#dexbitty

and bitty doesn’t seem to mind dex so he agrees, saying dex reminds him of a few of his daddy’s players and knows how to talk his language

(chowder isn’t close enough to bitty yet to recognize the red flag that is comparing dex to one of the football players from bitty’s past)

so bitty and chowder get coffee pretty frequently to meet and discuss what they’ve learned.

but the thing is, this has stopped being about getting the d-men to get along anymore, at least for chowder. they’re freshman, everyone’s kind of terrible as a freshman in one way or another. they’re both already maturing and growing as people, and chowder has it on good authority (bitty) that jack has talked to the boys himself, and probably had more of an effect. nursey and dex are already getting along better. 

and yet. the coffees keep happening. 

yes, chowder likes hanging out with bitty, but he’s starting to worry bitty will realize he’s bordering on obsessed with nursey. how could he not be though, when nursey’s so cool! and handsome! but also a goofy mess and a really emotional person, in private. 

but bitty doesn’t bring it up. he just smiles at chowder’s latest stories and counters with snippets of his own dealings with dex–how he taught dex to make bread this weekend, to surprise his mother over break; how dex taught him how to unclog the shower the other night; how dex got so angry when bitty told him about an argument he had with his father. 

(chowder doesn’t quite put it together, but he knows these conversations mean something.)

“we should all hang out,” chowder says one day, maybe early november. “all four of us. might be good for them.” 

“that’s a great idea,” bitty replies, looking up from his twitter feed. “rans and holtzy are throwing a party on friday, we could all pregame in my room?” 

so that’s how chowder ends up sitting on bitty’s bed, pressed up against nursey, a tervis tumbler of whipped cream flavored vodka in his hand. 

(bitty, it turns out, has an entire stash of weirdly flavored liquors he’s inherited from people like lardo and shitty who buy them, try them once, and hate them.)

it all happens in a weird, slow motion mess the way most things happen in pregames. 

first, chowder notices that dex–mr. ‘i only drink beer and whiskey’ poindexter–is sipping on the boxed wine bitty loves. even chowder thinks it tastes like terrible juice, but dex is choking it down for some ungodly reason. 

second, either nursey pregamed the pregame or he didn’t eat beforehand because he’s barely touched his drink but is all up in chowder’s space: leaning against him, touching him, laughing in his ear. chowder doesn’t mind in the least, but his cheeks have been hot since he sat down.

and third, dex and nursey are being…weirdly cordial. even on the ice, where they’ve learned to put the team first, they don’t act like this. but they keep exchanging weird looks, which makes chowder nervous.

a drink in, bitty decides to put on his beyonce party playlist, to “get them in the party mood.” nursey chirps him for it, but dex just smiles.

and of course if music is playing and alcohol is flowing, then bitty is dancing. chowder wishes he could dance like bitty, all confident and flirty, but his sister always tells him he dances like a pogo stick or a white suburban dad. 

“you gonna dance with your man?” nursey asks in an undertone, and chowder is bewildered. 

“my man?” he asks. “who’s my man?” 

“bits,” nursey elaborates. “i know it’s on the DL, but dex and i have been talking and we know about your coffee dates…” 

“those aren’t dates, those are- those are business meetings,” chowder says, because how else would he describe them? “we talk about- about important things.” 

“it’s okay,” nursey whispers. “i mean, obviously, but also, like, we won’t tell anyone-”

“we’re not dating!” chowder says a little too loud. it wouldn’t be a big deal, normally; one of the baristas at annie’s thought they were a couple the other day and it was a little funny then, totally harmless. but not coming from nursey, the guy chowder’s been pining after for months now. 

bitty stops dancing, eyes widening. dex is looking between them, bewildered. 

“oh.” nursey looked a bit ashamed, a bit confused. “uh, sorry for assuming?” 

“no, it’s fine,” bitty says quickly, clearing his throat. “who wants to do dirty girlscouts?” 

dex chokes on his wine. “excuse me?” 

nursey relaxes a little. “oh, sweet, we used to do those at school. shitty’s obsessed with ‘em.” 

“alright, boys, on your knees,” bitty says, and chowder watches dex’s face go from pink to cherry red. he rummages through the collection of bottles on his desk and pulls out a half-empty thing of peppermint schnapps. “i already stole the whipped cream and chocolate syrup just for this.” 

chowder and nursey hop off the bed to kneel next to dex. chowder goes first, taking the shots of syrups, schnapps, and whipped cream while bitty laughs and squirts a little extra cream onto the end of chowder’s nose. 

“i’ll get that,” nursey says, and before chowder can react nursey’s licked the whipped cream from his nose. bitty laughs again and dex tells him that’s gross, but chowder thinks he might pass out from how turned on he suddenly is. 

“c’mon, licky mcgee, your turn.” chowder watches in horror and wonderment as nursey takes the syrup and the schnapps alone, adam’s apple bobbing once, tantalizingly. nursey casts him a look with hooded eyes, and chowder feels like he might explode. 

then he looks over, at dex, who looks like he’s feeling the same as bitty stands over him and pours schnapps into his mouth, followed by the whipped cream. dex chokes on it a little, some spilling out the corner of his mouth, but he wipes it away and stares at bitty chugs schapps straight from the bottle. 

and that finally clicks for chowder. all of it, really. he can see the longing in dex’s eyes, the way bitty is showing off, the suggestion in nursey’s expressions…

“you wanna take a walk?” he asks nursey, probably too loudly. but dex and bitty are either ignoring him or hoping nursey will say yes, so when nursey does chowder has him out of the room and alone in seconds. 

they don’t walk far–just around the block where no one is watching–before chowder takes nursey’s hand. 

and chowder does not believe in things like subtlety or miscommunication. “this is what you want, right? because I really, really like you.” 

and nursey, astounded, answers chowder with a kiss. 

Their hands linger and Dex isn’t sure how this happens, honest to God, he doesn’t know. Everything was and then it wasn’t, and then he was kissing Bitty and Dex really didn’t know how this had happened. They were only baking, for fuck’s sake, they were just making bread and cookies and pies and spending so much time together in this one enclosed space that neither one of them thinks about it when it happens.

Dex doesn’t think Bitty is thinking about it. He was almost certain, because Bitty doesn’t pull away. He brings one flour covered hand up to gently cradle Dex’s head to press more into this kiss, soft and slow. Dex doesn’t really know who pulls away first, but he knows that he pushes in for the next kiss, a calculated and deliberate movement. There’s no one else but the two of them in the entire world in this moment.

Then, the timer for the pie goes off and they’re startled apart.

“I—” Dex doesn’t know what to say. He watches Bitty hurry to pull on oven mitts and pull out the pies that were baking, his mind everywhere and nowhere at once. He keeps thinking about Bitty’s lips, soft, a little chapped the first time but wetter the second time. Had Bitty taken a moment to lick them?

“Goodness, we got so carried away!” Bitty breathes. He looks back at Dex, his eyes soft, and pulls off the oven mitts. Dex still doesn’t know what to say, because this is new to him and it’s probably not new to Bitty and what even is this?

“Are you alright?” Bitty asks. Dex nods, a little dumb, and steps closer, back into Bitty’s space. He wants to kiss him again. He knows his face is red, it has to be, but it’s not red like when he’s angry at Nursey or red like when he’s drunk and fuzzy, but red because Bitty makes him hot in ways that shouldn’t be talked about. Bitty’s got a softness about him that makes Dex want to stay near, a warmth and kind of light that makes him glad to be the one Bitty chooses to kiss.

“Can I kiss you?” Dex blurts out, and he feels like it’s unnecessary when Bitty smiles and laughs a bit.

“Yes,” he replies, “but I think it’s a little late to ask.”

Dex manages to smile a bit himself, even as he presses in close again to kiss Bitty once more. This is their third kiss in the span of a few minutes. They’ve barely talked but Dex feels like this isn’t the time for words, and some part of him thinks that it really is. Even if he had come to terms with himself they needed to define this beyond the kitchen. When did Bitty start to like him like this? When did Dex feel the same? What are they?

“We don’t—darlin’, look at me—we don’t have to be anything yet if you don’t want to be,” Bitty sas, as if reading Dex’s mind, or maybe Dex said that out loud; he didn’t know when he had opened his eyes. And he didn’t know why Bitty calling him such a simple petname made his stomach flutter either. Bitty comforts him, though, and holds Dex’s hand in his.

Dex thinks he wants to be something with Bitty. He thinks he wants to date Bitty, if Bitty will have him. He thinks he sees himself navigating this, being gay or bi or whatever he is, he thinks he sees himself figuring it out with Bitty.

“I—” Dex pauses, breathes, swallows the lump in his throat and Bitty rubs soothing circles in his hand, “—I want to be with you? Shit, I think you’re really hot, and you’re just. You.”

Bitty smiles and chuckles, a low sound, something Dex didn’t really expect but he loves it, he really does, hadn’t he always?

“Yeah. You too,” Bitty nods, agrees, and Dex thinks this is nice. They’re just two people, who like each other, who want to be with each other.

“The dough for the bread is probably done,” Dex mumbles. Bitty glances over at the bowls of dough they’ve made, which had been rising for the last thirty minutes or so. He looks up at Dex, who thinks that it’s kind of hot when Bitty looks up at him but part of him knows that Bitty could bench him with no problems.

“We should get that,” Bitty says. But he doesn’t move. His fingers are still laced together with Dex’s and they don’t really pull apart.

“Yeah. We should.”

The thought of them being we and not I or you or me makes Dex’s heart flutter and his face redden more, he’s sure of it, because he’s hot, hot for Bitty. This is their space, as opposed to being Bitty’s. Dex was lucky enough to be privy and invited into it, and he was lucky Bitty wanted him to be there.

They move, eventually, together and in sync, and they bake bread. They bake bread and pies and cookies and cupcakes and they smile and they laugh and they kiss.