of course i voted for you

So, yeah, Derek knows he’s a romantic. But now, he keeps finding beauty in all the small things Dex does.

The surprised raise of his eyebrows whenever Derek brings him back a disgusting black coffee or still-warm blueberry muffin from Annie’s without Dex putting in a formal request.

The way he doesn’t do much more than whip out the fake eye roll when Derek steals a bite off that muffin. If anything, he even holds it out for Derek.

The way his eyebrows knit together approximately three minutes before he sighs, closes his laptop, and asks Derek what kind of pie he should bake. (Derek always suggests strawberry rhubarb and, more often than not, that’s exactly what comes out of the oven an hour later.)

The way Dex’s touch seems to linger on Derek—on his arms, his legs, his back, his shoulders—just a little longer than on anyone else.

The way Dex offers Derek a smile, small and private, whenever their gazes meet across the room, on the ice, over their teammates’ heads.

Sometimes—most times, really—Derek thinks Dex is a little sweet on him too.

That’s how they end up in the McDonald’s parking lot closest to campus at almost one in the morning, Derek thinks. Well, that, and Derek’s text asking Dex to go on a drive with me c’mon, knowing he’d be waiting for Derek at the front door despite replying with nothing more than an it’s midnight dude.

“Remind me again,” Dex says from the driver’s seat now, fry salt on his index finger and thumb, “why your parents got you a car?”

Derek shrugs. “Graduation present.” Dex lifts an eyebrow, no doubt gearing up for a chirp, but all Derek’s got eyes for right now is the orange glow of the streetlight making Dex’s brown eyes look even more beautiful. That warm almost-honey might be Derek’s favorite color. “So I don’t have an excuse to not make the trip to visit them after settling in Boston.” With you, Derek doesn’t add, but the thought of moving into a two-bedroom with Dex in July makes Derek want to jump up and click his heels.

Dex makes quick work of another fry, his gaze holding Derek’s when he licks the salt off his fingers, watches Derek swallow around the want clawing its way up his throat. “Do they even know you’re a shit driver?”

Derek snorts and remembers his ice cream. It’s almost entirely soup by now, between the heat of Derek’s palm and the mild late-April night air. “Yes.” He slurps some of his ice cream soup, eyes on Dex, then pulls a face. “No. Well. Probably.” There was that incident with his mama’s car and the pillar in the parking area by their house, so they’ve probably got an inkling, Derek figures.

Dex laughs, all loose and as full-bellied as the time of night has space for. Derek’s proud of every time he can tickle joy like that out of Dex, sure, but there’s something buzzing under his skin tonight that makes Derek want to reach across the console and see what other kinds of noises he can get out of him. They’re close enough that Derek thinks he could do it and it’s late enough that he’s not entirely convinced Dex wouldn’t let him.

But he doesn’t.

“You’re ridiculous,” Dex tells him at the tail end of his laugh that settles into a soft smile. It’s a smile that Derek would pay any fine to kiss.

A quick, comfortable breeze passes through the car, in through Derek’s window and out through Dex’s. The sweet scent of the nearby lilac has Derek itching for his notebook, but turning on the light would shatter this moment and Derek can’t have that. Not when moments like this are borrowed time. Instead, he slurps up more of his ice cream soup.

“And yet I took you out for food,” Derek says, digging around his cup for the last remnants of cookie pieces, “if that’s not the height of benevolence, then I-D-K what is.”

Derek braces himself for the chirp at the abbreviation, waits for the eye roll and the quip. But it doesn’t come. Then again, Dex hasn’t chirped Derek for saying abbreviations or chill out loud in a long time, has he?

“So benevolent you made me drive,” Dex throws back. “As always.”

And who can blame Derek? He’s happy to admit that driving isn’t particularly high in his list of skills. Like, he can drive, but he doesn’t like it. Dex does, though. And that concentrated frown on his face when he drives Derek around while muttering under his breath about Massachusetts drivers, man or the way his strong hands hold onto the steering wheel or grip the gear shift with an easy confidence six years in the making or the way his forearms flex sometimes when his sleeves are rolled up are reason enough for Derek to never touch the driver’s seat of his own car. The lateness makes Derek brave, braver than he usually is without a cup of tub juice around, and he confesses, “Well, maybe I like the way you look doing it.”

For a moment, the only noise around is the faint rush of cars on the nearby roads. Then, Dex cracks another smile, small and private, and Derek feels himself release a breath he wasn’t aware he was holding. “Dork.”

“Chill,” Derek says, his mouth pulling into a grin the way it always does when he’s around Dex for long enough. “How are you feeling, B-T-Dubs? You know, with everything.”

Dex scratches his jaw, along the vestiges of his playoff scrap that he hasn’t parted with yet. It’s miles from a respectable beard, but the ginger fuzz draws Derek’s gaze in every time the sun hits it just right to be visible. There have been a few times Derek has wondered what it would feel like under his fingertips, his lips, against the tender skin of his inner thigh.

“Fine, I think?” Dex says, his fingers now picking at the mostly empty fry box he’s holding, “Stoked we won the Frozen Four, obviously. Kinda melancholic about college ending in a few weeks.”

Derek lifts his eyebrows, his grin skewing more to the sly side of things. “Melancholic, huh? Look at you using big words. We’ll make an English major out of you yet.”

Dex chuckles. “Guess you’re finally rubbing off on me, Nurse.” And that’s not necessarily a mental image that Derek needs right now, but it makes his ears heat up all the same. “How do you feel? Are you panicking again? Is that why we’re at McD’s this late?”

“Chill, no,” Derek defends right away, but then he deflates. “Maybe a little. I really did want ice cream, but it must be said that I am a little sad this chapter’s closing.” Sometimes it feels like he just stepped foot on campus for the Taddy Tour just yesterday and now he’s supposed to graduate and be a real adult? With a job and responsibilities and shit?

Dex eats a fry in sympathy. “Maybe the next chapter’s even better, though. Isn’t that what you always say?”

With a sigh, Derek takes another sip of his ice cream soup. “Ch’yeah, it’s probably gonna be chill, but it’s still gonna be a weird transition?” Part of him wants to reach over, cling to Dex, but he keeps his hands on his cup. “At least I’ll still have you to bug L-O-L.”

Dex rolls his eyes, but the tug of the corner of his mouth betrays him. “Always, Nurse.” Derek could swear Dex lifts his hand to reach for him, bump his knuckles against Derek’s, but he doesn’t. He swerves at the last second and digs out two more fries that he shoves into his mouth. “They’re gonna love you, man. That entire office is gonna swoon.”

Derek hums. He’s confident enough most of the time to agree; he knows his way around people and he actually really likes editing, so the job really is gonna be chill. Future coworkers aren’t really the ones he wants to have swoon over him, though. But then again, Dex isn’t really the type to swoon, is he?

After another moment of silence, stretched between them like taffy, Dex speaks up again. “I did pretty alright at that captain thing, right?”

“Chill, yeah. Yes,” Derek says immediately. Sure, their season had rough patches and dips here and there, but what team doesn’t? And Dex did everything he could to bring them together, to forge a cohesive team out of familiar faces and fresh blood alike. Derek can’t even count on both hands the number of times Dex broke up squabbles, listened to multiple guys’ worries pretty much simultaneously, and still studied his ass off and showed up for Frog Nights. Derek, more than any of them, has seen the strain it’s put on Dex at times too; the tension he held in his shoulder, the tired look in his eyes, the occasional cracks of insecurity in his facade late at night when it was just the two of them in the basement.

“You don’t regret voting for me instead of Whiskey?” Dex asks, voice smaller than Derek would like.

“Dex,” Derek says, wishes he’d reach out and take his hands in his, but he doesn’t. “You still are the most brainwashed of them all, Christ. I haven’t regretted voting for you for even a second, man.”

The corner of Dex’s mouth tugs up again, but instead of culling it, he lets the smile bloom. There Dex is, in the driver’s seat of Derek’s car, so close and still too far. Dex, who has staked his claim over Derek’s heart so thoroughly. Dex, his sometimes-captain, his always-best-friend. Derek wants him so bad he's not entirely sure any of the languages he speaks have words that get anywhere close enough to describe it.

Derek washes the intensity of his feelings down with another few scoops of his ice cream soup and Dex goes through most of his remaining fries. A few years ago, this silence would’ve been awkward and uncomfortable, but now Derek’s never felt more at ease.

Once Dex has swallowed, he asks, “Do you think you’ve done everything you wanted? In college, I mean.”

There’s little Derek can do to keep his gaze from dipping down to Dex’s mouth, so he lets it. He shrugs, then says, “Mostly, I guess.” When he drags his eyes back up to Dex’s, he finds him with his game face on. “You?”

“Yeah, mostly,” Dex agrees. The intensity on Dex’s face passes after a beat, but Derek feels no less hot.

“Why, uh. Why haven’t you done the rest yet?” Derek asks.

Dex takes a deep breath and even in the low light of the night, Derek can see the way Dex’s eyes flit across his face, the way his thumb catches on the edge of his fry box again and again. “Cowardice, I guess. What if you—” Dex clears his throat, but then Derek thinks there’s something like determination on his face. “What if it’s all in my head, you know?”

Derek swallows. He can barely convince his hands to stay put, but his lips don’t cooperate as well and let all his anticipation leak out into a smile. “What if it isn’t?”

“Well, what if?” Dex asks around a chuckle. “What about you, Nurse? Why haven’t you done the rest yet?”

“Anxiety,” Derek says. They’re friends, finally. And being Dex’s friend and having Dex be his friend is great, amazing, wonderful. Next to Chowder, Dex is his best friend for a reason. But Derek knows he can be a lot, knows his feelings are big and his worries even bigger. He’s worried about losing Dex and the friendship they fought tooth and nail for. But recently, with the weight of Dex’s hand on him more and more, Derek’s started thinking about the other kind of what if. What if it could make them even better? “But there’s still time, right?”

“Yeah,” Dex replies, smile unwavering, “there’s still time.”

A beat passes and then Dex’s eyes glint with what Derek guesses must be mischief. Dex takes a fry—his last one, it seems—and finally, finally reaches over the console. 

Derek barely realizes in time that Dex is aiming straight for the last dregs of his ice cream and just manages to catch him by the wrist. “Yo, keep your salty shit out of my sweet treat, you heathen!”

Dex laughs again, free and intoxicating, as he starts another weak attempt at dipping his fry. Even when he gives up trying to taint Derek's ice cream soup, he doesn’t make a move to pull his wrist out of Derek’s hand, his skin warm and surprisingly soft where Derek’s fingers are still holding on to him. It would be easy now, Derek thinks, to lighten his grip, push his fingers up along Dex’s forearm until he reaches the sleeve of his shirt or down to lace their fingers together. But he doesn’t.

Really, in hindsight, Derek should have known better. He should have distrusted Dex’s easy capitulation. But as it stands, he doesn’t see it coming when Dex slips out of Derek’s grasp with one quick motion, dips his fry into the cup, and then smears a streak of vanilla ice cream and fry salt across Derek’s unsuspecting cheek.

“I—” Derek gawks, his mouth opening and closing around aborted half-responses of indignance. “You asshole!” He should be a little mad, probably, about sullying his ice cream or at least for defiling his face, but the look in Dex’s eyes and the grin pulling at his lips as he chews the evidence make it hard to keep the laughter from bubbling out of him. Chewing with an open mouth should be gross too, but it just makes Derek laugh harder.

There are a whole lot of things for Derek to say, but it all dries up when Dex’s grin slides off his face and his eyes focus on the streak of ice cream on his cheek. Or maybe his lips? The light is so low in the car and the ice cream so close to Derek’s mouth, he can’t be sure. His heart picks up and his palms start to sweat a little anyway, just in case.

“Poindexter,” Derek says, a butterfly pinned under Dex’s gaze.

“Nurse,” Dex replies and something flashes across his face, something Derek wishes he had the brainpower to analyze and pick apart right now, but he doesn’t. Not with Dex this close, this intense, this focused on him. Dex reaches out across the console and cups Derek’s cheek. When Derek’s breath hitches, Dex’s lips quirk up and his thumb wipes at the ice cream he put there.

There are probably more than a handful of pages in Derek’s notebook about this, about Dex so close to him and inching even closer, and they all go a little differently. But in the end, Derek finds that none of them hold a candle to the real feeling of Dex’s lips on his. He’s not even completely sure if it’s him who leans in the rest of the way or if Dex pulls him forward, but he doesn’t even care.

It’s a gentle kiss, nothing more than a tentative press of lips, but it makes Derek sigh into it all the same. It’s sweet, it’s romantic. It’s exactly what Derek has been dreaming of in a first kiss with someone.

When they break apart, they barely move away from each other. But now that Derek’s tasted the blood in the water, he wants more. Needs more.

He urges forward now and Dex is right there with him, parting his lips for Derek with an eagerness that makes Derek’s head spin and his stomach swoop. The little noise Dex makes when Derek’s tongue brushes his is something Derek wants to hear again and again and again.

Dex pushes his hand from Derek’s cheek to the back of his head and, really, Derek should complain about him smearing the ice cream all over his face. But he’d take ice cream anywhere if it means he can keep kissing Dex, chasing his mouth kiss after kiss and groaning at the little bites to his lower lip that make him open up for Dex every time. He cups the side of Dex’s neck, relishes in the pulse hammering against his fingers, smiles into their kiss until it breaks.

“Fuck, Nurse,” Dex says, panting, as he rests his forehead against Derek’s.

Derek pushes out a breathless little laugh that gets mostly lost in his own heavy breathing. “Is that okay?”

Dex nods. “Yeah.” He still hasn’t quite caught his breath and it’s doing things to Derek. “More than okay.”

The way Derek sees it, he has two options. Either, he can pull back now and hope they’ll talk about it in the morning. Or, he can throw all his caution out the car window and give in to the want that’s been burning underneath every inch of him for the past while. Dex hasn’t pulled back yet or let go of Derek, so Derek figures there’s a very clear right answer here.

Derek pushes forward again and Dex meets him just as eagerly. He matches Derek kiss for kiss, turning his head this way and that to not bump their noses together—it works, for the most part. Carefully, Derek pushes him back to his seat; the way Dex’s other hand immediately hooks into the collar of Derek’s shirt to pull him along makes Derek want to do drastic things. Like climbing over the center console of his car and knocking over his ice cream cup and Dex’s fry box. The car is not meant for two people of Derek and Dex’s size trying to squeeze into one seat, much less the driver’s seat, but Derek doesn’t care. All that matters now is being as close to Dex as he can possibly get. His elbow presses into the horn for a solid couple seconds and his foot gets caught on the gear shift. He breaks the kiss to curse, but before he can get back to business, Dex puts a hand flat on his chest.

Half on his way to Dex’s lap, half awkwardly caught on the console, Derek asks, “What’s wrong?”

“You—” Dex kisses him once, barely long enough for Derek to let his eyes fall shut. “We’re not gonna fit in the driver’s seat together.”

Derek curses under his breath again, then he hooks his index finger into the collar of Dex’s shirt and pulls him along as he tries his best to backtrack to the passenger seat without pressing another button or breaking the gear shift clean off.

The darkness does its best to hide most of Dex’s eye roll, but Derek catches it along with the twitch of his lips that tells him he’s won. Dex’s climb over the console is much more elegant than Derek’s sure his own was, but once Dex’s weight hits his lap, he decides he doesn’t care one bit. It’s a tight fit to keep both of Dex’s knees on the seat with Derek, but it’s kind of glorious.

His hands find Dex’s hips without missing a beat and then Dex is bracing himself on the backrest of Derek’s seat with one hand and cupping Derek’s cheek again with the other. The kiss that follows has Derek humming into it, hardly able to contain his smile. He lets a hand slip under the back of Dex’s shirt, running it over the warm skin he finds above the waistband of his shorts. Derek knows there are freckles there. He’s seen those clusters more than enough times in the locker room, but now he wishes he could taste them too.

All too soon, Dex breaks their kiss. “You’re lucky I love you,” he says against Derek’s lips, barely above a whisper, and then he’s kissing Derek again and again.

It takes Derek an embarrassing amount of time to register what Dex said, but when he does, he pulls away, the hand that isn’t underneath his shirt is back on Will’s chest. “Wait, what? Did you just—” He clears his throat, swallows for good measure. With Dex’s back to the streetlight, Derek has a hard time reading his expression. “Did you just say you love me?”

Derek only knows Dex averts his eyes because he moves his whole head to the side. With a deep breath that Derek can feel him take, he turns back and says, “Yes.” He drops his hand from Derek’s cheek to his shoulder. This is real, not one of Derek’s late-night musings tucked into the pages of his notebook. Not a dream that leaves him aching when he wakes up alone in his room.

“Like,” Derek starts, licks his lips, fisting his hand in the front of Dex’s shirt. “Like as a friend?”

“No, not as a friend,” Dex replies. Derek’s eyes have adjusted enough to make out the outlines of a frown. “Is that—is that okay?”

A breathy laugh escapes Derek. He can’t really see the flush of Dex’s cheeks, but when he lets go of his shirt and cups his cheek, he can feel the heat of his skin all the same. “Fuck, Dex,” Derek says around a grin. “Yeah, that’s okay. More than okay.” He pulls Dex in for a kiss, just a lingering press of their lips. “For the record, I love you too.”

For their next kiss, Derek feels Dex’s smile against his own. Derek could float away, probably, if Dex’s weight on his lap wasn’t anchoring him down.

Their kisses grow more frantic again with each one, a hunger Derek’s held close to his chest for months; a hunger Dex seems to know something about too. Somewhere south of a handful of kisses, Derek lets his sighs and hums and moans tumble out of him unhindered and Dex rewards him for it with a nip to his bottom lip, his tongue in Derek’s mouth, a warm hand under the front of Derek’s shirt zeroing in on his happy trail.

Dex was right, there’s no way they both would’ve been able to squeeze into the driver’s seat, but the passenger seat is barely any roomier and as much as Derek revels in having Dex pressed close to him everywhere, he fears his—or even worse, Dex’s—hips might cramp at any moment. He breaks the kiss, just enough for him to be able to swim to the surface of his thoughts and think of anything other than Dex, Dex, Dex. The way Dex chases after his mouth with an almost-whine makes Derek’s stomach swoop.

“Wait,” he whispers against Dex’s lips. Then, he drags his hand out of the back of Dex’s shirt and squeezes it past their legs, down between the door and the seat. His fingers scramble a little, but then he latches onto the lever and pulls.

The seat reclines without any warning and it has Dex crashing into Derek’s chest a little heavier than he anticipated. It knocks the wind out of both of them, but then he hears Dex huff a laugh above him and Derek can’t not chuckle too.

“Sorry,” Derek hurries, then he pulls Dex back in with a hand at the back of his neck.

He goes back to greedily taking in every inch of Dex’s back he can get his fingers on. A good few pages of his notebook will be dedicated to the warm skin and the eager lips under the orange glow of the streetlights later, he knows. But now, all Derek can focus on is the weight on top of him, the way Dex kisses him like that’s all he’s ever wanted to do. Derek knows Dex well enough to know he doesn’t half-ass anything and knowing that making out with Derek is included in that is genuinely devastating.

Derek’s pulled up Dex’s shirt pretty much halfway—both of his hands running up and down, side to side as much as they can—by the time Dex pulls away from Derek’s mouth again. Derek barely gets a frustrated noise out before Dex’s lips are back on his skin, finding the corner of his mouth for a gentle press of a kiss before making his way down his jaw. When Dex nips at the skin of Derek’s neck, right under his ear, Derek thinks he’s about to combust. He turns his head, inviting Dex in even more. Dex wastes no time leaving maddening, open-mouthed kisses down Derek’s neck and then right back up. This time, he doesn’t just scrape his teeth along the sensitive skin below Derek’s ear, but he sucks hard. The sensation ignites something in Derek’s chest, his stomach, his whole body. It draws a moan out, louder than any of his other noises, and Derek can’t do anything but clutch at Dex’s back. Once Dex seems satisfied, Derek thinks he feels him smile as he kisses the mark he’s just left on Derek.

“Fuck,” Derek breathes into the space between them, but Dex isn’t done unraveling Derek. He drops a few more kisses down Derek’s throat before he bites at a different but just as devastating spot, then sucks on the skin here too. Derek feels like he’s on fire or electric or electrified or whatever the fitting word would be. He clings to Dex’s back again, barely avoiding digging his blunt nails into Dex, but that means he has no brain function left to stop his hips from jerking up, seeking friction, pressure, Dex.

Dex’s hips grind down against Derek’s almost immediately and Derek swears into Dex’s shoulder.

Dex soothes the spot he marked up—that alone could get Derek there, he thinks—before he places a few gentle kisses up his neck again. But now, the fire in the pit of Derek’s stomach has been stoked, now he’s needy, needs more. With Dex’s mouth back on his, Derek shifts his hips up against Dex’s again and barely keeps his smile under wraps when Dex meets him around a swallowed groan of his own. He can feel that Dex is just as excited as he is by how this night has played out so far and it makes Derek feel wild.

But then Dex breaks the kiss again. He rests his forehead against Derek’s, both their heavy breaths mixing and mingling between them. “Derek,” Dex says, his voice rough, and Derek thinks he could melt right here. “We can’t—” He pants. “We can’t do that here.”

Derek isn’t sure if Dex can see his pout in the near-darkness, but he does it anyway. “Chill, how about the backseat? That’s roomier.”

Dex chuckles and Derek just has to steal another kiss. “How about we actually talk about this? Us?” Before Derek can complain, tell him that there’s always time for words later and all he wants right now is Dex’s mouth on him, Dex continues, “And then pick this up in my basement? You know, where there’s actual privacy?”

“Will, fuck,” Derek swears. That does actually sound fucking great. “Fine. Yes.”

Dex chuckles again and kisses Derek once more, slower than before. “I love you,” he whispers, then kisses Derek again and then once more.

Derek’s smiling when they part. “I love you too.” He kisses Dex. Just because he can. “Dork.”

With an eye roll, Dex sits up as much as the car’s roof lets him. His fingers graze the side of Derek’s neck, above the marks. “Sorry about that.”

Derek shrugs, lets his thumbs find the skin of Dex’s sides. “Worth every fine,” he says. Hell, he’ll pay an advance if Chowder lets him.

For a beat, Dex just looks down at him, thumb stroking the first hickey he’s left on Derek, and Derek just looks back. Then, Dex clears his throat and scrambles off Derek’s lap toward the driver’s seat again. His foot gets caught on the gear shift and he curses at it under his breath. Derek chuckles, replacing Dex’s fingers with his own at his neck. There’s a faint, pleasant ache when he presses down that makes him smile like a fool at the roof of the car before he sighs and brings his seat back up.

“I, uh—” Dex starts, eyes in the general direction of Derek’s face but now, with the streetlight back, Derek can tell that he’s looking over his shoulder instead. “I need a moment. Before I can drive us back.”

“You—?” Derek asks, but then Dex folds his hands in his lap, drawing Derek's gaze down and, oh. Right. A laugh bubbles out of Derek again, disbelief and anticipation and excitement pushing past each other. “Oh my God, Dex.”

“Don’t make fun of me!” Dex defends, reaching out over the console to try and cover Derek’s eyes with his hand, but Derek ducks out of the way and catches Dex’s hand in his.

“Chill, babe,” Derek says, satisfied smile on his face as he presses a kiss to the palm of Dex’s hand. He’s sure if he reached out for Dex’s cheek now, it would be burning up. Fuck, he’s really so gone for Dex, it’s not even funny.

“Babe, huh?” Dex shoots back, his mouth quirking up. Derek really wants to kiss him, so he does, once, twice, three times. Dex nudges him away again after a fourth kiss, clears his throat. “Not helping.”

Derek snorts; the ego boost this is giving him is unparalleled. After a moment of silence, only filled by the faint noises of the night outside the car and Derek’s lovesick look for Dex, he says, “No backseat adventures today, but how about some other time?”

Dex laughs. “Oh my God, Nurse.”

“That’s not a no,” Derek replies, keeping his eyes on Dex’s as he drops a kiss to Dex’s fingers.

“No,” Dex tells him, voice somehow soft and charged at the same time, “it’s not a no.”

Instead of dwelling on it, Nursey stands up, collects his bowl and their two empty cans of beer and heads downstairs to grab more beer.

When he gets back into his room, he finds Dex lying on his back, his hands crossed underneath his head. His hair's standing up this way and that and his eyes are closed, but his lips are pulled into a smile that tells Nursey he's probably not passed out yet. His shirt has ridden up, though, and Nursey finds fewer freckles than he'd assumed, based on the sheer amount on Dex's cheeks and arms. Nursey blames the beer again when he wonders, briefly, if that's a trend he'd find up his back, across his shoulders, underneath his shorts too.

Nursey clears his throat, which makes Dex pop open an eye. He sits up again and accepts the can Nursey offers him. Cracking his own beer, Nursey plops down the ground next to Dex, leaning his back against his bed.

“Cheers,” he says, bumping his can against Dex's.

They're quiet for a couple of sips of gloriously cold beer, but then Dex bumps his calf with his foot. Nursey hums, settling his gaze on Dex, his cheeks now a slightly darker pink. It's still cute, but Nursey recognizes it as his tipsy flush now. “Thanks for inviting me,” Dex says.

“Glad you came,” Nursey replies.

He'd floated the idea of Dex coming down to the city for the Fourth the week before graduation, so Nursey could show him some iconic fireworks on the East River and introduce him to the city that makes Nursey's heart beat a little stronger, the city Dex would be moving to anyway at the end of the month. It took a little arguing, but most things with Dex do. In the end, it was the argument of efficiency—this way you're already there and you'd be moving down like two weeks later anyway, so just make it easier and stay with me—that made Dex sigh, give in, and show up at Nursey’s doorstep with his suitcases yesterday evening. He'll spend the next two weeks being shown the ropes of living in the city by Nursey, getting acquainted with the biggest tourist spots and hidden gems, and then he'll move into an apartment in Brooklyn. Nursey's staying in the city too—Columbia accepted him into their master's program a bit after Dex had already signed the lease on that place in Brooklyn, so Nursey spent the following week moping and complaining about their missed chance of rooming together again, but they both know he's going to pester Dex whenever he can anyway. Besides, they’re only a subway ride apart. And who knows, maybe they'll find another chance at being roommates again when Dex's lease is up next year.

“How are you finding the city?” Nursey asks eventually, swirling the last sip of his beer around and around in the can.

Across from him, Dex tips back the last of his own beer and his lips split into his firmly-tipsy smile. “It's alright,” he says, all languid and chill the way he rarely is. There's nothing of the ever-present tension in his shoulders. Vacation's a good look on Poindexter, Nursey decides. “I like my tour guide, even though he says chill a bit too much.”

“Fuck you, Dex,” Nursey throws back without a laugh, “you just said you like me.”

“That I did,” Dex confirms, wiping at his can's condensation. “What about it?”

Nursey grins. Getting Dex to talk about his feelings is an ordeal on a good day. “Nothing, bro. I love you too.” To drive the point home, Nursey presses his big toe into the meat of Dex's calf. Nursey's not sure what does it, but something about this day, about this moment, makes him itch to bug Dex again, find a button and press it but without the drive to make him mad. “Hey, Dex,” he says then, running his toe along Dex's leg in the way he knows Dex hates, “sing to me. I know you're hiding some set of pipes over there.”

Across from him, Nursey thinks Dex flushes even deeper. “How would you know that?”

Nursey shrugs. “Heard you singing in the shower every now and then. The Haus walls… were pretty thin.”

Dex pulls a face that tells Nursey Dex is remembering just how thin the walls really were, especially when they still lived just a bathroom away from Chowder’s room that housed both C and Farmer more nights than not. Or Bitty and Jack down the hall. It makes Nursey bark out a laugh and Dex doesn't trail far behind

“So then why do you need me to sing to you if you've heard it already?” Dex asks, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye.

“That doesn't count,” Nursey explains, gearing up his best pleading eyes. “You didn’t sing to me. Even though I've been asking you so kindly for literal years.”

Nursey expects more arguments, like every time he brings this up, expects Dex to be difficult just because he can be and then shoot him down for the fourth year in a row. He doesn't expect Dex to sigh, smile, and say, “Yeah, okay.”

Thrill shoots through Nursey and makes him sit up ramrod straight, his face breaking out into a grin again. “Wait, really?”

“Yeah,” Dex says. He shrugs, but Nursey's known him long enough to know that this attempt at casual is about as real as his own chill. “You got a guitar in this fancy house somewhere too or…?”

“You gonna pull out all the stops to woo me?” Nursey asks as he jumps off the floor and heads to the door. With his hand on the doorknob, he throws a wait here over his shoulder before Dex can get a reply out.

He rushes out of his room and down the hall into his sister's to grab the acoustic guitar she wanted to learn but never got past the first few chords of. This moment feels fragile, like Dex will take it back if Nursey's gone for too long, so quickly plucks the guitar off its hook on the wall. He’s almost by the door when he hears something crash to the floor behind him, but he figures this can wait until the morning; it’s not like his sister will be staying in her childhood bedroom anytime soon. He'll have plenty of opportunity to pick up whatever this was, but the timer on Dex’s offer to finally sing to him is ticking. Probably.

Once Nursey’s back in his room, he finds Dex sitting on the edge of his bed, wringing his hands in his lap and snapping his eyes  to Nursey when the door clicks shut. “Here,” Nursey says and offers up the guitar.

“Oh,” Dex says as he takes it with a careful hand on the neck and one on the body. He runs his fingers along the shiny, dark brown wood with a gentle reverence that Nursey, for a split second, wants to know the feeling of. “It’s, uh, really pretty. And, like, really good quality. Where’d you—?”

“My sister,” Nursey supplies quickly, “she was gonna learn how to play, but now it just sits on her wall, LOL. She didn’t take it with her when she moved out.”

Dex doesn’t roll his eyes or anything, his gaze still trailing along the guitar. He situates the body in his lap and Nursey doesn’t wonder what it would be like to take up that space too, a leg on either side of Dex’s hips. Dex places the fingers of one hand along the strings on the neck and strums with the other once, twice, pulling Nursey back into the present. He frowns, like he does at the oven or the dryer when one of them is on the fritz again and he’s trying to figure out what’s wrong this time and how he can fix it. Then he twists the key things at the top a few times; it looks precise and calculated and entirely outside of Nursey’s wheelhouse of skills to know what he’s aiming for, but it’s fascinating all the same.

“I, uh, I don’t know a lot of songs,” Dex says once he seems satisfied, eyes trained on the strings his fingers are fidgeting with. “None that you’d know, I guess. Probably.”

Dex could play him the fucking alphabet song and Nursey would be elated anyway, so he shrugs, sits down on the floor, leans back on his hands, smiles. “I don’t care. Hit me, Poindexter.”

“I—Well, okay. Here goes, I guess.” Dex offers him another smile, small and twitchy, before he drops his gaze down to his knees and starts to play.

Nursey vaguely recognizes the melody; he’s sure he’s heard it before in the Haus when Dex was in the bathroom or studying or, later on, baking up a storm in the kitchen. He figures it’s safe to say it’s some of the dad rock that Dex loves so much, but Nursey would be hard-pressed to put a name or title to it with any sort of confidence. Bruce Springsteen? Probably? That sounds about right, anyway.

Dex’s gaze sticks to his knees when he starts to sing the lyrics, something somber and maybe kind of sad about lost love, Nursey’s mouth drops open. He knew that Dex could sing, that’s just a fact. It’s why he’s been begging for Dex to sing to him ever since he learned that Dex used to sing at church back in Maine. But he wasn’t prepared for it, he realizes now. Dex’s voice is fluid, a little raspy around the emotion of the song that’s venturing into hopeful and romantic the longer it goes on. Nursey’s staring, he knows, but how can he not?

Nursey can see it: Dex as a teenager, sitting on his bed in his room with his own guitar practicing the chords again and again with a determination to get it right that Nursey’s extremely familiar with from him. He can see Dex around a bonfire, more stars above than Nursey’s ever seen in New York or Andover or Samwell, singing this song to a swooning girl. Something clenches in his chest, just for a second, but Nursey doesn’t for the life of him know why. Dex isn’t even into girls; not that it matters.

“The road is dark and it’s a thin, thin line, but I want you to know, I’ll walk it for you any time,” Dex sings, his deft fingers working the strings. But then Dex lifts his gaze for the first time since he started playing, looks directly at Nursey as he continues to sing. “Maybe your other boyfriends couldn’t pass the test, well, if you’re rough and ready for love, honey, I’m tougher than the rest.”

Nursey watches, floored, the way Dex’s cheeks flush deeper again and his gaze quickly drops from Nursey’s eyes down to his knees again as he finishes out the song, his voice never wavering. Oblivious to the fact that Nursey feels glued to his spot on the floor, his mouth agape just slightly. The emotions of the song flood across Dex’s face in a way Nursey isn’t used to but it tugs at his chest now, seeing Dex so unguarded like he rarely ever lets himself be around other people.

Nursey wants to reach out, hold his face in his hands, pull him into a kiss. Nursey… Well, fuck. Nursey’s in love with Dex, isn’t he?

In retrospect, it’s kind of obvious. All the chirping and the button-pressing, all the wrestling and pushing just to touch him, the late nights in either of their rooms at the Haus and on the phone despite the both of them yawning after every other word. The relief when Nursey found out Dex was coming here too, still close by, still within arm’s reach. The disappointment that felt disproportionate and crushing at the time when he and Dex realized they wouldn’t be able to live together in the city. The way his thoughts have been drifting tonight and, if he’s entirely honest, a handful of times all throughout their senior year. Why none of his relationship attempts since his spring semester of junior year really went anywhere even though Nursey couldn’t quite put his finger on why when those people were perfect for him on paper.

Well, fuck. Nursey’s definitely in love with Dex and has been for well over a year.

In front of him, Dex finishes the song, his skilled fingers plucking the last few chords before he clears his throat and sets the guitar down gently by his feet. “So,” he says, his eyes darting across Nursey’s face, never settling anywhere for long. “That everything you were hoping for, Nurse?”

“I—” Nursey says, his heart leaping into his throat now. Quite frankly, he’s not even sure where to start. His world and everything he thought he knew about himself just tilted to the side by a few degrees. He’s in love with Dex. He’s in love. With Dex. And Dex… likes Nursey too? Maybe? Probably? He said he doesn’t know a lot of songs, sure, but. That was intentional, surely? It must have been; Dex, for all his temper and short fuse, has his moments of thinking his actions through. He wouldn’t take something like this lightly, Nursey knows.

“You? Speechless?” Dex chirps with a grin that looks about as weak as Nursey’s knees feel. “Should I mark it in my calendar?”

“Chirp fucking chirp,” Nursey finally manages, sitting up straight. “You just made me realize I’m in love with you with some dad rock song and you have the audacity to chirp me right now?”

Dex’s grin grows bolder, tipping into smirk territory, and that alone is kind of everything to Nursey. All that confidence is betrayed, just a little, by the white-knuckle grip Dex has on the edge of Nursey’s bed, though. “Gonna—” He clears his throat again. “Gonna do something about it then, Nurse?”

Instead of dwelling on it, Nursey stands up, collects his bowl and their two empty cans of beer and heads downstairs to grab more beer.

When he gets back into his room, he finds Dex lying on his back, his hands crossed underneath his head. His hair's standing up this way and that and his eyes are closed, but his lips are pulled into a smile that tells Nursey he's probably not passed out yet. His shirt has ridden up, though, and Nursey finds fewer freckles than he'd assumed, based on the sheer amount on Dex's cheeks and arms. Nursey blames the beer again when he wonders, briefly, if that's a trend he'd find up his back, across his shoulders, underneath his shorts too.

Nursey clears his throat, which makes Dex pop open an eye. He sits up again and accepts the can Nursey offers him. Cracking his own beer, Nursey plops down the ground next to Dex, leaning his back against his bed.

“Cheers,” he says, bumping his can against Dex's.

They're quiet for a couple of sips of gloriously cold beer, but then Dex bumps his calf with his foot. Nursey hums, settling his gaze on Dex, his cheeks now a slightly darker pink. It's still cute, but Nursey recognizes it as his tipsy flush now. “Thanks for inviting me,” Dex says.

“Glad you came,” Nursey replies.

He'd floated the idea of Dex coming down to the city for the Fourth the week before graduation, so Nursey could show him some iconic fireworks on the East River and introduce him to the city that makes Nursey's heart beat a little stronger, the city Dex would be moving to anyway at the end of the month. It took a little arguing, but most things with Dex do. In the end, it was the argument of efficiency—this way you're already there and you'd be moving down like two weeks later anyway, so just make it easier and stay with me—that made Dex sigh, give in, and show up at Nursey’s doorstep with his suitcases yesterday evening. He'll spend the next two weeks being shown the ropes of living in the city by Nursey, getting acquainted with the biggest tourist spots and hidden gems, and then he'll move into an apartment in Brooklyn. Nursey's staying in the city too—Columbia accepted him into their master's program a bit after Dex had already signed the lease on that place in Brooklyn, so Nursey spent the following week moping and complaining about their missed chance of rooming together again, but they both know he's going to pester Dex whenever he can anyway. Besides, they’re only a subway ride apart. And who knows, maybe they'll find another chance at being roommates again when Dex's lease is up next year.

“How are you finding the city?” Nursey asks eventually, swirling the last sip of his beer around and around in the can.

Across from him, Dex tips back the last of his own beer and his lips split into his firmly-tipsy smile. “It's alright,” he says, all languid and chill the way he rarely is. There's nothing of the ever-present tension in his shoulders. Vacation's a good look on Poindexter, Nursey decides. “I like my tour guide, even though he says chill a bit too much.”

“Fuck you, Dex,” Nursey throws back without a laugh, “you just said you like me.”

“That I did,” Dex confirms, wiping at his can's condensation. “What about it?”

Nursey grins. Getting Dex to talk about his feelings is an ordeal on a good day. “Nothing, bro. I love you too.” To drive the point home, Nursey presses his big toe into the meat of Dex's calf. Nursey's not sure what does it, but something about this day, about this moment, makes him itch to bug Dex again, find a button and press it but without the drive to make him mad. “Hey, Dex,” he says then, running his toe along Dex's leg in the way he knows Dex hates, “sing to me. I know you're hiding some set of pipes over there.”

Across from him, Nursey thinks Dex flushes even deeper. “How would you know that?”

Nursey shrugs. “Heard you singing in the shower every now and then. The Haus walls… were pretty thin.”

Dex pulls a face that tells Nursey Dex is remembering just how thin the walls really were, especially when they still lived just a bathroom away from Chowder’s room that housed both C and Farmer more nights than not. Or Bitty and Jack down the hall. It makes Nursey bark out a laugh and Dex doesn't trail far behind

“So then why do you need me to sing to you if you've heard it already?” Dex asks, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye.

“That doesn't count,” Nursey explains, gearing up his best pleading eyes. “You didn’t sing to me. Even though I've been asking you so kindly for literal years.”

Nursey expects more arguments, like every time he brings this up, expects Dex to be difficult just because he can be and then shoot him down for the fourth year in a row. He doesn't expect Dex to sigh, smile, and say, “Yeah, okay.”

Thrill shoots through Nursey and makes him sit up ramrod straight, his face breaking out into a grin again. “Wait, really?”

“Yeah,” Dex says. He shrugs, but Nursey's known him long enough to know that this attempt at casual is about as real as his own chill. “You got a guitar in this fancy house somewhere too or…?”

“You gonna pull out all the stops to woo me?” Nursey asks as he jumps off the floor and heads to the door. With his hand on the doorknob, he throws a wait here over his shoulder before Dex can get a reply out.

He rushes out of his room and down the hall into his sister's to grab the acoustic guitar she wanted to learn but never got past the first few chords of. This moment feels fragile, like Dex will take it back if Nursey's gone for too long, so quickly plucks the guitar off its hook on the wall. He’s almost by the door when he hears something crash to the floor behind him, but he figures this can wait until the morning; it’s not like his sister will be staying in her childhood bedroom anytime soon. He'll have plenty of opportunity to pick up whatever this was, but the timer on Dex’s offer to finally sing to him is ticking. Probably.

Once Nursey’s back in his room, he finds Dex sitting on the edge of his bed, wringing his hands in his lap and snapping his eyes  to Nursey when the door clicks shut. “Here,” Nursey says and offers up the guitar.

“Oh,” Dex says as he takes it with a careful hand on the neck and one on the body. He runs his fingers along the shiny, dark brown wood with a gentle reverence that Nursey, for a split second, wants to know the feeling of. “It’s, uh, really pretty. And, like, really good quality. Where’d you—?”

“My sister,” Nursey supplies quickly, “she was gonna learn how to play, but now it just sits on her wall, LOL. She didn’t take it with her when she moved out.”

Dex doesn’t roll his eyes or anything, his gaze still trailing along the guitar. He situates the body in his lap and Nursey doesn’t wonder what it would be like to take up that space too, a leg on either side of Dex’s hips. Dex places the fingers of one hand along the strings on the neck and strums with the other once, twice, pulling Nursey back into the present. He frowns, like he does at the oven or the dryer when one of them is on the fritz again and he’s trying to figure out what’s wrong this time and how he can fix it. Then he twists the key things at the top a few times; it looks precise and calculated and entirely outside of Nursey’s wheelhouse of skills to know what he’s aiming for, but it’s fascinating all the same.

“I, uh, I don’t know a lot of songs,” Dex says once he seems satisfied, eyes trained on the strings his fingers are fidgeting with. “None that you’d know, I guess. Probably.”

Dex could play him the fucking alphabet song and Nursey would be elated anyway, so he shrugs, sits down on the floor, leans back on his hands, smiles. “I don’t care. Hit me, Poindexter.”

“I—Well, okay. Here goes, I guess.” Dex offers him another smile, small and twitchy, before he drops his gaze down to his knees and starts to play.

Nursey vaguely recognizes the melody; he’s sure he’s heard it before in the Haus when Dex was in the bathroom or studying or, later on, baking up a storm in the kitchen. He figures it’s safe to say it’s some of the dad rock that Dex loves so much, but Nursey would be hard-pressed to put a name or title to it with any sort of confidence. Bruce Springsteen? Probably? That sounds about right, anyway.

Dex’s gaze sticks to his knees when he starts to sing the lyrics, something somber and maybe kind of sad about lost love, Nursey’s mouth drops open. He knew that Dex could sing, that’s just a fact. It’s why he’s been begging for Dex to sing to him ever since he learned that Dex used to sing at church back in Maine. But he wasn’t prepared for it, he realizes now. Dex’s voice is fluid, a little raspy around the emotion of the song that’s venturing into hopeful and romantic the longer it goes on. Nursey’s staring, he knows, but how can he not?

Nursey can see it: Dex as a teenager, sitting on his bed in his room with his own guitar practicing the chords again and again with a determination to get it right that Nursey’s extremely familiar with from him. He can see Dex around a bonfire, more stars above than Nursey’s ever seen in New York or Andover or Samwell, singing this song to a swooning girl. Something clenches in his chest, just for a second, but Nursey doesn’t for the life of him know why. Dex isn’t even into girls; not that it matters.

“The road is dark and it’s a thin, thin line, but I want you to know, I’ll walk it for you any time,” Dex sings, his deft fingers working the strings. But then Dex lifts his gaze for the first time since he started playing, looks directly at Nursey as he continues to sing. “Maybe your other boyfriends couldn’t pass the test, well, if you’re rough and ready for love, honey, I’m tougher than the rest.”

Nursey watches, floored, the way Dex’s cheeks flush deeper again and his gaze quickly drops from Nursey’s eyes down to his knees again as he finishes out the song, his voice never wavering. Oblivious to the fact that Nursey feels glued to his spot on the floor, his mouth agape just slightly. The emotions of the song flood across Dex’s face in a way Nursey isn’t used to but it tugs at his chest now, seeing Dex so unguarded like he rarely ever lets himself be around other people.

Nursey wants to reach out, hold his face in his hands, pull him into a kiss. Nursey… Well, fuck. Nursey’s in love with Dex, isn’t he?

In retrospect, it’s kind of obvious. All the chirping and the button-pressing, all the wrestling and pushing just to touch him, the late nights in either of their rooms at the Haus and on the phone despite the both of them yawning after every other word. The relief when Nursey found out Dex was coming here too, still close by, still within arm’s reach. The disappointment that felt disproportionate and crushing at the time when he and Dex realized they wouldn’t be able to live together in the city. The way his thoughts have been drifting tonight and, if he’s entirely honest, a handful of times all throughout their senior year. Why none of his relationship attempts since his spring semester of junior year really went anywhere even though Nursey couldn’t quite put his finger on why when those people were perfect for him on paper.

Well, fuck. Nursey’s definitely in love with Dex and has been for well over a year.

In front of him, Dex finishes the song, his skilled fingers plucking the last few chords before he clears his throat and sets the guitar down gently by his feet. “So,” he says, his eyes darting across Nursey’s face, never settling anywhere for long. “That everything you were hoping for, Nurse?”

“I—” Nursey says, his heart leaping into his throat now. Quite frankly, he’s not even sure where to start. His world and everything he thought he knew about himself just tilted to the side by a few degrees. He’s in love with Dex. He’s in love. With Dex. And Dex… likes Nursey too? Maybe? Probably? He said he doesn’t know a lot of songs, sure, but. That was intentional, surely? It must have been; Dex, for all his temper and short fuse, has his moments of thinking his actions through. He wouldn’t take something like this lightly, Nursey knows.

“You? Speechless?” Dex chirps with a grin that looks about as weak as Nursey’s knees feel. “Should I mark it in my calendar?”

“Chirp fucking chirp,” Nursey finally manages, sitting up straight. “You just made me realize I’m in love with you with some dad rock song and you have the audacity to chirp me right now?”

Dex’s grin grows bolder, tipping into smirk territory, and that alone is kind of everything to Nursey. All that confidence is betrayed, just a little, by the white-knuckle grip Dex has on the edge of Nursey’s bed, though. “Gonna—” He clears his throat again. “Gonna do something about it then, Nurse?”