#derekknurse

Ahhhhhhhhh thank you! That’s so sweet! But beware of feeding my ego. It’s going to go off and do something drastic and stupid.

18. Surprised kiss

….it definitely doesn’t count as doubling the word count if i wrote from both their perspectives, right????

Dex isn’t out.

Still, he got rid of that Samwell Republicans sticker, he changed his Facebook picture back in June for an entire week (in Maine, where his entire family could tear him a new asshole about it), and he listens to Beyoncé sometimes.

Okay, he doesn’t always change the station when she comes on the radio.

It’s as out-and-proud as he’s going to get, and as deep in each other’s pockets as they all live, Dex figures everyone has to know by now that he likes guys: specifically, Nursey.

Nurse got to him like Stockholm Syndrome. Will spends any time away from Nursey wishing they were together and the time they’re together wishing they were together. It’s some kind of bullshit.

Yo, Dex. Roommate sexiled me last night. Help me get back at him?

????

Rent queued up on Netflix. My roommate would rather gnaw off his own leg than listen to Rosario Dawson sing Out Tonight, and you literally cannot call yourself a Wellie until you’ve seen the most entry level Alt Lifestyle-turned-mainstream movie there is.

Dex almost forgets his shoes on his way out the door.***Derek’s a flirt, but he’s been pushing the limit of plausible deniability for months with Dex—using the summer to let the ambiguity of text shroud him in mystery.

When they’re together, he’s gagging for it; deeply lacking chill.

It’s embarrassing—only missing mortifying because he’s sure Dex doesn’t know. Nursey can’t function without touching Dex if they’re in the same room, so it’s an otherwise open secret. Sometimes, Bitty looks at Derek like he wants to cry. If there were any sort of reciprocation, he probably wouldn’t be making Bits cry with the sheer force of his crush.

So when he’s got the lights off to set the mood, and Dex shows up ruddy as a cabbage patch doll, he regrets pushing the envelope. He’s on his best behavior, hands to himself while Dex’s fists clench and spasm through the whole first act.

He hates that he’s fucked up so bad not even La Vie Bohème pulls the stick out of Dex’s ass, but when he pauses the movie to apologize, everything goes sort of fuzzy.

Dex’s fingers grab onto Nurse’s neck, still stiff and twitchy, and the palms of his hands are sticky with sweat pressed under Derek’s ear. He’d be grossed out if he weren’t pant-shittingly shocked.

Copper eyelashes tangle up in themselves when Dex squeezes his eyes shut, and even though Derek knows what comes next, when Dex kneels over him and swans in to work his tongue against Nursey’s teeth, he’s pretty much comatose.

“Dude.” Nursey gasps when Dex reels away. “The fuck?”

It’s not possible. It shouldn’t be possible, but Dex’s face and the tip of his nose get so goddamn red if Derek couldn’t see the contradictory evidence pushing at Dex’s fly, he’d swear he had no blood anywhere else in his body.

“Didn’t you want me to?” Dex snaps, grinding the heel of his hand into his brow, and the shaking starts to set in just around his shoulders before Nursey gets his shit together.

“Chyeah. Of course I did. I just didn’t know you wanted to, you know?”

Derek pulls Dex’s hands away from his face and grins at the tiny quirk of his lip.

“For a while, yeah. I wasn’t sure you wanted it, too, until…”

The penny drops so suddenly that Derek’s breath catches in his throat, and he’s practically choking on his own laughter. Dex is concerned for the five seconds it takes him to realize Nursey doesn’t need emergency first aid; then, it fades into the sullen annoyance Nurse can’t live without.

“You thought I wanted to Netflix and chill?” he manages to sputter, using his knuckles to wipe tears from his eyes.

“Shut the fuck up, I—“

I mean yeah those are also good? but so much of Jack’s conflict comes from the fact that he potentially could be just as good as his dad–the problem isn’t that he can’t play hockey, it’s that he doesn’t know if he can play as well as everyone expects, which says to me waterbender with a really famous waterbender for a dad, not non-bender.

that said, i have def considered Jack as the Avatar too… 

and right?? they’re really hard to nail down for me for some reason :/ i’ve been leaning towards fire and earth for them too, in part just bc i like having the numbers work out evenly like that, but i cannot figure out which one is which and it is really frustrating

but okay like. imagine the checking clinics as jack basically giving bitty an adapted version of the training toph gives aang, bc despite the fact that bitty isn’t learning to bend earth or water the main lesson is the same–facing the problem, dealing with it head-on rather than trying to avoid it at all costs

and think about nursey deliberately annoying dex in little ways, literally and figuratively fanning the flames

lardo sometimes focusing more on sculpting than on painting bc given the right materials she can do that in her sleep–but sometimes using materials she can’t bend or painting instead of sculpting for exactly that reason

shitty thinking everything is cool but also like whatever, perfectly content not to have this one more thing seen by elitist jerks like his dad as inherently making some people Better than others

ransom and holster being so comfortable and in-sync people see them playing around with fire and earth together sometimes and can’t tell which one is bending which