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Summer crept in painfully, the musk of New York City a faded memory in comparison to Maine’s breezy shoreline. Nursey flicked his wrist to spare a glance at his watch; 2:19. He had told Dex his flight would arrive a little before two, but that time had come and gone, with only one text from Dex that read, “b there soon,” which truly meant nothing coming from him. William J. Pointdexter, the king of empty promises, was late.
Nursey didn’t mind, particularly. He stared wide-eyed at the scenery from the airport and nibbled at the dried fruit he had snagged during the flight, but he couldn’t deny the itch in his fingers. William J. Pointdexter, the king of stilted conversations and pointed awkwardness, had Nursey falling hard.
The idea to visit for the month had come into play after one of their usual skype sessions, both of them sleepy-eyed and heavy-tongued near three in the morning. Dex had taken note of the void in his house, the still silence that seemed to permeate regardless of the time.
“You should come visit me here,” Dex had suggested suddenly, waking Nursey from his doze. His shirt had become ruffled from the laptop on his stomach, just a peek of smooth skin revealed at the bottom of Nursey’s screen. “Since your moms are on that business trip and you’re a fucking hermit.”
“Am not.” His voice was pitched high, nearing a whine he could still be embarrassed of while only half conscious. He had smoked a bowl before Dex called, edging a line between drowsiness and anxiety. “You come to New York in the summer and see if you want to come outside. Everyone smells like wet cheetos and the tourists always stop in the middle of the street.”
“Wet cheetos?”
Nursey nodded, closing his eyes again. On the other end of the skype call there was a click, then the soft sounds of a melodramatic violin song. “Fuck you.” He couldn’t help the grin on his face after Dex’s belly laugh. “You would get sick of me in like, two days. I need to sleep with the TV on and I eat every thirty minutes.”
“I’m serious, Nursey. Honestly, I talk so much shit about you at home my parents are dying to meet you.” There was a pause, then, “I miss you, if that counts.”
The following morning, Nursey had booked the a flight next week for Maine.
“Nurse!”
Nursey glanced away from the windows, coming face to face with William J. Pointdexter, Samwell’s resident firecracker and defenseman, a boy his heart had become full from in only a short time.
“Hey,” he murmured into his skin and his hair and this was far too intimate for a Samwell greeting but Nursey hadn’t seen him in over a month and this felt familiar and right and Dex wasn’t pulling away. Neither of them were.
“Sorry I look like shit right now,” Dex mumbled into his skin, breath ghosting at the base of his throat. He pulled away slowly, hands still lingering on Nursey’s arm. “I kinda overslept and I had to rush to get here.” His freckles were darker and his hair was brighter and he looked tired, sure, but he looked good and Nursey didn’t realize how much he missed him.
“Don’t worry, I remember the Epikegster of 2015. You can’t look any worse than that.”
“Fuck off,” Dex laughed, but he reached for one of Nursey’s duffel bags, wincing as he threw it over his shoulder. “Jesus, what did you pack in here? It weighs more than you.”
Nursey didn’t want to admit that he wasn’t sure how much to pack, so close to his whole wardrobe had been forced inside. He shrugged in response. “You forget, New Yorkers are high maintenance, Will.”
“Figures. Alright, let’s get you home then, where we obviously have steak and caviar waiting.”
Nursey only grinned. “Perfect.”
*
“You can bet your ass, if a zombie apocalypse happened you wouldn’t find me hiding out in a closet.”
That night they had decided to watch a kitschy horror film to distract themselves from the heat. They were squeezed on the bottom bunk (“Heat travels up,” Dex had told Nursey, muffled by his pillow and the roar of the fan), Dex stretched out on the right, while Nursey was cross-legged beside him. It took twenty minutes for them to decide what movie, and then another fifteen to decide whose laptop. Once it got started, the movie was entertaining enough, but Nursey couldn’t help but spare glances at Dex every few minutes. Hair tousled and ruddy cheeked, he looked so soft, and so warm that Nursey didn’t mind the temperature.
“Are you even paying attention, or are you going to stare at me the whole time?”
Nursey wasn’t sure if Dex had feelings for him. Over the year they had become closer, in more ways than one, sloppy kisses and drunken fondling in dimly lit hallways and abandoned bedrooms. He wasn’t sure if there was a limit to it all, or something more. Nursey wanted more.
“I wanna kiss you,” he said plainly, openly. His heart thrummed against his chest. Even the heat couldn’t explain the sweat on his palms.
“No one’s stopping you.” Dex made a face when Nursey collapsed on top of him, planting kisses on his jaw and his neck until Dex was pushing him off, voice broken from laughing. “It's fucking two hundred degrees in here, you’re gonna suffocate me.”
Nursey opted for an arm slung around Dex’s waist, the comfortable warmth between them. The zombie movie muffled on, just a background to their gentle breathing. Nursey played with his hair until he was pliant under his touch, drowsing to the sound of the main characters struggling to survive. Nursey wasn’t struggling to speak when he said, “What are we, man?”
Dex hummed absently, teetering on an unspoken question. What do you mean?
“Like, are we just. I don’t know,” Nursey continued. “I don’t know. If this...if you want to keep it like this, that’s fine. I just need to know.”
Once the laptop clicked off, all that sounded was the dingy fan in the corner. Nursey wiped his sweaty palms on Dex’s shirt, who only weakly protested.
“I want you,” Dex finally murmured. “I’m not trying to lead you on or anything. This is new to me, you’re new to me.” He hesitated, pressed the softest kiss to Nursey’s lips. “I guess...I’m just not sure how to do this right.”
“There’s no wrong way to do this, though. At least, I don’t think. You haven’t fucked up so far, anyway.”
Dex scoffed, wiggling around until he was lying on his side, facing Nursey. They stared at each other for a bit, Dex blinking once, twice, before he reached forward to gently squeeze Nursey’s arm. “Why the fuck did you get this tattoo again?”
William J. Pointdexter, the king of evasiveness and ambiguity, had given Nursey more comfort in just a few words than he expected.
“Chill, it’s not that bad. Me and some friends from Andover...our last year we decided to get some matching tattoos for the hell of it. We thought it would keep us together, you know? Like some sort of bond,” Nursey’s voice lowered a bit, “I don’t even keep in contact with half of them, actually.”
Dex squeezed his arm again, tracing featherlight circles on his skin. “If you could get another one…?”
He still held his gaze, albeit sleepily, and Nursey had to look away. He trained his eyes on a stain on the ceiling until it started to blur. “Believe it or not, I would love to get a big ass octopus on my shoulder.”
Dex hummed in response beside him, voice slow and heavy when he said, “I’m glad you’re here with me, Derek.”
Derek, Derek, Derek, Derek.
“Yeah? You missed me that much?” Nursey considered, waited on the edge for an answer, but instead he felt the ghost of a breath on his neck. When he turned his head, Dex’s face was dangerously close to the dip of his shoulder, lashes low and lips lax, fast asleep.
Despite the heat, Nursey could sleep easy that night.