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There’s not really a singular event that Nursey can blame it on. It’s not like he woke up one morning and decided life wasn’t worth living anymore, it wasn’t a decision at all. It was a gradual descent, unrelenting and painstaking slow. Some days are worse than others; sometimes he can barely drag himself out of bed, and sometimes he wakes up with the ghost of a smile on his lips. But it's always there, a steady pressure on the back of his mind, weighing him down when he’s happy, and pressing his face into the gravel when he’s not.
So he finds ways around it, ways to distract himself. Writing helps; the words bleed from his fingers and drip onto the pages, staining the alabaster. It's easy. Hockey helps too, the slide of his skates on the ice, the weight of a stick in his hands. The mouth guard stops him from chewing the insides of his cheeks raw. The puck leaves pomegranate coloured bruises where the pads don’t cover.
When it's really bad, when he balks at the thought of facing anyone that day, smoking is the only thing that will take the shake out of his hands. He knows it’s bad, dangerously unhealthy, hovering precariously on the edge between casual and addictive. But it's the only thing that helps, and God, does Nursey need help.
He hangs outside the back of Faber until he’s sure everyone has left, too exhausted from the early practice to notice him leaning up against the wall. His fingers itch to open the pack, resting like a dead weight in his red Samwell Hockey hoodie pocket. This is, it's so bad, his mom would kill him, he’d be in so much shit. His dad would get that look on his face, the only he knows all too well, the whole I'm not mad, I'm disappointed façade he would put up every time Nursey made a mistake. And Nursey made a lot of mistakes.
An only child, Derek Nurse had faced the brunt of his parent’s indifference alone. Absent birthdays and unanswered phone calls had ingrained a deep sense of desolation in him at a young age. A lifetime of being raised by nannies he knew better than his own parents and being sent to boarding schools had shattered any dreams of a healthy family that had survived as more than a fleeting thought.
His eyes trace the backs of his retreating teammates; Holster’s arm slung over Ransom’s shoulder, walking at the rear of the group with their heads close together. Bitty and Chowder walking just ahead, too much skip in their step to be normal. He can see the back of Tango’s head bobbing up and down as he walks, presumably next to Whiskey. They all hold such a casual air of affection between them, something Nursey’s longed for his entire life. After a while his vision blurs, and he blinks to clear his eyes. When he can see properly again, his friends are all gone.
The cigarette feels heavy in his fingers, everything feels heavy. He lights it, relishing in the click of the lighter, and the almost sweet smell cigarettes have when they're first lit. The first drag is followed by a single cough, but it's smoother after that, the nicotine soothing his frayed nerves.
He’s still leaning up against the wall when the back door to Faber suddenly slams open, hitting the wall and bouncing back, almost taking out the red headed boy who steps outside, skipping lightly to the side to avoid the door. Dex looks around the quad, eyes squinting as he peers through the dim December light. His eyes find Nursey, and his expression softens. “Nursey, there the fuck you are- are you smoking?”
Nursey lets his hand drop to his side, the cigarette dangling loosely between his index and middle fingers. He flicks it once with his thumb to drop the ashes. “What’s it to you?”
“What’s it to me?” Dex vaults over the railing on the steps, and stalks over to where Nursey is standing, angry flush rising behind his freckles, “It's unhealthy as fuck, and disgusting.”
There’s a part of Nursey that wants to fight back, but he still feels a little like he might fall if he tries to stand without the aid of the wall. He takes another drag of the cigarette and shakily takes a few steps away from Faber. “I’ll change my shirt before I go back to the Haus, chill.”
Half a second passes before Dex reacts, his expression incredulous. He runs a hand through his hair, looking the dictionary definition of frustrated. “Nurse, it's not about the smell, people die from smoking, your lungs go all black and have you never been told this?” His voice increases in volume with every word, until Nursey is cringing back from the sound.
“Get the fuck out of my face, Poindexter,” he spits, Dex sounds too much like his parents, “it’s none of your goddamn business.”
Later, Nursey realizes he should probably work on his observation skills. Dex’s eyes are glassy, and his complexion is flushed, his voice sounds feverish and alarmed. “Of course it's my business,” his hands ball into fists, “I don’t need you getting fucking cancer and dying on me.”
Nursey scoffs, “that doesn’t happen, back off, asshole.”
“Yes it fucking does!” Dex is pushing him backwards, hard enough that his head smacks into the concrete wall, and the cigarette falls from his hand. Dex twists the toe of his worn out sneaker onto it, and when he looks up, his face holds apprehension, like he’s afraid Nursey is going to hit him back.
Nursey just sighs, looking down at his own shoes. He doesn’t know what Dex’s problem is, it’s not like this affects him in any way. Derek is so tired fighting. So tired of existing. “Just leave me alone.”
“No.”
A switch flips, and Nursey is suddenly furious, “why the fuck do you care so much?”
There’s a lapse in the conversation, argument, he reminds himself, and he looks up from his shoes. Dex looks conflicted, eyes a little clouded, bottom lip caught between his teeth.
Nursey has spent a fair share of his time crying and screaming over his parents, over his grades, over life in general, and he knows that look, knows the way the clouds coil just before a storm. It’s the look slowly taking over Dex’s flushed face, the set of his mouth and the hard amber eyes that are resolutely not getting shiny.
“Because my father died of lung cancer.”
And there it is; the bomb Nursey never knew would drop, leaving behind a nuclear wasteland of devastation. They don’t talk about things like this; instead they hide their feelings in each other’s shadows, a constant denial that either of them cares.
The air feels colder, the breeze whipping in and around the cracks caused by Nursey’s silence, chasms of whistling wind and despair. The sky is dark, and Nursey thinks it might rain.
“I was sixteen, and my dad had smoked my entire life. One day he got a cough that wouldn’t go away, and mom took him to the doctors. They said it was cancer and that he had a year to live,” Dex looks sadder than Nursey has ever seen him, “he was dead three weeks later.”
Derek Nurse has been heartbroken before, but this is something new, something harsh and stinging and it burns like sticking your hands in hot water when they're freezing, and he’s a poet for god’s sake, he should be able to think of a better simile, but he can’t, because that’s exactly what it feels like.
Because maybe he’d stopped hating Dex, but he hadn’t particularly liked him either, and there was this boy standing in front of him who had known all the same pain and worse a million times over. Because Nursey already hates himself but fuck, if he doesn’t want to die after he chokes out, “at least your parents loved you.”
The fire in Dex’s eyes flickers, and the first tear falls, mapping its way down his freckled cheek.
Of course, then, because Nursey can’t shut his fucking mouth, and for all he praises being chill, he doesn’t really have any, “I smoke because I get scared and nothing else stops me from shaking, and if I don't, it hurts.” His voice breaks on the last word. It's not articulate, and probably doesn’t make any sense, but Dex falters anyways, angry words falling away from his bitten lips, leaving behind something softer and infinitely more vulnerable.
He has to smoke, because it's been fifteen years since his parents were home for Christmas, and fourteen since they’ve said happy birthday to him. Because not once in his life did Derek Malik Nurse feel like he was enough to be loved. Because drinking makes him reckless and weed puts him to sleep, and the only time he tried anything stronger it terrified him.
“I don’t do it a lot,” he stutters out, and then Dex is stepping forwards, and Nursey shuts his eyes like he’s about to be hit, but the arms that close around him are gentle and warm, and Dex hiccups against his shoulder. His tongue feels like it's swelling up in his mouth when he tries to talk, and his heart pounds as he hugs back. “It hurts, Dex”
Dex shushes him, face warm against Nursey’s neck, nose cold against his collarbone.
I’m not okay. Nursey sobs quietly, fingers pressing into the muscles in Dex’s lower back, where his arms cross over each other. He has never hugged Dex before, not like this, and it's terrifying, so utterly exposed to the weathering of the elements should they decide to turn against him.
“Derek, it's gonna be okay.” One of Dex’s hands is in his hair, and the other is splayed across the centre of his back. Nursey doesn’t ever want to move, and for a while he thinks he won’t have to, but then Dex pulls away, eyes red and puffy.
He lets Dex lead him back to his dorm, hand warm on the small of his back, shoulders bumping together as they walk. Dex sits him down on a bed, unfamiliar quilted blankets surround him. The double dorm is a clash or worlds, one side empty and grey, bed done up Military style, and the bedside table empty. Dex’s half feels like home, the blue and green bedding is rumpled, and there’s pictures taped up around a Gretzky poster. There’s a light on the table beside the bed, lampshade covered in paintings of autumn leaves- it looks homemade. A laptop sits beside that, half open, and a coffee cup too, perched precariously close to the edge, the coffee probably gone cold.
For the first time in a week, Nurse’s smile is genuine. He’s glad Dex has people that love him, people that quilt him blankets and paint him lampshades and take pictures he can tape to his wall. He’s glad they didn’t end up the same.
Dex sits down beside him on the bed, presses their thighs and shoulders together. “What’s up, Nurse, you’ve been acting off lately.” Like Derek hadn’t just spend half an hour sobbing on his fellow D-man’s shoulder.
Nursey hesitates, breath hitching in his throat, and chokes out a lie. “I’m just like, so fucking stressed.”
The weight of it sits on him like the Earth on Atlas, and Dex cocks a knowing eyebrow at him. “How long have you been smoking?”
“Maybe two years, but that’s not the question you want to ask, is it?”
“Why have you been smoking?”
Nursey lets out a strangled laugh, “gotta find a way to chill after the stress of realizing no one cares about you.”
If Dex had looked mad, Nursey would have got it, it's a shitty reason, if Dex had looked confused, he would have understood that too, but he just looks upset, and his voice is small and hesitant when he responds, “I care about you.”
“Then you’re the only one, dude.”
The sudden pattering of rain against the window is the only thing keeping Nursey sane, his head is full of enough silence as it is. Dex looks utterly shattered, like he couldn’t believe why Nursey would think that, but it pretty obvious, really. “Look, my parents pay my tuition, and send me Christmas cards with nothing but their business stamp on it, and that’s the only way I know they're alive. The rest of my family is either dead, or doesn’t talk to me, and I don’t have any siblings.”
A strange expression comes over Dex’s face, “you can have my family.”
“What?”
Dex nods, eyes brightening with hope, like he’s just thought of a way to fix this. “Yeah! I’ve got loads, like, six siblings, and seventeen million cousins, and dude, its Christmas break soon, you can come home with me.”
“Dex, you don’t even like me.” Nursey protests, his heart thumping in his chest.
“I-um,” Dex is sitting there with his mouth open, like Nursey just pointed out the fatal flaw in his planning, which he did. “I don’t not like you.”
Nursey rolls his eyes, “a ringing endorsement."
The constellations of freckles on Dex’s nose contort as he frowns miserably. The one Nursey has dubbed as Aquarius collides with what he thinks is Orion. “Sometimes we don’t get along, doesn’t mean I dislike you.”
There’s a certain amount of respect that’s earned when you play on the same team in any sport, especially in such a tight pairing as defensemen do. But Dex and Nursey are different; Ransom and Holster cringe every time they think of the two of them taking over their legacy. “Dude, you broke my nose the day you met me.”
Dex flushes solid red from the neck up, and Nursey wonders how far down his chest the blush goes. “Sorry.”
“It was like a year and a half ago, I don’t care anymore.” Nursey scrubs his face with his hands, “but what the fuck are you doing trying to bring me home for Christmas?”
For a moment Nursey thinks he’s got Dex in a corner, and then the redhead blurts out, “trying to convince you that you're not alone. ‘Cause you’re not, even a little bit.”
And Nursey snarls back, “Your shitty family isn’t going to make up for the fact that nobody fucking loves me.”
Maybe Nursey deserved to be punched for that, and he flinches right after, waiting for a blow that never comes. Dex doesn’t move, he’s still pressed all up against his left side, he smells like pine trees, and Derek realizes he wants to kiss him when he opens his eyes and Dex is staring back at him, eyes wide and a little sad and so so gold, it's like looking into a glass of whiskey. To stop himself from acting on a stupid whim, he continues, “And I know you hate me because I’ve got money, but I go home to my empty brownstone and cry myself to sleep every night, and all the money in the world couldn’t stop that.”
He shuts his eyes tight again, like he can block out the confessions of his own sadness, and Dex’s sunshine eyes fade from his view. Then there’s hair tickling his neck, and Dex is tucking his head into the crook of Nursey’s neck, arm wrapping tight around his waist. Nursey can feel the reverberations in his chest when Dex says, “I’m gonna phone my mom, and ask her if you can come up for Christmas. And she’s gonna say yes because I talk about you enough that my entire family knows your middle name, and then she’s going to fret about your family and if they’ll be missing you, and you can tell her anything you want.”
He doesn’t open his eyes, too afraid of what they’ll hold. Derek Nurse knows he could have been the perfect liar if his eyes didn’t give him away every time. He knows this, and so he keeps his eyes closed until Dex is preoccupied on his phone.
One of his nannies had told him once, that you can tell almost everything about a person by how they are on the phone with their mother, and watching Dex, Nursey thinks she might’ve been right.
He lights up like a kid on Christmas, talking animatedly, laughing, and recounting stories, and sitting silent while his mom talks on and on about whatever or whoever. His eyes glow, and it makes Nursey ache in inexplicable ways, that Dex has so much love to give and he spends so much of his life angry.
Nursey wonders how much of that anger is his fault.
After a long time silent Dex cuts in, “Mom, yeah okay, you know Nurs- Derek?” He pauses, and she must give an affirmative, since he continues, “can I bring him home for Christmas?”
He stays silent for a moment while his mom talks, “Yeah his family is- here, just talk to him.” He thrusts the phone into Nursey’s trembling hands with a reassuring grin.
Nursey lifts the phone to his ear, “uh, hi Mrs. Poindexter.”
The woman who responds sounds nothing like Dex, her voice is sweet like honey, and it reminds him a little of the nanny he had when he was eight. “Hi Dear! Please call me Liz, Will talks about you all the time!”
“He does, does he?” Nursey smirks at Dex, who fidgets a little uncomfortably, like he knows exactly what they’re talking about.
Liz hums in response. “You’re certainly welcome to come out for Christmas, any friend of William’s is a friend of ours, but I have to ask, won’t your family miss you?”
He readjusts his grip on the phone to keep from laughing. “No, I really don’t think so; they haven’t been home for Christmas since I was four.”
There’s a series of cooing noises from the other end of the phone, and Dex’s eyes fly wide open in front of him. “We can’t be having that!” Liz proclaims, “It’s settled, you’ll come up here for Christmas.”
“I don’t want to be a bother-“
“Sweetheart,” Dex’s mother cuts him off with a laugh, “we’ll have so many people here, I probably won’t even notice you.”
Nursey thinks of his dark skin and his brown hair and is very skeptical of that. He’s also suddenly terrified, that Dex’s family will be racist and kick him out onto the street as soon as they see him. He doesn’t think Dex is like that, but he’s had enough encounters with poor white families to know that they're overwhelmingly conservative. “Uh, yes ma’am.”
Liz laughs again, and asks him to hand the phone back to Dex. He does, and Dex’s fingers brush his a little longer than necessary when they grab the phone back. “Hi mom, yes I know he’s charming… Bye mom, I love you.”
Somewhere in the back of his mind it registers that Dex’s mom thinks he’s charming, and that Dex just agreed, but as soon as the phone call is ended Nursey blurts out, “is your family racist?”
Dex groans, “What did mom say, I swear she didn’t mean it, she probably doesn’t even know-“
“No, nothing, it's just, you're white, really white, and I uh, I'm not.”
The confusion falls from Dex’s face, replaced by something close to amusement. “Dude, everyone in my immediate family looks just like me, and everyone else is either pale, a redhead, or has more freckles than me…” He trails off, bites his lip, “actually most of them are at least two of those.”
Nursey shrugged, not seeing the point, “and, what?”
“Yeah, you’re gonna stick out like a sore thumb, but they’ll fucking love you. I mean, my sister is dating a guy who’s twice as black as you, and they like him, so you should be okay.”
He doesn’t miss the allusion comparing them to a couple, but Dex doesn’t fumble. “I’m pretty sure they’ve seen pictures of you.”
Something in Nursey’s chest flutters, “Showing me off to your family?”
Dex shrugs, “Well, they wanted a face to the name. And don’t tell my sisters you know this but they think you’re super hot”
He doesn’t know if Dex is chirping him, so he just raises an eyebrow in question.
Dex shrugs. “It's an objective fact that you’re attractive, at least three of my sisters want to bang you, and the other isn’t old enough to know what that means.”
“What?” Nursey splutters, “You think I’m what? Three of your sisters? The other? Do you have more siblings?”
“Uh yeah dude, I’ve got four sisters and two brothers.” He doesn’t answer the first question and Nursey tries not to over analyze it.
“Oh fuck, I'm gonna need a spreadsheet.”
Suddenly there’s a phone in his face, Dex’s home screen wallpaper, a picture of a group of redheads wearing Christmas sweaters, lined up in front of a huge Christmas tree. Dex is standing in the back row in a Santa hat, wearing a blue sweater with a reindeer on it, smiling wider than Nursey’s ever seen.
It hurts a little to see such a big happy family, something he’s never known. And Nursey knows he should be alright on his own, but the vanilla scented candles in his apartment do nothing to imitate a mother’s baking, and the Christmas specials on TV do nothing but make him sadder, because he doesn’t remember the taste of turkey dinner, can’t remember ever unwrapping a gift.
His thoughts are cut across by Dex’s voice, familiar and comforting and foreign all at once. “There’s me, and that’s Eddie beside me, and Sammy beside him, and then the girls are Kayla, Hayley, Hanna, and Grace.”
Derek lets his jaw go slack. “I can’t tell those two apart,” he points to the middle two girls. “Hayley and Hanna?”
Dex laughs. “Yeah, they're identical twins. Just say whichever name, they’ll both respond.”
Everyone in the picture is a red head, and all but one of the boys has freckles. “You’re fucking with me, the actual Weasleys.”
Amber eyes meet his with an expression that he thinks means to never mention the Weasleys again. Instead of more Harry Potter chirps, he asks, “are you the oldest?”
The cold amber eyes go soft and warm in an instant. “Yeah, it's me, then Sammy’s seventeen, Kayla’s sixteen, Eddie’s fifteen, Hayley and Hanna are fourteen, and Grace is twelve.”
Nursey blinks twice, sure he’s imagining that Dex’s eyes are that fond. He doesn’t think that he’s seen Dex look this soft in his entire time at Samwell. “Is that why?”
Dex looks up at him, confused.
“Is that why you’re always fighting everything?”
The rain beats down on the window in the background, and Nursey realizes walking back to his dorm in this weather is gonna be hell. Dex swallows, “Yeah, being the oldest of seven kids who never have enough food on the table is hard, after a while you get tough.”
Sometimes Nursey forgets that there are people that don’t have everything they need on tap, people that go to bed hungry, people like Dex, who worked on a lobster boat to pay for university, even on an athletic scholarship. He feels a pang of sadness, and swiftly realizes Dex’s family won’t hate him for being brown, they’ll hate him for being rich. His hands are soft, and he wears a gold ring on his second finger, where Dex's are calloused and scarred, and dotted with freckles.
He voices his concerns a little abashedly, and Dex’s eyebrows furrow. “As long as you don’t flaunt your money in their faces, you’ll be fine. I don’t know why you think my family are such assholes.”
Nursey wonders what that means. “So like, no Armani sweaters then?”
Dex frowns and Nursey bumps their shoulders together playfully, “I’m kidding dude.”
“I fucking hate you.” Dex says, amusement masked by a huff.
The breath escapes his lungs, like someone is sitting on his chest, and it's not voluntary, but Nursey flinches back, as much as he knows Dex didn’t mean it.
And then Dex has got that same feathery look in his eyes as he did on the phone with his mom, flecks of gold and brown, malleable in a sea of honey irises. Nursey didn’t even know eyes could be that colour, it's not fair. “Nurse, I don’t- it's not-“
“Shit Dex, don’t apologize for my issues.” For once Nursey’s glad he’s brown, that his skin will hide the blush rising on his cheeks. He doesn’t want Dex’s pity.
Dex falls quiet momentarily, a rare occurrence, “You don’t have issues, Derek.”
“I appreciate your faith, but I have a boatload of issues, a lobster boat full of issues.”
Dex laughs, and his eyes crinkle up in a way Nursey wants to write poetry about. He probably will, later. “You don’t even know what a lobster boat looks like.”
Well, he has a point, but Nursey’s pretty sure that a lobster boat is a big boat, and he has big issues. “Uh, like a boat.”
For once, Nursey isn’t even mad when Dex rolls his eyes, whispers of a smile on his lips. “God, mom is gonna show you pictures of me on the boat last summer, I swear, if you make fun of my sunburn.”
Nursey holds his hands up in mock surrender, his heartbeat slowly returning to normal. If the concentration of freckles on Dex’s shoulders is anything to go by, Nursey is definitely going to chirp him about the burn.
“Seriously though, you don’t have issues.” Dex is looking at him oddly, and Nursey knows that he’s good at hiding his issues, isn’t surprised Dex went over a year before he found out anything was off at all.
He thinks of the years spent raised by other people, shoved around in school for being brown, because it was a preppy private school, and he was the only one. He thinks of the look on his father’s face when he failed his calculus test, on the one night that month they’d actually been home. He thinks of nights spent in hospitals and how no one ever came to visit him. He doesn’t know how to make Dex understand.
Dex, who grew up with paper bag lunches, and was sung to sleep by his mother, and was taught how to ride a bike by his father. Dex, whose treasured baby pictures are stored away in a photo album somewhere, whose drawings are stuck to the fridge. Dex, who had brothers to play with, and friends in high school.
“I tried to kill myself when I was sixteen.”
Maybe that’s the wrong thing to say, because Dex’s hand flies to his face to muffle the gasp that Derek’s already heard. “And my parents didn’t come to the hospital.
Reliving the memory is excruciating, pins and needles in his heart, remembering the misery of realizing you are completely and truly alone. “They sent me an email, saying they were disappointed in me, and how much of a burden I was to them.”
“Nursey, that was- fuck- what was only three years ago.” Dex looks like he might cry again, “you don’t still- I mean, are you okay? Are you-“
“I’m not okay, Dex, that’s what I'm trying to say.” It hurts to say out loud. The heat from Dex's body leeches into his own, grounding him, but Derek hasn’t been okay in a very, very long time.
Dex wipes his eyes with his sleeve, takes a shaky breath, “I think I should never meet your parents, I would probably punch them.”
Nursey doesn’t doubt it, but he doesn’t understand. “Dude, why do you even care so much?”
There are many different types of people in the world, those like Chowder and Bitty who are soft hearted, and take care of their friends with love. Those like Shitty and Tango and Ransom and Holster, friendly and loyal, willing to do almost anything for those they care about. Quiet ones, like Whiskey, who can still light up your day when they smile. Those like Jack, cool and collected and hiding their pain from the world.
Most notable perhaps, are those that are angry at the world for the cards they have been dealt. They are rash and generally cruel, and the depth of their heartbreak forms jagged ravines under their skin. Nursey always thought Dex fell into that category, the bitter, vengeful soul that just wanted others to feel his hurt.
Now, Nursey can see that Dex cannot be categorized as simply as that, filed away under a one dimensional title. He is angry, yes, but he does not fight for himself, he fights for others, cursing the universe for hurting those select few on which he bestows his love; his family, his friends, and now it seems Nursey too. Derek wishes he knew what that meant.
Dex is the type of person to lay himself down on the ground and let people walk over him, break his back, never open his mouth in complaint, for those that he loves, and it breaks Nursey’s heart.
“I don’t know, I just do.”
Nursey thinks about lonely summers and empty houses, and that’s good enough for him. “Okay.”
Slowly, Dex smiles, and it lights up his entire face, “okay.”
He looks a little too close to something Nursey wants to call home. A little too close to something Nursey could wake up next to, trace his freckles until he pulled him back down for a drowsy kiss. A little too close to someone Nursey can see himself loving. The thought absolutely does not paralyze him, because it absolutely does not mean anything.
And then Dex ruins the moment, “if you smoke at my house I’ll literally dump you in the Atlantic.”
Derek Nurse might not be okay, but its better, and he laughs. “Promise I won’t.”
“I’m not kidding, we live by the water, I’ll pick you up and drop you in the bay.” Dex’s eyes are sparkling.
“Okay Dex, I promise I promise.”
Dex takes his hand, and pushes his fingers into the space between Nursey’s own, and it feels a lot like a completion, a little like the final puzzle piece slipping into place.
His heart still hurts, and he still feels like curling up in his bed and falling asleep forever, and his eyes are still misty, but with Dex’s body pressed up against him, he knows he is not alone.
Outside, the rain turns to snow.