Dex sits down across from him, and hands him one of the cups in his hands with a slightly nervous smile on his face. Nursey blinks, taking the steaming mug reflexively, startling at the smell of hot chocolate and cinnamon beneath whipped cream. He takes a sip and raises his eyebrows at Dex over the rim. 

“Saw you in here on my way back to the dorm,” Dex shrugs. “It looked like you could use some company.”

“And the drink?”

Dex’s flush deepens. “It’s after five, if I got you more coffee you’d never sleep tonight.”

“Thanks,” he says, oddly touched. He and Dex are friends these days, pretty good ones, actually, when they aren’t arguing about stupid stuff. But this is the first time Dex has sought him out without Chowder.

“No problem,” Dex says. He pulls out the novel he’s been slogging through for his Gen Ed literature class with a sigh, and starts reading. Nursey sets the mug down with some reluctance, and starts his own work. One day, he’s not going to have to memorize facts about Christopher fucking Columbus and it can’t come soon enough.

They sit like that for a while, the easy silence broken occasionally by the squeak of a highlighter, the scribble of a pen, a distinctly Maine-flavored huff of annoyance, a groan that sounds like New York City frustration.

Finally, finally, Nursey finishes both his reading and his hot chocolate and starts packing up. Dex smiles softly at him, stowing his own book. He pulls out a wrapped package and slides it carefully to Nursey.

“For me?” he can’t resist asking.

Dex nods, biting his lip. The blush is back, faintly, but unmistakable on his freckled skin.

“What for?”

“It’s your birthday in two days. And – I wanted to make sure you got this since I’m going straight from practice to class to my late shift at the computer lab. And then probably right to bed,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Oh.”

Nursey doesn’t know what to do with that actually. He just stares down at the present, wrapped neatly in brown paper and a string bow. His fingertips brush the simple Happy Birthday Nursey, from Dex in Dex’s characteristically untidy scrawl.

“Are you going to open it, or just stare at it?” Dex chirps.

“Right, yeah, I’ll just—”

He unties the string and tears the paper and reveals a book – wait no, it’s a journal. The leather cover is worked to look like a star-filled sky, and the letters DMN are stamped in gold along the spine. The paper inside is a lovely cream, the pages not the perfect cut edges of a generic journal, but the uneven, almost ripped, look of something from the last century. There’s even an attached ribbon bookmark in a deep green color.

“Wow, it’s gorgeous, thank you, Dex. I’ve never seen anything like this before, where did you get it?”

Dex’s cheeks turn even deeper red. “I, um, made it actually.”

Nursey’s mouth falls open in shock. Dex made this. Dex made this. This work of art masquerading as a journal – Dex made this.

“What?” he croaks.

“I just – I noticed at the end of last semester that your writing notebook was almost full, so I was gonna buy you a new one, but when I was looking around I couldn’t find one that I thought you’d like, so, I made you one instead.”

“You just made a journal. Casually.”

“Well – yeah,” Dex says, bites his lip again, before— “Is it – do you like it?”

“Do I like it, he asks,” says Nursey, shaking his head. “Dex, it's probably the best present I’ve ever gotten in my life.”

“Oh. Well. Good then.” Dex’s face looks good with a smile.

“You just knew how to make one?”

Dex shakes his head with a shrug and his blush trailing down his neck now. 

“Wasn’t that hard to learn,” he mumbles.

Nursey throws his hands up in exasperation. “Fucking hell, Poindexter. Absolutely insane, you just fucking learned how to make a book over winter break?”

“Ayuh, I guess.”

“Seriously, man, you didn’t have to go through all this trouble. But, thank you. So much. It’s beautiful.”

“I’m glad you like it. Happy early birthday.”

_X_ _X_ _X_