Work Text:
Kent flies to Massachusetts at the end of spring semester, during a break between playoff rounds. Dex meets him in Boston. It feels a lot more natural to hug Kent now; Kent feels tired to him, and it’s like Dex can feel how much strength Kent is wringing out of that grasp.
They go to a bank in Boston, where they’re mutually ill-at-ease with how friendly the branch manager is to them; they shoot each other little incredulous looks over the floral arrangement on the mahogany credenza before their finance manager comes into the room and ushers them into an enormous black hole of a leather sofa to discuss the terms of Dex’s trust.
Dex gets a lot of paper from this meeting. Kent’s put enough money into this trust to finance four more years of Samwell education even without Dex’s half-scholarship from hockey, and the manager explains the process by which Dex submits his Samwell fee assessment every semester and funds will be disbursed. There’s the payment of tuition to the school, a stipulated amount for textbooks, and then a monthly living allowance so long as he’s enrolled in school. She spends a lot of time explaining in very complicated ways that the allowance and textbook amounts are all he gets right now, and to access the money for anything else, Kent has to sign off on it; on the other hand, Kent absolutely cannot touch the money in the account anymore, so even if Dex decides he’s done with Parson tomorrow, his education will still be funded.
Dex finds it really hard to care about the tax forms he’ll have to (get his accountant to) fill out and the annual accrued interest and shit like that because within the first five minutes he’d looked at the paper and calculated: If he stays in Residence and lives frugally, this plan would give him $2,000 spending money a month. That’s $24,000 a year to throw around. That’s as much money being handed to him for being a student as his sister makes busting her ass in an old folks’ home.
“Yeah, I know,” Kent says when they step outside. "Up to you what you do with it. Invest it, snort cocaine, take up yacht-racing, shop at Whole Foods. The world’s your oyster.“
"Can you take your sunglasses off?” Dex finds himself asking as they get into Kent’s rental car. "I can’t see your face.“
Kent hesitates, and Dex knows for a certainty that’s why Kent wears them. Then he slips the glasses back to perch on his head and flips the car’s visor down.
They talk hockey and statistics on the drive up to Rockport, and Kent tells Aces stories, does impressions of his teammates to make Dex laugh. Dex plays a little bit of tour guide, identifies some of the boats and ships they see. His uncle’s boat isn’t out yet, but Dex won’t be on it anyway.
He’d told his parents he’d gotten a job in a professor’s lab, that he’d be staying with friends this summer, that he was getting a ride home from a friend. It felt like the easiest way to explain why they shouldn’t plan for him coming home to stay for the summer, why they didn’t have to meet the train when he visited. Kent drops him outside his house and goes to check in at the hotel he’s booked nearby.
"You should have invited your friend in,” his mother says, hugging him and smelling like flowers, warm as always. Katie gives him a tired half-squeeze and Maura wraps her arms around him like she’s overjoyed to see him again. Mom’s making apple pie in the kitchen and Dex finds himself helping, explaining that he learned how to make lattice this year. He doesn’t say that after a year at Samwell it feels weird that he and Declan never cooked, that his sisters spent the afternoon before Christmas dinner working in the kitchen with Mom and Dex’s father skipped out on most of dish duty. But he does tell them about Bitty’s cooking classes, about him teaching the frogs how to make macaroni and cheese in September, about the pie Jack made for a final project. Things that were hard to talk about when they first happened come out more easily with the grease of a bit of distance. They feel less momentous with a little perspective.
Well, some things.
He tells them when dinner’s in the oven and his dad gets home from work. While his dad is washing his hands Dex leans his arms on the counter asks his mother and father if he could talk to them, and Katie looks up from assembling the salad and Maura pops in from setting the table because clearly she’s missing something, and Dex’s mom says, “Girls, could you give us a minute,” and Dex says, without looking up from his hands, “No, it’s all right. They can stay.”
Stiffly, haltingly, not looking up, he says, “I think I found–my soulmate? I, there was someone I’ve been dreaming about a lot. Since I was about 13. So I, he gave me his phone number in a dream last December, and I called him. We’ve been… talking.” He looks up at his parents, who are impassive and surprised, takes a deep breath, puts his head down, and soldiers on. "So, the thing is, he has a really good job, he’s done well for money, so he set up this trust fund for me. It… covers my Samwell tuition and my living expenses, so I can… I have an apartment, in Samwell, and I’m working in a professor’s lab this summer. So I won’t need to take out student loans anymore.“
He keeps looking down, waiting for the storm to to break, but his mom just says, "He paid your Samwell tuition?”
Dex goes for his book bag and scrabbles for the folder from the bank, brings it out and spreads it across the counter for them. His parents gather around, picking up pieces of paper and trying to understand what’s happened to him.
“William,” his father says, “what did you have to–”
“Nothing!” Dex says, flushing defensively. “I met him once. We talked in the Quad at Samwell and talked. And we’ve emailed since then. And we, I wanted…” He clears his throat. "I was wondering if Kent could come to dinner tonight.“
"Kent?” Maura says, squeaky and sharp. "His name is Kent? Kent who?“
"Of–of course he can come,” Mom says dumbly.
“Yes,” Dad says. "I think we’d better meet him.“
”Will!“ Maura is practically vibrating on the spot, bursting with the effort of being noticed. ”Kent who?“
Dex pushes her away with one hand, the way you do to a little sister, but his parents are looking at him too. He ducks his head and mumbles, "Parson.”
“What?” Katie says, loudly.
“I couldn’t hear you, sweetie,” his mother adds.
“Kent Parson,” he says, loudly and defiantly, and clears his throat. They’re a hockey family; they all know exactly who he means.
Maura shrieks and descends on him, all babbling and squeals. Dad looks over at Mom and says, “Explains where he got the money from.” Katie looks… honestly still a little in shock, but when Maura’s run off to her room to primp for dinner with Kent Parson she steps forward and gives Dex a look that’s steady and solid under the show of being impressed.
“Not bad,” she says, and hugs him. He hugs her back with relief.
Later Katie and Dad have gone into another room to watch TV, and Dex is texting Kent to let him know he can come over, when Mom comes up to him in the kitchen wearing her best careful concern.
“This–soulmate thing,” she says nervously. "William, you know it’s not…“
He folds his arms, "Yeah, Mom, I know.” He doesn’t want to talk about it with her. He’s been handed the pamphlets and sat through the youth group sessions and seen aged priests do Beyonce impressions to talk about “putting a ring on it”. So far as the Catholic Church is concerned, “soulmates” are an obsession of the modern age; people have always had strong bonds and fallen in love but, as ever, the only “soulbond” the Church recognizes is a consummated sacramental marriage between a man and a woman. Everyone else is supposed to suck it up and be celibate.
She slides a hand over his forearm. "I just want you to be happy, sweetie.“
Dex surprises her into silence by turning and putting his arms around her, engulfing her in his arms. It feels weird how easily he can do this, how he can recognize from the outside all the things that would have made him explode with anger before that just don’t now. It’s not necessarily that he’s actually less angry, because he still feels angry about a lot of things. He’s not even less thin-skinned. It’s just like the anger is less of a monster inside him; it’s something he owns, not something that owns him. So probably because of the very thing she’s trying to save him from, he can be angry at her and recognize that she loves him and she’s worried for him, and he can put that anger aside and comfort her.
"I want to be happy too,” he says down at the top of her head. "I don’t want you to have to worry about me.“
"I’m your mother,” she scoffs. "It’s my job.“
Then he helps her change out the Corelle plates for their good china, the everyday forks and knives for Grandma Laird’s silver. He’s laying cloth napkins on the plates when Kent rings the doorbell. "It’s him,” he says, and his mother whisks the old dinnerware out of the dining room like her tail’s on fire, so that leaves him to answer the door.
Kent looks calm, very nearly unruffled, tired more than anything, as he greets Dex’s family and sits down to eat with them. He feels a bit nervous, like an itch on Dex’s skin, but it doesn’t look from the outside like being charming is an effort. The Poindexters make it easy, asking him knowledgeable questions about hockey, about playoffs, about Dex’s team. Kent’s never seen a Samwell game live, but he’s reviewed Dex’s tape with him; he can soundbyte about Dex’s progress as a player as easily as he can about his own.
And he can talk about the money in a way that puts them at ease. He was a public school kid too, after his dad left. His mom was a nurse who worked night shifts and bought Kent’s hockey gear second-hand. The kind of story that made sense in this house.
“Fortunately,” he says when Dex’s father makes a comment about the change to the NHL, “I got really good advice from a couple old-timers when I started. I actually had an accountant and a financial planner when I was still in Juniors. So yes, I went a little crazy–” he smiles self-deprecatingly, like he knows for a certainty this family has discussed his financial choices around this very dinnertable– “but I knew what I was spending. I was lucky. I’ve seen players bankrupt themselves.”
“Good planning isn’t luck,” Dex’s dad opines, but there’s still something unsatisfied in his face.
Oh, Dex thinks with a sudden flash of insight. All the restrictions on the money aren’t for me. They’re for my parents. He’d thought it was a little weird, sure, but he’s been a teenager so long that a ton of weird rules and procedures didn’t really seem out of place, but now that he’s sitting here he can think of all the things his family could do with that money. It’s the kind of windfall his father and Declan have wanted for years. Or it would be, if Kent would sign off on a disbursement.
Which Dex is suddenly certain Kent will never do. Dex doesn’t entirely get why Kent doesn’t like his family, and he thinks Kent is wrong about some of the reasons he does know about, but what he does know for a certainty is: he doesn’t like them, and he won’t help them. His loyalty goes to Dex and Dex alone. He looks easy, friendly, relaxed, but he feels like a soldier behind enemy lines, ready for a fight under all that good cheer.
The most Kent ever cracks is in a different direction. After Dad’s had his turn at cross-examining the witness Mom takes over, carefully probing at his emotional suitability now that his financial bona fides have been established. Kent takes it in stride, not batting an eyelash as he puts peas on his fork and says, “Will and I aren’t dating. The second time I met him was today.”
“But–then why–” Mom starts.
“That’s a lot of money for someone you met once,” Dad says.
Kent looks down at his plate, fingers twitching on his fork. "I don’t think that I’m good enough for your son,“ he says finally. "But I want to make sure he has everything he needs.”
Dex is pretty sure you don’t need to be his soulmate to hear how bleak that sentence sounds. "What does that even mean? How are you not good enough for Will?“ Maura butts in, all sixteen and deaf to nuance, but out of the corner of his eye he can see Mom and Katie exchanging speaking glances.
"I’m sure you’re not that bad,” Mom says, and flushes.
It’s a neat trap and that’s for sure. If Kent showed any sign of giving them the money, they could refuse it with stolid New England pride; if he made any sort of move towards Dex, they could chase him off with crosses and pitchforks. But Dex can tell his mom is holding herself back from saying, I’m sure you’d make a wonderful boyfriend (and then holding back her horror about the impulse in the first place).
Dex’s parents don’t live up to Kent’s suspicions of them, not tonight. They serve coffee and pie. They don’t argue or yell. The closest anyone comes is when Dex’s dad gets a little bit flushed when he’s explaining to Kent what the minimum wage ought to be, but Mom cuts in softly and redirects him. They tell him that he’s welcome any time when he stands up to leave.
“I’ll walk you to your car,” Dex says, and nobody stops him.
They walk side by side, circumspectly, in sight of windows belonging to people who know all about Dex, about his school, about his hockey team. Dex quickly abandons his plan of saying anything to Kent in the open air, as they walk down the block to the lane where Kent parked his plain white rental sedan; when Kent unlocks the car Dex opens the passenger door and slings himself inside.
“Neighbours,” he explains with a wave of his hand. "Really don’t wanna talk with ‘em watching.“
"Okay,” Kent says, relaxing and smiling at him in a tired, fond way.
“So,” Dex says, and blows out a breath. "That went… okay.“
Kent nods. "Yeah. You okay for me to leave you here?”
“Oh, I got an accurate copy of the train schedule, I can get myself out this time.” Dex shoots him a crooked smile. Kent smiles back.
Then Dex looks down at the dash of the car and makes himself breathe again. "Look,“ he says, feeling embarrassed. "That thing you said. About not being good enough but wanting to help. That’s… the way I feel too.”
“Nah, that’s not…” Kent begins to protest.
“You could be with a lot better people than me,” Dex rides in over him. "Like. Better in a lot of ways. But I’m here and they’re not. So if that’s true, I… want to give you what you need.“
The problem is, he thinks, I think you need a hug right now. I think I need somebody who loves me. I think we need to stay together. I think money is never going to be the answer here.
Kent rubs a hand over his face tiredly. "God,” he mutters. “You could be with so many better people.” He draws in a deep breath and takes his hand away. "Look, I just. Every time I think about this, all I can think about is how many ways I could be an asshole here. There are so many ways you could lose out.“
"Yeah,” Dex says. He doesn’t know a way to mince around the fact that he knows things about Kent’s childhood literally nobody else does, because Kent thought he of all people deserved to know why Kent was so fucked up around relationships and sex, so Dex just does what he knows best: squares his shoulders and faces it head on. "You told me. But then you did a bunch of stuff to make sure you couldn’t fuck me over. And I’m not gonna rely on you. I’m gonna keep my scholarship, finish my school, get my own job. You gave me money, but you made sure it didn’t give you power over me. So the thing is, I can say no to you if I want. You made sure of it. I just don’t want to.“
Kent looks at him with a new wariness and Dex can almost feel him want to put his sunglasses back on. Dex is a threat of a new and different kind, someone who can’t be held at a safe and easy distance. He’s someone who threatens to get too close.
Sounding tired, Kent says, "I just wouldn’t wish me on anyone I liked.”
“So you do like me,” Dex blurts out, then regrets it.
For a tiny moment Kent’s expression is ironic, maybe pained. Wry, with a smile in it. "Yeah, Poindexter,“ he says slowly. "I like you.”
Dex can’t help the grin that leaps off his face, because honest to God he hadn’t been sure. Because… it’s really easy to feel like a tagalong, like someone endured for the sake of form instead of actually enjoyed. And every time he thinks Kent might like something about him a little voice in his head says: He’s just putting up with you…
But Kent smiles back at him and it lights up his tired eyes; and then he leans forward and very simply kisses Dex, fingertips lightly braced against Dex’s chest.
Dex’s brain shorts out. That press of lips to lips, that confirmation, renders him incapable of movement or speech. He stays frozen where he is when Kent pulls back. After forever, he looks up and meets Kent’s eyes.
“So, if you can say no,” Kent says, “See you tonight?”
Dex goes red the way only an Irish redhead can go red, crimson in his cheeks spreading from scalp to navel in three seconds flat. His toes curl. He’d thought they weren’t… that they were officially Not Talking about the dreams. Kent had mentioned them once only, dropping a link to “effective and useful” ways to close off to shared dreaming–but he hadn’t used any of them himself, not in the time Dex has known him.
Dreams are funny things. Dreams give you a lot of plausible deniability. Everyone does weird shit in dreams. Sometimes it’s hard to know if the dream’s originating inside your own head, or if somebody else is there.
But from the way Kent just said that it’s pretty clear that Kent’s there too for the dreams where kissing is the least they do.
Face flaming, Dex leans forward carefully and catches Kent’s mouth with his own, and leans into the very careful kiss as Kent relaxes. For the briefest, sweetest moment, he earns a swipe of tongue.
“You need to go,” Kent says, holding a fist of his shirt.
“Yeah,” Dex agrees, pulling back, and says stupidly, “See you tonight.”. They disentangle. He spills out of the car, feeling blind, and tries to unrumple himself in the shade of a lilac bush while Kent starts the car and backs out.
Dex puts his hands over his face and screams softly to himself as soon as Kent is out of sight. Then he does it again, this time because going home right now would result in a blowup. He knows it would.
Going for a walk around the shore, he texts Katie. Wanna join?
God, the way he feels is so classically him and Kent, this carefully-measured chaos that he’s left in. Kent knows he’s a hurricane, so he’s trying to portion himself out.
And Dex is out here trying to catch more of the storm.