and says “Morning breath.”
“Don’t care,” Nursey answers, pressing his lips to Dex’s pulse point, down to the line of his collarbone that’s been driving him crazy for months. Dex shifts a little to give him better access, and Nursey takes the opportunity to nip a mark on the tendon there. It’s not much, but it’s enough to make Dex sigh a little, which is way more than enough. Nursey might never want to hear anything again until Dex’s lips part and he moans something that sounds suspiciously like Nursey, at which point Nursey really has no choice but to kiss him again.
He’s not sure how long they stay there, a heady mix of lips and tongue and Dex’s fingers tracing the corner of Nursey’s jaw like it’s the most precious thing in the world. But eventually it becomes clear that they’re either going to have to get up for breakfast or stay in bed for the rest of their lives, and as much as Nursey would love the second option, his stomach is starting to rumble. When they break apart, Dex reaches up to run his thumb along Nursey’s bottom lip with the softest smile Nursey’s ever seen. “Hi,” he murmurs.
“Hi,” Nursey replies, trying not to grin.
Dex bites his lip a little and drops his hand to rest on Nursey’s cheek. Nursey, surprised at the intimacy of the gesture, places his hand over Dex’s and laughs a little as Dex runs his thumb along Nursey’s cheekbone.
“I love you,” Dex whispers.
Nursey wants to write entire novels about the way the sunlight dances on his temple. He wants to compose odes to the jut of Dex’s hipbones, sonnets on the furrow of his brow, symphonies for the planes of his throat.
“I love you,” he says instead, no frills, and kisses him just because he can. He thinks they can both taste the promise in it. There’ll be time for poetry later.