#nurseybitty

Before Nursey could argue, Bitty sashayed over and set down a large slice of cherry pie by Dex’s elbow. “Dex, sweetheart, eat some pie and do your work. You get mean when you're stressed.”

Dex rolled his eyes but grinned up at Bitty. “I'm always mean, Bits. Thank you for the pie.”

Bitty patted his shoulder then leaned over to assess Nursey. “You want some pie, hun?”

“Is there a muse hidden under that crust?” Nursey asked. He possibly tended towards histrionics when he was running on three hours of sleep and a disgusting cocktail of energy drinks from Ransom’s stash. “If not, no thank you.”

Bitty made a vaguely distressed noise. “S’not like you to turn down baked goods. What's the assignment? Must be a real toughie, I've never seen you so…”

“Unchill?” Dex asked, smirking. If he wasn't dying, Nursey might've chucked his Norton anthology at the fucker’s head.

Instead, he sighed again and said, “I'm supposed to write a collection of poems about someone I know. The assignment was to watch said person and draw from both your visual observations and your intrinsic emotional response to their presence. I'm with Poindexter a lot and he pisses me off 90% of the time so I figured I'd get some good shit from using him as my person.”

Bitty moved to better read the scribbled words in Nursey’s Moleskine. His hand ghosted across the back of Nursey’s neck, then settled between his shoulder blades, solid and warm through the fabric of Nursey’s Henley.

“Lotsa fire goin’ on, huh?” Bitty asked with a wry grin. Dex audibly scoffed, abandoning his computer for the slice of pie Bitty had brought him.

Nursey couldn't help but smile back at Bitty. Not smiling at Bitty was like kicking a puppy or telling Chowder that the Sharks were a half-rate team. Only evil people didn't smile at Bitty. “The next line was gonna be about setting him on fire. Literally.”

“Fgck ghff-” Dex mumbled around a large bite of pie. Bitty laughed, the sound like wind chimes rustled by a warm, summer breeze just after dawn as the birds were beginning to sing-

Oh.

“Bitty!” Nursey cried, sitting up straight. The motion sent several books to the floor and Dex’s laptop teetered dangerously close to the table’s edge. Bitty looked startled beyond belief, hand over his heart, face pale and frozen. “Bitty, you can be my person!”

Dex choked a little on his pie. Bitty didn't look any less taken aback, but color was returning to his face at a very rapid rate.

“Oh, um, sure?” Bitty hurried over to slap Dex on the back as he coughed and hacked. “But- and gosh , don't take this the wrong way - why me? How am I any better than Mr. Fire over here?”

“Well, for starters,” Nursey said, leaning over to pull Dex’s laptop further away from the edge of the table. “I don't want to set you on fire.”

Though still trying to clear his throat, Dex managed to glare at him. Bitty rubbed soothing circles in Dex’s back and Nursey found he longed to switch places with Dex, just to feel those thin, strong fingers kneading his skin the way they kneaded dough, slick with cooking oil and egg whites and-

“But also,” he continued quickly, tearing his eyes from Bitty’s hands. “The poems are due tomorrow, no one else is around the Haus tonight, and I feel way more inspired by you than by William tonight.”

my grandmother sang of apple pie the

night they called the priest.

the (our?) father dipped her hands in oil but

how could it be as holy as the tang of

sugared fruit (eve’s fruit) under her tongue?

  they tell me she burned her fingers on

ovenhot metal every week (day? I cannot

recall now) when she lived. the boy in my

kitchen has burns across his arms (i do not

see them but they are

there) and slips sugared fruit between my

lips.

  my grandmother’s house held a

husband, two children, and a (happy?)

wife-mother-eve’s-daughter, but

i did not know family until i

tasted (felt)(loved) apple slices tucked

beneath a crust (tongue) by

holy-oil-flour-sugared fingers

  -d. m. nurse

 “The composition is sloppy,” Professor Ngo said, and Nursey bit his tongue. The hardest part of workshops was the fact that he wasn't allowed to speak, couldn't explain or defend his work. It was for his own personal growth as a writer, sure, but creative writing majors could be brutal . “I like the direction you were going with the religious imagery, though the family line was very heavy handed.”

“It was an interesting choice to bring in such sexual imagery,” Kayla said, circling something on the print-out of his poems. “Kinda risky move when half the thing is about your grandmother, but I think it worked nicely.”

To her right, Nathaniel nodded. “I like the association between your grandmother and Eve - maybe, like, a forbidden sexuality in a repressed era? And then using the same imagery to describe your boyfriend, y’know, a different kind of ‘forbidden’ sexuality in a modern e-”

“Wait, what?” Nursey said, then clapped a hand over his mouth. Silently, Professor Ngo made a red mark on her paper, taking one point of his grade for speaking during the critique. Dammit .

Nathaniel raised an eyebrow at Nursey. “Um, like I was saying, comparing your boyfriend-”

“He's not!” God dammit. Nursey clapped both hands over his mouth, nearly glaring the Professor as she took another point off.

“Oh, uh.” Nathaniel looked helplessly at Kayla, who shrugged. “Could've fooled me.”

“The poem is intensely passionate,” Professor Ngo said, and Nursey was almost certain she was smirking at him. “The subject is clearly framed in an important and, frankly, sexual light. It doesn't matter if he's a boyfriend, an ex, a close friend, a hated enemy - the subject clearly represents a genuine sense of family outside of blood ties.”

“I think there's also a sense of longing, there,” Pippa said, flashing a truly sycophantic smile at Professor Ngo. “To make a family with the subject, the way the grandmother had a family.”

“I don't see that interpretation,” Professor Ngo said and Nursey longed for the earth to open up and swallow him whole. “Would you care to elaborate where you see that?”

It took everything Nursey had not to groan and slam his head down onto the desk repeatedly.

Nursey didn't want to say the kegster was being thrown for him, but he would admit to very casually mentioning to Ransom and Holster that he absolutely needed to get fucking smashed tonight. It wasn't his fault if the captains were easily persuaded.

Dex was on Nursey Patrol, as he often was, which meant that Nursey would have very little actual supervision. With a pointed look, Dex pushed up one of Nursey’s sleeves and wrote, in thick, black Sharpie, “IF LOST OR DYING, CALL DEX,” followed by his phone number. Nursey wanted to be pissed off about it, but this tactic probably saved him from freezing to death in a snowbank last year so he kept his mouth shut.

“If you wanna go home with someone,” Dex said in a bored tone. “Come to me first so I can make sure you're not too drunk. If you wanna go back to your dorm, tell me before you leave or else I'll send Holster after you. Don't go near the kitchen, don’t try to dance on anything elevated, and try to drink some water. Got it?”

“Yes, Mom,” Nursey said, rolling his eyes.

“Don't take that tone with me,” Dex said, capping his Sharpie and shoving it into his pocket. “You have no right to complain after the Slip n’ Slide incident.”

“That was one time ,” Nursey muttered, but Dex didn't pay him any attention.

“Come on, we’re already late,” Dex said, grabbing Nursey’s jacket and ushering him out of the door. “Jack’s gonna be there and I wanna talk to him before he disappears.”

“He won't disappear if Shitty’s there,” Nursey said, letting Dex herd him towards the Haus. He hadn't realized it until he'd seen Dex help Bitty in the kitchen, but the dude was such a mother hen. “They're, like, super tight.”

Dex waggled his eyebrows. “Given how often Shitty was naked in Jack’s bed last year, I'd say they're more than tight .”

Nursey hummed as he considered the possibility. “You think? Zimmermann kinda reeks of Macho Straight Guy.”

A year ago, Nursey never would've expected to have this conversation with Dex. But they'd both grown a lot since then; nobody was their best freshman year. “I mean, I don't know if they've done anything about it, but there's, like, an annoying amount of sexual tension between them. Plus, like, could you imagine Jack Zimmermann cuddling with anyone else, man or woman, other than Shitty? Like, maybe Bits. Maybe.”

An unsettling jealousy pooled in Nursey’s gut. “Bitty? You think?”

Dex shrugged. “You'd have to be blind not to have seen his crush on Jack last semester. But I think he's gotten over it. He and Jack are bro-ier than Holster and Ransom.”

“Huh.” Nursey gave Dex an appraising look. “How do you know all this stuff?”

“Are you serious, Nurse?” Dex scoffed. “Dude, I pay attention. You’re the artiste . Aren’t you supposed to be more in touch with human emotions than a lowly STEM nerd like myself?”

“Shut up,” Nursey mumbled, jostling Dex with his shoulder. “So, Bitty had a crush on Jack?”

The knowing, amused smirk on Dex’s face was not appreciated. “Yeah. Why’re you so interested?”

“No reason,” Nursey said quickly. He and Dex had come a long way but they weren’t at that level of friendship yet.

Dex looked unconvinced. “Sure,” he said lightly. “My friend, Raquel, is in your workshop this semester. She had some interesting things to say about your poems.” Nursey’s blood ran cold. “She thinks it’s sweet you chose your boyfriend as your subject.”

“I will literally pay you to shut up,” Nursey said, face burning in the cool night. They stood outside the Haus, where the music was loud enough to shake the porch dangerously. “Please, Dex.”

“Okay, okay,” Dex said quickly, smirk fading. “But, like, I’m just saying- you should go for it.”

“Okay,” Nursey mumbled, hunching in on himself a bit. “Got it.”

Dex rolled his eyes and jerked his chin up at the Haus. “I’m gonna go find Jack. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. Don’t do anything Shitty would do. Go flirt pathetically with Bits. Drink water.”

Before Nursey could protest, Dex was jogging up the porch steps. “Fine,” he huffed and quickly followed.

When he entered the Haus, Nursey immediately found Dex talking to Shitty. A glance across the crowded room, and he found Jack preoccupied...dancing?

Nursey hadn’t once seen Jack Zimmermann dance in the year they’d known each other. But when Jack shifted and revealed Bitty dancing alongside him, it suddenly made a lot more sense.

A sinking feeling in his gut, Nursey scurried to kitchen where Ransom and Holster had laid out their typical smorgasbord of bottom-shelf liquors and store-brand mixers. He made himself a cup of Mr. Popper and Pinnacle (whipped cream flavor, what the fuck ?) and took several quick and inadvisable gulps before returning to the living room.

Bitty had disappeared somehwere and Dex was still talking with Shitty, so Jack now leaned against the wall awkwardly, watching the captains usher Chowder to the keg for his congratulatory shut-out kegstand. Nursey approached him after another swig of his drink, trying to quell the weird emotion bubbling in his chest.

“Hey, Nurse,” Jack said, barely loud enough to be heard over the music. “You alright?”

“Hmm?” Crap, Nursey’s emotions must’ve been showing if Jack could sense something was off. “Oh, ha, yeah. Just had a weird workshop experience I’m trying to banish away with booze and dancing.”

Jack raised an eyebrow, face impassive. “Oh? You know, I always found peer critique to be...enlightening.”

“That’s a word for it,” Nursey mumbled into his cup. He couldn’t help, however, to notice Jack’s eyes flickering to Shitty, soft and tender. Maybe...maybe Jack had a point.

“Listen to your classmates,” Jack said clapping Nursey on the shoulder, pushing himself off the wall. “Sometimes it takes an outside perspective to learn something new about yourself.”

“O...kay,” Nursey said lamely as Jack walked off to wrap an arm around Shitty’s shoulders. It was casual, platonic, bro-y , but Nursey didn’t miss the soft smile on Jack’s face or the way Shitty leaned into the embrace. Dex, who had now launched into a conversation with Jack, also seemed to notice, and shot Nursey a smug look when Jack wasn’t looking.

“So, how’d the poems go?”

Nursey looked up to see Bitty standing there, a vision in his red tank top and jean shorts. His cheeks were flushed from dancing, his mouth stained red from the cranberry mixer in the kitchen.

Nursey sighed, ignoring the tightening feeling in his abdomen. “Well, apparently my work is sexual, even when I’m talking about my grandmother, so I’m drinking to forget everything they said in the workshop.”

Bitty laughed and pouted in sympathy. “I’m sorry. But why were you writing about your grandma? I thought I was your muse.” He leaned in and fluttered his eyelashes dramatically. Nursey snorted and shoved lightly at his shoulder.

“I was relating the way you cook out of love to the way she cooked out of a sense of duty,” Nursey said quickly, feeling awkward. He hated discussing his poetry, especially with people whose opinions mattered to him. “It was a dumb idea, but I put the poems off so long…”

“I think it sounds nice,” Bitty said, leaning in. Nursey could feel the warmth of his body, smell the cranberry juice on his breath. He wanted to open up his chest and envelope Bitty whole, have him inside-

Nursey took a long drink to combat the direction his mind was taking him.

“Better than all the fire metaphors I had going on with Dex,” Nursey said with a sigh. “He just didn’t...spark my imagination the way you do.”

Bitty looked down at his shoes, a small, pleased smile on his face. “That’s...sweet, I think.”

“No,” Nursey said, something clicking in the back of his mind. “It’s inevitable.”

With a deep breath, like he was jumping off a diving board into deep, cold water, Nursey surged down and captured Bitty’s mouth in a kiss.

Bitty froze for a second, stunned, then wrapped his arms around Nursey’s neck and pulled them together, standing on his toes to shorten the distance.

Nursey’s hands itched to write as Bitty deepened the kiss. He wanted to scribble out paragraphs about the cherry-red hue of Bitty’s lips, the way he tasted like sunlight, the way Nursey felt like coins had fallen from his eyes in the light of this new discovery-

But then Bitty pulled back and smiled up at him, radiant, and every metaphor and adjective and long, run-on sentence faded away. Nursey’s mind quieted as it zeroed in on the crinkles of Bitty’s large, warm eyes, the hopeful way he looked at Nursey.

“Nothing to say?” Bitty chirped, leaning close so Nursey could hear him over the music. “What happened to all your words, Mr. Lit Major?”

Nursey turned his head slightly to ghost his lips over Bitty’s ear. “How can I speak when you take my breath away?”

Bitty laughed, light and clear, and gently fisted Nursey’s shirt in his hands. “Charmer,” he said. “I guess we’ll have to occupy your mouth in other ways.”

Nursey brushed his fingers over Bitty’s brow, the ridge of his cheek, the dimples that formed when he smiled. Freckles marched up the bridge of his nose in scattered form, and the valleys of his collar bone invited Nursey to taste the salt of his skin there. He was a living masterpiece, Nursey decided, and the way his eyes followed Nursey’s every movement made it clear the feeling was mutual.

He took Bitty’s hand, heart fluttering as Bitty’s eyes lit up, and let himself be pulled from the room and toward the stairs. Bitty looked back over his shoulder as they ascended, and Nursey tightened his grip; he’d found his muse in this beautiful, kind man and there was no way he’d ever let go.

-

Holding Dad’s hand as he was led into the schoolyard, Zodiac frowned, not because he was upset, but because facial expressions are different on everyone and don’t necessarily always offer a glimpse from the outside into the self. Sarah Cunningham, Dakota and Fletcher’s mom, squatted down to make their faces level and gave him a wide toothy grin, but her eye shape didn’t change. He stepped protectively behind Dad.

“Grumpy today, isn’t he?” Sarah said, before exploding into forced laughter.

Zodiac wasn’t, but he didn’t say that, he just looked nervously up at Dad, who met his eyes with understanding. 

Then Derek turned to Sarah and smiled, but a smaller smile. Zodiac didn’t like this business of fake-smiling.

-

“Zodiac! Come on!”

Moses Jones was tapping the top of the jungle gym, where he sat comfortably, waiting for his friend to join him. Zodiac was quiet and steady as he moved his hands and feet, crawling up more than pulling himself up, like Moses had. He had seen his Dad do it this way at the bouldering gym. “Come on!” Moses was so excited to sit at the top of the playground with his friend. He reached out for Zodiac with both arms, and Zodiac, after a moment’s hesitation, took them. Moses tugged him gently to the top, and put an arm around him as Zodiac turned back.

It felt like they were at the top of the school: they could see the roof of the slide, the tops of the kids’ heads as they played on the swings, and they could see over the play structure to the doors where they’d been let out for recess.

“I’m...I’m Spiderman,” said Zodiac.

“I’m...” Moses said slowly, “I’m...”

They felt vibration through the metal supports of the jungle gym, and saw Kayla, in pink striped leggings and a skirt, pulling herself up with her long, strong limbs.

“Hi, Zodiac. Hi, Moses,” she said.

“He’s Spiderman,” Moses said.

“I mean hi Spiderman.”

“Hi,” Zodiac said. He reached down to pull her, like Moses had for him, and she grabbed onto his hand while pulling herself up with her other arm. She tiptoed on the reinforced, rubber-covered chains around them, looking at the entire playground.

“I’m a whale,” Moses finally said. “I’m gonna learn to swim, Zodiac. I’m...I’m gonna be in...a class.”

“You’re a whale.”

“Whales are sick.”

“I’m gonna jump from up here,” Kayla said, pointing to a structure a few feet away.

She jumped and fell on her knee, scratching it.

“Ow,” she said.

“Kayla, you hurt,” Zodiac said, turning. “It’s ‘cause you don’t have web-slinging. You need to be Spiderman.”

A teacher ran up to Kayla. “Hey, K! That wasn’t safe!”

“It’s ‘cause I wasn’t Spiderman,” Kayla said, and the teacher made a snorting noise behind her hand as she led her away to the nurse.

-

“Pops? Dad?”

Derek and Eric, seated across from each other, each looked to the side at their son, holding his fork and knife but looking at an untouched plate of potatoes and scrambled eggs, his favorite dish.

“Honey? Eric said.

“Kiddo?” Derek said.

“M-M-Mrs C-Cunningham said,” Zodiac wasn’t sure why his voice sounded so weird suddenly, “She said I have...an interesting name. S-She asked if...I like Chinese food.”

It somehow hurt even more when Dad put his face into his palm, in Zodiac’s peripheral vision. That’s when he really started to sniffle.

“S-she said my n-name means...means...twelve...animals...in...like...chinese food, she said she’s a rooster, I d-d-don’t know what she was talking about...”

Zodiac was picked up and cradled, his back rubbed gently, by Eric, as Derek patted his head, the two men standing and comforting him.