Chapter Text
Thinking on it later, Derek would be happy to note that Dex had remembered how to start and drive his truck without help, and then horrified that they’d gotten into the big powder-blue monster without checking first.
Upon getting back in the Haus, Derek had moved things back to their places around the living room without much fanfare, with Dex looking on calmly from the couch. At first, the red-head sat primly as Derek moved about the room, the oddity of his crossed ankles drawing too much of Derek’s attention. Half of Derek hoped that rearranging would undo whatever mindfuck Dex was still suffering from, but the other half just did not want to think about the consequences of Dex’s ability. Which meant he did nothing but think about it all night in aborted bursts and shivers.
What did it mean, to steal control from someone? How easy could it be to abuse? Just from what he could recall, how easily and how many times had Dex already used it on the team? On Derek ?
Still, as the evening wore on, Dex floated around the Haus, mumbling, quiet and lost and unsure, and every halting step stabbed Derek’s heart with a small, stinging blade.
The restless evening rose to an early morning, Bob nowhere to be found at the solemn sidewalk. Downstairs, Dex had a bowl and a box of cereal waiting for Derek at the table. Dex’s sallow eyes drifted up to meet Derek’s on the stairs, and he shrugged to the peace offering in silence.
“How are you feeling?” Derek asked.
“My head is twisted on a bit better…but I’m still fuzzy.”
Derek hummed and Dex frowned at his soggy cornflakes. Wetness gathered in his pretty yellow eyes, until fat tears slid down his cheeks and he croaked, “ I hate this. ”
A lump in his throat, Derek skid his chair noisily across the short space between them and pulled Dex under his arm. “How can I help?”
“I just need some time,” Dex nuzzled into Derek’s shoulders, one arm wrapping snuggly over Derek’s hips. Another wiggle, and Dex’s hot nose found Derek’s nape, sending a shiver over his skin.
“Yeah,” Derek said, “I’m sure you do. But I don’t want you spending summer alone.”
“I won’t be alone, I can go back to my parents place in Maine–”
“Isn’t your mom still pissed at you?”
“-- oh… Yeah. She is.”
Dex curled tighter into himself and Derek wanted to swallow crushed glass. “Come to New York with me for summer.”
“I don’t know…maybe. I hate to intrude on your parents.”
“Oh, do you have somewhere else to be, Mister ‘I just got put on the registry of mystical people in the north east’?”
“... Oh shit, I did do that! ” Dex whispered, horrified. “I..am such an idiot! …”
Derek squeezed him with the arm over the other’s shoulder, fighting the urge to lean down and brush his lips over a thin-skinned temple. “Yeah. Way to be spontaneous, old man. I don’t suggest you be anywhere near campus when that news hits. Why don’t you call whoever you need to call to get your shifts at the computer lab covered?”
“Okay.”
Two hours, two phone calls, and three packed suitcases later, when the clock was rounding just past ten AM, they were in Dex’s blue truck and heading up the coast for New York and Derek’s brownstone, the gleeful congratulations of the Dean of History in their ears.
The trip was cool with the windows down, the oppressive heat of summer not to its peak so early into June.
“It’s weird,” Derek said as they were rumbling down I-90. “A few weeks ago, I- we found out you were an Incarnate. And since then, it’s like…so much of you started to make sense…and yet I still have so many questions.” The sun beamed in from his side of the truck, warming his face. “It feels like these past few weeks have been so long, but thinking back, they took hardly any time at all.”
Dex shrugged, “It’s like that, you know? But it gets faster as you get older. I feel like freshman year just started, how can we be juniors already? Forget a month being fast–the world has been spinning at light speed since the beginning of the industrial revolution.” He sighed, calm and contemplative, “I heard once that technology advances exponentially. And I knew it to be true. It’s happened a few times in history before catastrophes blew us back to the beginning of the bronze age.. It’s fun to learn things now, because I’m not able to keep up.”
“Did you keep up with a lot?” The words blurted out of Derek before he could ask something more embarrassing, like ‘What catastrophes?’ or ‘Was Atlantis real?’ .
To his surprise, Dex chuckled, warm, deep, and beautiful.
“I did! I do . I feel like if I don’t, someone else will forget and then who will remember if not me?”
“Putting a lot of faith in your memory, Dex–don’t you guys have something like a fifty percent retention rate? Eighty if you’re awesome?”
And Dex’s smile caught, then faded.
“About that…” fair colored brows drew down, and his eyes flicked between Derek and the road. Dex’s lips thinned to nearly nothing, and he took a deep breath, “My memory is perfect. Hyperthymesia. I remember… everything. ”
“I’ve been a mother, a grandmother, and a great-grandmother. I’ve been a father and grandfather, too, and I remember every moment of it. I know him.”
Oh.
He meant that literally.
Oh.
Oh shit.
Derek stalled for a moment, “You remember… everything ?” Dex nodded, eyes tight and affixed to the road ahead of them.
“...yeah.”
Derek thought back to April Fools, and how Dex had sat outside, his knowledge of everything in his room perfect, his need to have all of his items just so … the fear and confusion on his face as Derek yelled at his ‘husband’ in a strange and unfamiliar place.
Dex continued quietly, “The Deja vu is…bad. That’s why I got so confused. My…reminders got moved around.” Derek swallowed thickly, remembering all the times he’d jokingly agitated Dex’s persnickety habits. Dex hesitated, lips parting around some terrible knowledge that Derek knew without doubt would break him, the possibility of heartbreak hovered in the air between them.
“I’m sorry,” Derek interrupted instead. “For April Fools. I knew it was the prank that –that made you–”
“That–ah,–gave me an episode?”
“--yes. Did that. I apologized, back then. But I didn’t really understand . And I’m sorry.”
Dex huffed, shifting in his seat, “Gonna pull over for gas… Can you get a coffee for me from the store?”
“Sure. Do you want a snack? I was gonna grab a Coke and peanuts.”
Dex nodded, “A sausage roll, maybe?”
“Coming right up!”
Derek dashed in as soon as they pulled up to a pump and hid in the bathroom for a few minutes while he contemplated how hard this summer was going to be, in a way he was not used to. However, he must have taken too long, because Dex was stilted and jerky upon his return.
Several minutes passed in thick, sticky silence, broken only by the rumble of the engine and the hiss of wind through whatever invisible seams leaked between the panels of the truck.
“I’m sorry!” Derek said.
“I’m sorry,” Dex murmered.
Both startled and pulled back.
“You go first,” Dex said.
Derek felt the nervous laugh as it bubbled up, “Haha, no, I’m just apologizing again because once really wasn’t enough? I was an ass , bro. Grade A certified cow patty. And I got you into this huge mess with Bob–”
“No you didn’t,” Dex said sharply. Derek felt his heart seize in dreadful, unkillable hope. “Bob and I–we’ve had our problems. But his insecurities about you-” Bob has insecurities about Derek? “--don’t give him permission to use my weaknesses against me, and it’s not a reason for him to try and hurt you through me. Don’t apologize for him. Apologize for what you did, not how he responds.”
“So I can apologize for what I did to Chris? Even though I don’t remember it?”
“What you did to–?” Dex’s eyes unfocused, yellow irises engulfing pupils the size of pinpricks before blowing back out, unseeing. He sucked a breath in, eyes wide and unfocused across the asphalt, “ Oh– oh, fuck .”
The truck swerved sharply off the highway and down the next exit ramp, Derek’s stomach jumping into his throat, squeezed in around his tiny scream. They wobbled a few dozen feet in a terrifyingly short time and into the empty lot of an abandoned building whose fence hung open like a bad scene set-up from a movie, all broken bricks and chain link. The smell of spilled coffee sunk into Derek’s nose.
And then Dex curled over the steering column and broke down .
“--Oh–oh no , my poor baby– no no no no –” Dex’s low voice collapsed, his breath coming in shaking pants and huffs. “Oh no, baby, no… ” He pulled his elbows in tight, and fat tears rolling off his freckled cheeks to splat loudly onto the hard plastic mud guards on the floor.
Slowly, Derek unbuckled his seatbelt and slid over, “...You didn’t remember what happened to him,” he said softly, and mostly to himself. “It’s okay, he’s okay now. You can text him right now to see how he’s doing and everything.” He laid his arm over Dex’s shoulders a millimeter at a time. Dex jumped, then twisted off the steering wheel and into Derek’s neck.
“You–you shot him !” he wailed, his volume all returning at once. “H-h-he died !”
Derek felt sick and Dex wailed like a broken thing, hiccuping and sputtering short, stifled screams.
“Yes. I know. And I am so, so sorry,” he pulled Dex in tight, “ please believe me. I am so sorry. ”
Pulling up to the brownstone around noon was a strange echo of winter break. Same truck, same house, same bags, different season with more humid heat and a more awkward, heavy silence. But this time, there was no cajoling or careful plying to get the redhead to stay the night. The bubble of knowledge that Dex would be staying sat at the top of Derek’s throat, cloyingly sweet on the back of his tongue and hard to breathe around. The afternoon was used to get Derek set up for the months at home, Dex scoffing half-heartedly at his laundry, and then the pair of them running out to the nearest shop for detergent.
Luckily, Dex only had a moment of confusion looking at the buttons on the machine before shaking out his hair in a flicker of sunset orange and pressing the buttons.
“Want to watch some Netflix?” Derek asked as his sheets were closed into the appliance and water was cued into the drum, cascading in a utilitarian waterfall over the clear front door.
“Hmm? Oh, sure…would you know if a theme is part of a movie? I can’t get it out of my head and I can’t, uh, I’m just having some trouble placing it?”
Worry slid slick down Derek’s back like cold, sticky blood, “Sure, bro.”
Let it be known that starting a Lord of the Rings marathon mid-afternoon is a mistake when the person you’re watching it with is a hyperglot with perfect memory. Jogging Dex’s memory was a cascade of remembrances and then swift and brutal comparisons to the books, poetry, and extended lore of the whole Middle-Earth mythos that was simultaneously charming and hilarious. They couldn’t finish the series, but when Derek promised they’d finish the next day, Dex was appeased enough in his self-righteous nerdom that he acquiesced to sleep.
Their first two weeks in New York were slow, mostly spent watching movies. But where Derek would have slowly piled take-out containers into the tiny trash bin and drank himself through a good portion of the liquor cabinet and wine fridge, Derek and Dex together left both well enough alone. Their only forays into the neighborhood were to the tiny grocery mart ten minutes walk down, and to the ethnic food mart another twenty minutes past that. Derek was agog with fascination as Dex, who had been pulled there the day after they finished the Lord of the Rings, had carefully picked through the foreign offerings at Derek’s closest falafel fix and then ordered in Persian. Possibly Egyptian Arabic. Derek wasn’t paying the closest attention. The staff also spazzed, piling Dex with questions and gleeful smiles. The matron owner pushed fig tarts at them on the way out.
Each day was a simple routine of a simple breakfast, going to the markets while it was cool, gathering the ingredients for anything Dex felt like making for Dinner, and then returning home to either watch TV or read until hunger drove one of them to fix up a lunch. Laziness took their afternoons, too, and dinner…
…Derek loved dinner. Dinner with the team was great, with loud, boisterous Holster and Rans, kind, semi-organized chaos. Every available member of a thirty-strong squad of college athletes pot-lucking enough food for the small army that would crowd the Haus’ every available seat and fight over dessert. Dinner with just the frogs at the dining hall or at Annie’s, where Dex would pout prettily at Derek’s faux-chill poetry slamming and Chris’ resulting giggles…
But this , the intimate, almost exotic , dinners at Derek’s own home between just Dex and himself…
It was heaven .
Dex danced around the kitchen, a beat that Derek never understood when the only people who had really used the space before had been caterers. Ingredients transformed under Dex’s hands, the smells of all walks of life billowing like the steam from his pots and skillets. Each dish a new exploration in lives that Derek didn’t remember, but Dex insisted had, at one point or another, been favorites of theirs. Theirs.
History entwined,
you and I in endless dance
the way you pour spices
secret little stories
told over dishes
spoken between bites
days we once had
adventures
dreams.
Stories once lost
time taken
and memory faded
now shared
the salted meat of life
feeding in love and hope
a rediscovery of flavors
once familiar
nostalgia for one
shared ‘twixt two
stomachs made full
cold souls nourished
and warm
Derek remembered the first night, where they awkwardly bumbled around each other, careful bodies and careful words feeling around the edges of a comfort they both knew the shape of but had gotten lost between one meltdown and the next. The third time Derek nearly sliced his own finger Dex booted him to stirring duty, sitting on the counter like a misbehaved toddler under watch. Never mind that they had nothing to stir that night, or the one after.
Still, the smile Dex flashed him, warm and inviting, and joking that he needed to pay attention to his own work as the redhead flashed from pot to pot and cutting board and back–
–it felt like the kitchen of a real home .
Dex and Derek strolled in the mid-morning’s rising heat, headed towards the Halal Market that Derek’s mama preferred. His mom had little preference, but agreed that of all the places nearby, it was likely the cleanest in terms of lighting and dust. As the pair approached a corner with a small gaggle of people in their nicer linen work suits waiting on the signal to walk, Derek tugged them gently towards the rich smell of coffee, spice, and buttered, yeasty bread. “This place has amazing Moroccan coffee, let’s sit for a bit!”
“Any better than the butter coffee I made for you this morning?”
“Hey! They are different kinds of good!”
“Yes, and this has nothing to do with the fact that you didn’t want to eat cereal this morning, and now you’re realizing you’re hungry and can see some pastries?”
“I would never,” Derek blatantly lied. “...This was planned!” Which was true, but not in regards to wanting pastries, per se. Derek didn’t know what language was spoken behind the counter by the family owned cafe near the corner, but he had always been curious. And Dex might actually know even if he didn’t speak it himself.
The pair crowded through the front door, laughing brightly, Derek distractedly watching the flashing shine of the morning sun catch off the corner of the window and streak flame-bright in Dex’s hair and the sparse hairs on his chin. The smells of baked honey and almond and fruit sweetened the air, and the bold spice of roasted coffee mellowed it just enough to keep the sugary scent to one side of saccharine. The shop itself was warmly colored, the pastry cases brightly lit and the big coffee makers dark and heavy behind the busy staff hurrying around the counter. Derek stepped up to the displays and made a show of carefully looking over the menu, written in scrawled chalk over their heads. Dex’s shoulder was warm at his shoulder blade, the musk of his cologne at odds to the coffee and milk honey. Derek basked in it.
Under the menu two of the workers, who Derek suspected to be the grown children of the elderly owner, were chattering away in the language Derek couldn’t decipher. He leaned over, “Do you know what they’re saying?” he asked, voice low.
Dex’s eyes flicked to Derek’s, amber and green meeting, “ Yes , but that’s rude. ”
“They’re saying something rude ?” Derek asked, waggling his brows.
“Don’t be facetious!”
“What language are they speaking? I’ve been dying to know! It sounds cool!”
“I think in english it’s called Berber? I’ve heard it called that, but I don’t know if that’s the proper name.”
Derek’s chest swelled as he sucked in his breath, “What does it call itself?”
“ Tamazight. ”
Derek squirmed and bit his lip to seal in an unmanly squeal. “Will you order for us?”
“In Tamazight?”
“Yes!”
“ No! ”
Derek huffed through his smile, “Why not ?”
“ Shush !”
Dex stepped up to the portion of the counter where the harried cashier was taking orders, “Two spiced coffees and one pastry.”
“What kind?” she asked, not unkindly, but with the sharpness of someone who had little time to waste. With the crowd of the shop, it wasn’t a surprise.
“Literally any. Whatever doesn’t sell a lot.”
“Whatever doesn’t ?” she jerked and glanced up, seeming to see the man in front of her for the first time. Dex smiled, a roguish smile of a shared secret and glittering eyes looking like molten metal and gentle body-heat.
Her eyes widened and Derek related so hard. “This brat wanted me to eavesdrop on your conversation a second ago, he can get the least popular pastry for breakfast.”
Her eyes glaze over at the deep rumble of Dex’s voice, and then she smirks back, rattling something off in her family’s tongue. Dex’s laugh in response had the bubbling quality of coming from deep in his chest, and he rumbled a response back that had her snorting, then gasping. They had a very quick back and forth as she -predictably- lost her cool a little.
“Hey! We’re waiting back here!” said a person further back in line.
Dex and the woman jerked, and she said something that sounded like a smiling apology before clicking their order into the old register with thick-sounding keys and Dex pulled Derek aside to wait for their order to be called.
Derek felt the questions burp out of his mouth before he even knew they were there, “What did you talk about? Where is the language from? When did you learn it? Do you know if it's her first language?”
“You are a menace! We had a four-second conversation! She just asked if I was really speaking Amazigh, and where I’d learned it.”
Derek felt his body sway in an impatient dance, “Wel, what did you tell her?”
“The truth.”
“The truuuuth?”
“That I used to live there,” Dex replied with an exasperated smile. One milk-pale freckled arm snuck around Derek and pulled him in by the waist, knocking them together forehead to forehead. “That’s all we had time to say, are you gonna continue to be a pest about it, my dear companion?”
Derek, hot in the face, shoved him back with a snort, “You ass !” He brushed himself out, hands waving away the sharp tingling left behind from Dex’s body heat, “You know I’m a Death simp!”
“What the hell is a simp ?” Dex laughed back.
“It’s slang for a fanperson!”
“Is that a thing ? Being a simp ?”
“It’s sort of picking up steam on Vine…maybe just in my circles, though.”
“Sounds fake.”
Dex’s laugh rumbles low, “What do you mean by a Death simp? Do I need to put you on watch?”
Derek’s eyes rolled so hard they hurt, “ Emperor Death , Dex. I stan him.”
Dex blinked, a split moment of surprise and a bright flush before he spoke, “That’s…not what I expected.”
Derek elbowed Dex just as their order was called, two warm coffees and two pastries. Dex took the brown bag with a raised brow. The woman just smirked, “I charged you for two–why get rid of one of the least popular treats when I can sell two so that you can share the experience?”
Dex laughed, quietly bright, and nodded his thanks before rejoining Derek, who sniped a small table just as the occupants, two sharply dressed men who looked expensive enough to arrive to work late, got up. A quick sweep of his hands gathered the crumbs left into his palm and it was only a matter of leaning to the right a little to get the bits tossed into a bin. They settled in, unhurried.
The first touch of the hot coffee to his tongue was oddly bitter and sweet all at once. Then the spice hit, a tingling burn of flavor on his taste buds. It was like a little breakfast date, as they sat in comfortable silence sipping their drinks and munching an almond pastry that might not have sold well but was nonetheless delicious. They sat in comfortable silence, people watching through the windows and soaking in the morning.
Derek’s obnoxious ringtone split their silence like a sledgehammer smashing shelves in a china shop. He fumbled pulling out his phone, the thick case bouncing from hand to hand and the glare off the shiny screen protector flashing blindingly with the bright blinking of the flashlight in time to the rumble of the ring. He fumbled it, then again, then slapped his hands around it in a muted clap, and his eyes twisted to Dex.
–Who burst into guffawing laughter, spitting crumbs of pastry all over the table. It took several minutes of calming down before Dex could look at Derek without his cheeks puffing out in mirth, and Dex could drag his eyes down to his phone and check what Incarnate article had triggered his alert.
Oh.
It was about Dex.
By name, at least, though the only photo was one of him that Derek recognized as the same from Dex’s helluva triple hat trick that had been plastered all over the Swallow and had been tossed around a few sports clips. Prominently displayed was his number, a shock of Welly Red in a mostly cool field of ice, and Dex’s helmet and guard blocking a clear view of his face.
Newest East Coast Incarnate confirmation! Confirmed directly by the Smithsonian’s Incarnate-Lab, Samwell University is home to William J. Poindexter , a rising Junior on the Men’s Hockey team! Not much is known about him yet, but he appears to be a dedicated student, appearing on the President’s list every semester of his attendance on top of racking up plenty of minutes on the ice with his team. He is a Computer Science major, which breaks the solid string of humanities majors that we’ve seen amongst Incarnets…
It wasn’t long, Samwell commenting only that Dex had agreed with the Smithsonian to give his testimonials to Samwell, and via video-conference to the Smithsonian directly, and Samwell would share the information with other institutions. This was so Dex could continue to focus on his schooling, and that Dex was currently on Summer Break, and would return to the university in the Fall for classes.
Dex led Derek by the hand a week later as they walked through the city. Dex pointing out some areas beyond their vision with reminiscing wonder. “My sisters and I would sneak here to the city to see the university boys–we were, of course, not allowed to date, to go by the modern terms, but we loved to look our fill at all the pretty ones.”
“Did you find any?” Derek asked, lips pulling at his cheeks with a grin.
“We found Bob.”
“Ugh, should have put him back.”
Dex laughed back, “I had already known him before then, though my sisters I suppose never knew that. If he hadn’t been so pretty in that life I would have let my younger sister have him!”
“Hey!”
Derek ignored the call from behind them. “Your younger sister wanted him?”
“Hey!”
“Yes! My older sister liked him, too, but she was already married to a man she’d eloped with. She did ask me to lend him to her once, though.”
“HEY!” This time the call was accompanied by the thud of a hand on Derek’s shoulder. Derek choked on the neck of his shirt as he was yanked around. Dex’s face flashed with upset, a pretty pinch in his mouth, and then Derek lost sight of him.
A man- no, a butch woman, was breathing hard, leaning hard on the fashionably ripped knees of her jeans. She glanced up, one finger raised. Derek started to pat his pockets–had he dropped something? Was this rando trying to give his wallet back or something?
“Are– hah -are you– whoo! Jeez! Are you William Poindexter?” She sucked in a breath, standing to her full height, even as Derek stared.
“What?” he asked, intelligently.
“I am,” Dex said. “Do you need something?”
“Really?!” She shouted, hopping on her toes like a bunny, the childlike glee in her face at odds to the clean polo, cropped hair under a clean cap, and tough boots. “Really, really?!”
Dex cringed a little, and the woman calmed considerably. “I’m–sorry! I’ve never met a B-type and when I saw you down the road I panicked a little?” She points the way she’d come, and a group of women are shuffling embarrassedly. “My girlfriend said there was no way it was you, though–don’t you live in Maine ?”
“I’m staying with a friend for summer,” Dex replies, face a glass mask that Derek’s Mama would have envied.
“Oh, awesome, awesome! I don’t want to take up too much of your time, but would you look at my friends and tell us if any of us are A-types? I won’t be mad if you don’t, but I told them I would ask and they didn’t believe I actually would, which means I have to .”
Dex chuckles humorlessly, “The only way I would know is if you weren’t on your first life, to be absolutely clear. Before the second it’s impossible to tell.”
“Fair!”
Dex turned to the group on the corner, slowly creeping closer, and gave them a good look over. They stood stock still during their assessment. Dex’s eyes were cool like tumbled stones–lacking all warmth and sucking in the heat of summer.
“The femme in the skirt has a least a dozen under her belt, though none of the rest of you are, so far as I can tell.”
The woman gaped, then spun on her heel, “LIIISSSAAA!!!! YOU GOT LIKE A DOZEN LIVES!!!! YOU BETTER OFF THAN A CAT! ” Her voice was bright, and at an absolute roar of volume, and Derek did not jump. The woman thanked Dex brightly and nodded to Derek before happily jogging away, a jaunty wave tossed back to them.
“I guess,” Dex says quietly, “I should get used to stuff like that.”
There was a seizing in Derek’s chest, and the world felt distinctly more unfair than it had been before.
A rising bid of prophecy
a new thread come to life
of un-wove, re-made tapestry
peace given up for strife
Derek looked towards the happy woman, and then back to Dex’s stilted face. A dark-skinned hand reached out and grabbed a pale, freckled match, and Derek pulled Dex along the rough sidewalk, gently stepping over the cracks and breaks in the concrete.
“C’mon, tell me more about your sisters…”
A few days later, they wandered their way back home in the hovering light of late afternoon, the heat just past its peak but humidity in the air keeping the unseasonable upper eighties at an uncomfortable nearness. The pair had warded off the worst of it with some wandering in the garment district, and the crowded, almost claustrophobic stores filled floor to ceiling with fabrics and notions muffled the sounds of themselves, other patrons, and all else.
Dex was spotted by the store owner in the third shop, and with them was someone consulting for fabrics appropriate to suit-making in the nineteen twenties. Dex had been pulled along for thirty minutes as they debated between three wools that, to Derek, looked nearly identical. They were three hardly discernible shades of navy. Derek would be more upset with the distraction, but Dex had seemed happy to go along with it, sharing a few stories of pricking himself dressmaking when he was a child with fumbling fingers. He’d left the store with a small pile of scraps and odd-ends and with the delight of the owner, an elder gentleman with a patch of pudge under his button-up shirt. He told them to come by again. He could show them some patterns he’d drafted for a show in the eighties.
Such interactions were growing more common. There hadn’t been many outright. New York is a city that does its best to appear smugly nonplussed, after all. However, in their travels through the subways and over sidewalks, Dex and Derek have both twitched and the increasing numbers of rising cell phones and camera clicks. The quiet, if initially stalling, compaderie of the first few weeks was quickly being replaced with the ever watchful eye of the public, itchy on the back of the neck.
The pair’s shoes thumped up the steps of the stoop, tired legs clomping and a canvas bag of produce hanging off Derek’s arm bumping his thigh. Far-off sounds of traffic echoed down the lonely street of empty doorways. They were shoulder to shoulder at the door when Derek thudded into it with a smiling sigh, the relief of …of home? The sensation itself wasn’t wholly unfamiliar, there were twinges of it when returning to the Haus, or small splashes of it when collapsing– half-drunk after a kegster– onto his dorm’s thin mattress.
And the door swung open with the smooth click of a well-maintained lock.
Uncoordinated feet stumbled over the threshold to a brightly lit interior – they had left the lights off– and noise from the kitchen.
There was a rush of tingling energy down Derek’s spine, and Dex’s hard hand gripped his shoulder. Then the voices filtered through the pounding in his ears, and Derek was back in his own body.
“Derek! You’re home!”
“Wh– Mom ?” The squeak in his voice was childlike and small. From the direction of the kitchen, with the sharp click-clack of sharp heels on her feet, a tall woman strut into the foyer. She was milky-skinned with deep brown hair and a regal bearing. Her eyes were closely matched to Derek’s own green, but paler. They shone, pearl-like, behind her thick lashes. Her cream colored linen suit was missing its jacket, showing off a deep green silky top with a tasteful ruffle at her throat. It bled wealth in a whisper.
The woman twisted gracefully, years of dance lessons in her youth that hadn’t been allowed to fall too far into disuse, “My love, Derek and William are home!”
A lighter-toned voice called back, “Oh perfect! I just put on some coffee!”
More clatter echoed out from the kitchen – his and Dex’s kitchen!-- and Derek’s mama swanned through the threshold to open her arms and sweep Dex into an embrace. Her swooping octogenarian-art-teacher-chic cotton dress, in a wonderfully calming sage green, floated over the smooth flooring, wafting the spice of her skin oils into Derek’s nose. A part of his soul loosened as the parts centered over his chest squeezed.
Mama pushed back her blond hair, the kink of her natural curl pattern creeping in on the fly-aways charmingly. “Hello, William! It’s such a pleasure to meet you! Derek has told us so much!”
Derek sputtered, voice lost –because he had. In freshman year when his every other word over the other boy was false-calm pettiness and frivolous spite. “Mama!” he yelped, “What I said back then–!”
“All good things, all good things,” she waved off, pulling the red-head away from the door and guiding him through to the kitchen like–
–like he and Derek hadn’t spent weeks making their food there. Like he and Dex hadn’t fallen into a nightly routine there, where Dex danced his freckled limbs around the small space and handed Derek’s clumsy hands bowls of things to stir. Like they hadn’t made more food there than Derk’s moms in just about the house’s whole history?? That was probably an exaggeration, but the sick wrongness roiled all the same in his guts and in the numbness of his fingers.
The produce bag was leaden in his hand.
The two hockey players were pulled along by his Mama, the sharp edge of her acrylics tickling the inner corner of Derek’s elbow, sending hissing sparks up his arm. Into the kitchen they went, the clean lines and dark wood cabinetry made less stifling by rows of undercabinet lights and strong can lights from above. Derek itched to flick a finger out and leave them with just the undercabinet lights. The can lights were too bright, they pushed the shadows back into the corners, leaving the open space of the kitchen to yawn wide like a pit–
–the liquor cabinet to one side was bathed in light, as of yet untouched this season save for a single bottle of wine that Derek and Dex had opened, but then left to go to vinegar on the counter– forgotten, with much more important conversations taking place instead. Derek didn’t want to look at it. He swallowed thickly.
His mom’s voice drew his attention away from the large cabinet full of ill-forgotten sorrows, and back into the too-bright, no-longer intimate cooking space. “We brought dinner when we pulled through JFK, it’s not five star dining, but we can heat it up in the oven if you want to warm it some.”
There were some bags of take-out that wafted muted spice, piled on the counter where Derek normally sat. The scent felt thin and cold compared to the spitting of oil and hot peppers that Dex could fill the kitchen and most of the entry hall and living area with night after night.
“We…we had dinner plans,” Derek replied, weakly. A quick glance towards Dex showed the other’s concerned face, even as the other opened the fridge to place their spoils of shopping inside.
Mama laughed, bright and airy, “Oh nonsense! You can’t expect us to make our guest cook!”
My guest, Derek thought uncharitably, only to be shot through with sick, twisting guilt. His mamas were home. During summer. With him in their own home. They would be headed out again soon ( would they? ) and he should make the most of that time with them.
A hand, hot and large, slid across the back of his waist. It was a heavy, steady-ing weight.
“Oh nonsense!” Dex parroted back, “It’s been wonderful to have nice facilities to use!” Dex’s tone was unfamiliar. Veiled, and the subtlety of it, the sweet and silken iron of disapproval was there, sliding by Derek’s moms entirely as they smiled at the incarnate in the room. “I’ve been making dishes that I haven’t made in a few millenia for Derek. The ingredients aren’t quite the same, but the quality is top notch!”
“Derek knows better than to have a guest— A few millenia? ” Mama said, fluffy curls floating around her head, stumbling over an interrupted insistence.
Dex nods, nonchalant. “Yes, but back then you used what you could for dishes, ingredients really changed with the seasons, you know?” He unbagged some produce - peppers? – to wash while he spoke. “There were less ‘reciepes’ and more ‘methods of cooking’ back then. Though most had their particularities in the kitchens of the world.” It was a piece of their routine back, though it was odd to watch his vague reflection in the glass of the dark window from across the room. The details of Dex were vague, almost ghostly, rather than the smudged gaussian blur that highlighted the curve of his high ears that could be made out from just over his shoulder. Dex rambled on, Derek’s moms swaying into his orbit, drawn into the rhythm of a story of a north macedonian market from a time at the start of recorded history.
Derek made himself busy reheating the food using an oven he only recently learned how to work, and within a half hour, there was steaming food on the table for the small family.
Derek’s mama turned the conversation to school through a note on baking, and from school, she was able to actually introduce herself, “By the way, please call me Angela –my name is Hasana, but I go by my middle name. My wife is Tori, with an i. I was surprised when I heard from my friend Susannah that Derek had brought a friend home for summer, but when she realized who you are–well, we received a number of phone calls from our housewife’s group.”
A black and bitter bile surged up Derek’s throat, and the sudden onset anxiety left him short of breath.
“Tori is short for Victoria,” Mom said, belatedly putting her hand out to give Dex’s a shake, “I work in cyber security. I hear you’re a computer science major? Let me know when you graduate, and I’m sure I can get you in at my firm.”
“Your firm? Do you own it?” Dex asks cooly.
Derek’s moms chuckled. “Oh no,” Tori said, “I’m just a project lead, but there are only a few people higher up than I am on that particular food chain.”
Dex nods, “I’ll consider it. Derek, have you had enough?”
Derek’s plate was half-gone, but his appetite had all but deserted him. He nodded.
Tori began the convoluted process of begging off her and Angela’s goodnights. They’d traveled far and unexpectedly, and the boys had surely been all over the city that day. Dex swept up the dishes that Derek had been asked to finish while his mothers threw away the leftovers and retreated to their bedroom. Dex smiled a cordial goodnight to them both as he guided Derek towards their own rooms.
And then turned them into his room together, pulling Derek by the sleeve of his tee. Derek collapsed against the impersonal dresser in the room that Dex was calling his own for the summer and stared into the wood grain.
He wanted a drink from the cabinet downstairs.
“I’m sorry,” he croaked, “I don’t know why I feel so off. Today was a good day.” Heat burned behind his eyeballs, and his throat closed up tight.
Dex shushed him, big hands running down his back. “I know,” he murmured, “I know. ”
Hot tears began to drip down Derek’s cheeks in hot, salty trails that left a sweet bitter taste in the corner of his lips. Derek was pushed to sit on the bed, and Dex kneeled to pull off Derek’s sneakers. The bright copper of his hair mellowed and softened under the yellow light of the lamp. He lifted his hips when Dex motioned for him to do so, and freckled fingers undid the button of his pants to pull his jeans down and off, leaving him bare of everything save his boxers.
The room was warm, but a chill swept his skin anyway.
Derek remembered the last time he’d been so undressed in front of Dex, fresh from a shower and picking on the red-head with every bit of annoyance he had at his disposal. He’d made a horrible assumption and got up in Dex’s cherry red face to yell at him, only to be towel dried like a tantruming child. The memory was held embarrassingly fond, as was the wrestling match with his team captains after.
A warm, wet rag cupped his cheek and Derek floated back to Dex’s obsessively clean guest room, and a pair of golden amber eyes giving him the softest look.
“Back with me?” he asked, deep tenor resonating like a plucked cello string. The rag dragged across his cheeks, “C’mon, under the covers, now…”
They folded together under the blanket, skin to blessed skin. Derek nuzzled shamelessly into the muscled chest before him, counting imagined constellations between sparse, coarse hairs. Wetness smeared between them and the “I don’t know why I’m upset,” Derek said.
“That’s okay,” Dex replied. He bent away, and the lamp clicked off. “It was a good night, but I liked how it was before, too.”
There was something deeper there, but that would only strike Derek in the light of day, after Dex rolled them out of bed and with the morning sun bleeding through the curtains and bleaching out the intimacy of a New York night.
“Good Morning,” Tori yawned, stumbling into the kitchen with unbrushed hair and a mismatched set of silk pajamas. “Bless you, child,” she said to the coffee machine.
Dex snorted into his own cup of orange juice.
Derek was settled on the other side of the couch in the pristine living room with him, and Tori settled at the floating island that separated the kitchen and living spaces. She slurped a sip of her drink noisily.
“Oh my god,” she moaned, “This is the best coffee I’ve ever had.”
“Right?” Derek said, “It’s from a little corner bistro down near that mediterranean place.”
“The Greek place?”
“It’s turkish,” Dex said, “The coffee, I mean. It’s brewed a little differently, but it’s good.”
“I think he put honey in it,” Derek whispered conspiratorially.
Dex shoved him with a toe, “Who would put honey in coffee? It’s toffee, heathen. Be careful, it’s very rich, start with a small amount.”
Tori ignored him and stared him in the eye as she took a long drag, smiling. Keeper she mouthed to Derek, who blanched.
Angela swanned into the room in a halo of fluffy blonde curls and the sleeper’s equivalent of a pantsuit. “Good morning,” she yawned, “good to see you up, boys!” She leaned over to give her wife a kiss on the cheek, and stole the other woman’s mug. “Thanks for the cuppa, my love.”
“Thief,” Tori said, lacking heat and with a definite bend towards fondness. Derek loved his moms.
Angela stretched and leaned on the couch near Derek’s shoulder, “Tori and I wanted to do something with you boys today, if you don’t mind.”
“We had discussed going back to the Empire State Building,” Dex said, despite such a conversation having never taken place, “I’m sure you’ve seen it before and I couldn’t possibly bother you to go just to entertain me.” Derek felt his face do something funny and buried his face into his mug. Just focus on the steam, he thought.
Angela laughed, bright and merry, “Oh we could never be such hosts! We’ll go with you tomorrow if you like! For tonight though we picked up something special!”
Dex nodded, “And that would be?”
“Tickets to a Broadway show! The hottest one of the season! When all the Incarnate news started popping up it was just starting to drum up interest and make waves as an off-broadway production, but then got a lot of buzz. So much so that they opened on Broadway earlier than expected. they were originally going to begin shows in August, I think?”
Dex twitched, “Ah, musicals. I was an avid fan in previous lives,” but not this one , he didn’t say. Angela took no notice of the thinning of Dex’s already thin mouth.
“It’s hip hop music,” she said, grinning down at Derek.
Oof , Derek thought. Negative points.
“And it’s about the founding of America! Well, it’s a biography of Alexander Hamilton.”
Dex choked on his coffee. He blotted up the mess from his face with the neck of his shirt, “I beg your pardon?!”
“Hip Hop dance musical about Alexander Hamilton, a founding father of the United States,” said Tori, passing over a dish towel that had never been used to clean a spill, ever.
Dex turned to Derek, “ We have to go, ” he said, with a grin and the gravity of a possibility that could at any moment be snatched away, “we really, really have to go!”
Tori’s fist punched the air, “That’s the spirit! There were a lot of B-types around at the time, weren’t there?”
“ Yesssss,” Dex replied, giggling. His eyes bored into Derek’s and seemingly willed him to understand this unspoken desire to go to a rap musical. Derek raised a brow.
“ Trust me ,” Dex said.
And really, that’s all Dex needed to say to convince him.
Derek’s moms insisted on going out and buying an outfit for Dex for the evening upon learning that the most formal clothes Dex had were clean henleys and dark wash jeans a size too large. He didn’t have any jackets on his person at all. Derek offered to lend him some, but his mama had already called up their personal shopper to tell him Dex’s colors and to meet them at the boutique.
Dex turned to Derek, horrified , but Derek could only shrug. When mama got to play dress up, she didn’t cut corners or price tags.
Derek got away with an old pair of seldom-used khakis and a mossy cashmere turtleneck. His mom tossed a thick gold chain with a letter ‘A’ on it from her collection of jewelry and told him to find a nice gold watch from his tie drawer to go with it. His moms had coordinating neutral monochrome looks. The light taupe matched Derek’s pants and while Tori opted for sleek textures of silk and thin wool, Angela’s top was a sweater of dripping fringes that matched her fluffy bottle blonde hair. As Dex was greeted and fawned over in the boutique, they drifted around the room with their shopper, pulling items off the racks.
Dex suffered through the selection process with less than pleased aplomb, but Derek saw how his moms had quietly coordinated to his own selection of clothes, even pulling aside a jacket in the color of his eyes off the rack to purchase for him and matching green scarves for themselves. When they left the store for lunch and a bookshop run, Dex would have something in similar colors, if not a few more options for the hell of it.
Sure enough, a ruffled William Poindexter left the store with stilted thank yous to Derek’s mothers for a full miniature wardrobe. Some slacks, jeans, A polo, two button downs, a turtleneck a little thicker than Derek’s, and two blazers. And two pairs of dress shoes. A dark pair of brogues and a sleek chelsea boot. The slacks were conveniently the same shade as Derek’s, and one of the button downs matched the green accessories of the small family. Angela laughed and waved it off, even if Dex was an ugly shade of red and clearly embarrassed. They would be back to pick up the fitted clothes from the alterations attendants in a few hours, just in time for the show.
“You’ll need them for when you’re doing interviews in the future,” Tori said, “Both for jobs and for those fancy B-type interviews they do for TV and all that.
Dex looked struck about the head, “I…suppose I will.”
“You’re in contract with Samwell, right?” Derek asked, “for your interviews?”
Dex nodded slowly, “Yes. They will forward their records to the Smithsonian Institutes researchers afterwards and have primary publishing rights.”
Angela huffed, “And what are they paying you for that?”
Dex hummed, “They will be covering my tuition the last two years I’m at Samwell, and any graduate studies I may choose to do if I choose to extend the deal. I also get room and board, plus an allowance for food and fun.”
Angela nodded, blond curls tamed into a neat coif at the back of her head, “That sounds good. Will they retroactively cover your last two years?”
Dex shrugged, and in the distance a horn blew on a car, “If they get an excess of publicity or profit from the deal, they will consider it. I don’t expect them to.”
Tori chuckled, “You don’t think you’re that interesting?” she asked, and Derek wanted to groan.
Dex huffed, “I don’t think they’ll ask that many interesting questions”
“Harsh,” Derek said.
“Harsh truth,” Dex corrected.
“Oooh, look at this!” Angela squealed and pointed through a window at a small crossbody purse –in green. Tori rolled her eyes, already pulling open the door to the store.
Dex followed Angela in, letting himself be pulled by the elbow.
“Get him a nice watch,” Derek’s mom whispered, with a nudge and a wink. “All guys like a nice watch, and that digital piece from the nineties on his wrist could use a good cleaning. It looks like it should have stopped ages back!”
“Dex takes good care of it,” he hissed back, and her answering grin told him that he hadn’t successfully distracted her from the flush on his face.
Entering the Richard Rogers Theatre and into a tiny lobby and series of hallways, being directed towards the mezzanine by ushers in clean uniforms, was nearly dizzying in the crowd. There was barely enough room to rub elbows.
Until a woman with a cloud of curls in a strange uniform that looked like a red-coat costume sans the coat, all white vest and dance shoes and heavily lined eyes, pranced up. “You’re William Poindexter!” she said, smile bright on her heart shaped face. Her voice was just quiet enough not to garner too much attention.
Dex stepped up, “I am, may I help you?”
She tapped danced a little circle while flapping her hands, “Ooooh, Lin is going to lose it backstage! He’s been trying to get some Incarnates to come to the show for weeks! ”
Dex huffed a laugh, “I see. I’m excited for the show.”
She beamed at him and turned her mouth to the lapel of her jacket, whispering into a small clipped-on radio. She paused, a finger to her ear –was she on a radio?--and then turned back to Dex. “How many in your party, sir?”
Dex smiled, “Four. Myself, my friend, and his parents.”
“Please wait here for just a moment!” She hopped on her toes, her curls fluffing, and disappeared into the crowd. They waited for perhaps five minute before she returned with another woman dressed in the same semi-clothed white vest and breeches. They passed Dex four badges.
“Please stay in your seats after the show and security will escort you to the back!”
“Ah, thank you very much,” Dex said, bundling the little backstage passes into the inner pocket of his new blazer. “We’ll be up on the Mezzanine level.”
“Mezzanine! If we’d known you were coming, we would have arranged for a box seat!”
“It was a last-minute change of plans,” Dex soothed.
The women giggled and nodded, and then with brief goodbyes and see you laters, left the emptying lobby for a side hallway marked for employees in a discreet corner. Tori hooked an elbow around Dex’s arm. “That,” she said, “was schmoozing at its best! Ha!” Angela’s arm twisted into Derek’s and the mothers guided the young men to their seats.
The mezzanine level was high, and their seats, for as last minute as they were, were still extremely close to the front edge. Derek swallowed thickly. He didn’t consider himself afraid of heights. Usually. But the looming vertigo of the drop past the guardrail left his brain swimming until he could sit. They were, happily, two rows back from the rail. Derek sighed, his moms were to the other side of Dex, putting him elbow-to-elbow with an older man who looked less than enthused to be there. Derek sighed, looking out at the brightly lit theater, waiting for the dimming of lights and an MC to give a spiel on etiquette. To his side, his moms were pestering Dex with questions, which he was handling with the straight face of a politician. Derek envied him such composure.
He used to think he had such grace.
He used to fake it well, at least.
He thought he did, at any rate.
But seeing now, on other’s face.
He doesn’t think he’d won the race.
“How about you, Derek?”
“Hmm? Huh?”
“Eloquent, love.”
“Hush, Tori, he’s excited for the show! Derek is doing excellently in his classes! He and Marin passed their Anthropology course!”
Derek dragged himself back into the real world, “Mahreen? Do you mean our Astronomy course?”
Angela giggled, “Oh, um, probably! But you did pass, didn’t you?”
Derek grinned at her, a flutter in his heart “Yes, actually! Dex tutored us!”
Angela oohed and ahhed, patting Dex’s arm and thanking him.
“He did pay me,” Dex said, “It wasn’t wholly altruistic.”
“I sure hope he did!” Tori said just as the lights began to flash and dim, “He’s a good boy.”
Derek shivered, grin going tight, just as the MC, dressed in red with a crown, stepped out to say hello.
Derek really loves the first act of the show.
It’s the second that puts something sour in his stomach.
The end of the show is heralded by Eliza being led to the front of the stage, to gaze excitedly into the crowd who has come to see her husband’s story, and the crowd leaping to their feet with whistles, hoots, and roars of applause. Derek is slow to stand, eyes already scanning the playbill to find the faces he needed names for.
Derek feels the sting in his hands as he claps, Dex to his side fighting back sniffles and tips into Derek’s shoulder, cuddling into his neck.
“Oh shit,” he said, hot breath in Derek’s ear, “I hate that I liked that. It was good? How dare it.”
Derek shivered, and pulled one arm up around the other’s waist. It felt entirely too familiar, and he dropped his arm again. Dex leaned in all the same, a warm line through the layers of cotton and wool that separated them.
The small family waited as instructed, and a few minutes later, an usher appeared and graciously invited them for an impromptu backstage tour. Derek’s moms and Dex happily followed him away, Derek trailing back, Dex’s hand hot in his own sweaty palm.
Some cast members greeted them happily in a bright, narrow hallway lined in thin blue carpet with small framed photos of various productions adorned with cast autographs. They were directed down some stairs and around a mini maze of strange equipment, the dance cast members with them showing them the intricate metal equipment that spun the concentric circles of the stage and the nooks and crannies where prop furniture was stashed from show to show.
After a look at the costume racks to one side of the stage – for quick changes, mostly– they were led away to another room, this one larger and lined in vanities with bright, circular bulbs hanging over their large mirrors adorned with photos and good luck charms. The carpet was still blue, but this one more worn, like it was replaced a little less often, or used a little harder. A variety of actors and actresses of color waved cheerily in their sweats to the little group.
“Hello!” boomed a light voice behind them.
The man was softer around the middle, with pale olive skin and a goatee split by a wildly friendly grin, dark hair pulled back from his face.
It was Lin Manuel Miranda, Alexander Hamilton himself.
Derek’s face flushed, even as Mr Miranda’s eyes slid away from Derek to lock onto Dex, who already had a hand out with a smile. The man shook it with both of his own, enthusiasm dripping glee from every line of his body. “Wow! Mr. Poindexter, you’re the talk of New York right now!”
“Ah, thank you, Mr. Miranda, it’s been a bit of a change.”
“I expect so! Did you get a tour? I’d love to hear how you feel about the production.”
Angela gushed, her blond hair seeming to fluff in accordance to her excitement, while her wife Tori soothed her with a steadying arm around her waist. Dex praised the minutia of detail and the clever costuming required to make what would normally be more restrictive wear flexible enough to dance in. Lin Manuel Miranda made a point to indicate he understood where some of the historical inaccuracies were, and that he’d wished he’d been able to have a B-type expert on hand to fact check him.
And then he asked, as if he’d been holding it behind his teeth only for it to escape without his permission, “Were you around during the Revolution? –If I may pick your mind! I’m not an historian!”
Dex chuckled, the present cast members leaned in, and Derek’s eyes drifted up to a woman just behind Mr. Miranda. She was round-faced and flushed, all sweet smiles and politely curious eyes. Dex turned to her, too, raising both of his hands. Blinking, she stepped forward to take them in her own.
“Hello, Ms. Soo.”
“Hello, Mr. Poindexter,” she replied.
The hair on Derek’s arms raised, and the terrible feeling, the familiar made unfamiliar raised like a great, dark wave up his legs, over his back and belly, and loomed high over his head.
“Because Derek’s name isn’t George, anymore.”...
“Derek Nurse--we play hockey together. Philip-Chris is our friend. He’s a goalie.”...
“Eliza, you’ll sleep the night away..”
Derek shivered as Dex roused.
“Hmmm--Alexander? What?...Where?”...
“What?” Dex said, feather light, “I--I don’t--Alexander, I’m confused--” The pitch of fear creeping into Dex’s normally strong tenor ran like cold fingers up Derek’s back.
“George is just leaving--”...
Rising Sublime Overwhelming
a secret
Pressure Sinking Drowning
the truth
Disaster Hunger Hunting
Me
Please God No
“…And in the meanwhile, you’re still married, and you know very well how I feel about that!”
“It’s very nice to meet you, dearest myself,” Dex said.
Her eyes went round, big and excited and awed. The cast gathered nearby sucked in a collective breath. Lin Manuel Miranda seemed to have stopped breathing completely.
“ Eliza ,” she whispered.
The drive home was loud, though Derek contributed to that little. Derek’s moms were chatting with Dex happily about New York, how he had found it during his visit, and how it had changed over the past two centuries. Derek’s mom smoothly talked about infrastructure changes while his Mama chimed in to talk about gentrification and the construction of Central Park. The cars around them honked and grumbled, the rumble of their own engine grumbled through Derek from the seat of his pants and up into his ribs. The sound of far away honking and sirens wailed through the fog muddling Derek’s brain.
Half thoughts and smoky remembrances filter through intermittently. The lights of the city smear through the half-light of New Yorks Midnight dusk, and Derek floats along their light trails.
When they pull up to home, Derek has completely lost track of the conversation, and wandered up the stairs at Dex’s back, the redhead’s freckled fingers hooked into Derek’s own. Halfway up, Derek’s feet froze, and Dex was pulled to a stop.
“Bad Bob is Alexander Hamilton. And Chris is Philip Hamilton. And you were Eliza. And he cheated on you.”
Dex’s eyes were moon-pale in the streak of yellow light splitting the foyer. They were acid. And gold. And honey. And would flash like lightning struck of an angel’s wing.
“Yes. He did.”
“And I killed your son.”
“And you killed my son. But he came back again. Come to bed?”
Derek and Dex laid back to back in Derek’s bed. The walls washed in shades of grey from the blue light from their cell phone screens. Dex was typing, pausing, typing again. Texting Chris? Maybe. Derek was doing the same, but every message was trite, over-sad, or over-angry or so avoidant of the topic of terrible, half-felt apologies that were mostly just self-righteous begging that they wouldn’t give him any relief to his send. Every message was summarily deleted with a vicious thumb and the blinking cursor in the message field taunted his sleepless, dry eyes.
He switched message tabs, and opened a conversation with Holster instead.
You: U awake?
HolstleTakeOver: Yes, plz talk to me bro im dyign
You: Snds srs u gud?
HolstleTakeOver: No
HolstleTakeOver: Rans is in bed w/me rn
You: Whaaaaat?
HolstleTakeOver: Portman and he were talking or smth and lik a wwek ago he started sleeping in my bed w/me
You: Ill kill him if you want
HolstleTakeOver: Idk man
HolstleTakeOver: this is torture but I love it
HolstleTakeOver: Im loosing sleep but other than that
The word bubble pauses. The blinking ellipsis of typing words dies.
You: Hols?
HolstleTakeOver: Rans woke up.
HolstleTakeOver: kissed my chest
You: uuuuuhhhh kiss him?
HolstleTakeOver: Nursery! No
HolstleTakeOver: Im having a hard enough time fighting an erection dont put that juju on me!
HolstleTakeOver: we talked. Rans and me.
You: so you confessed and hes stillin ur bed –sounds like kiss o’clock to me!
HolstleTakeOver: NO
You: Hols, you didnt
HolstleTakeOver: I did
You: HOLS NO
HolstleTakeOver: I TOLD HIM WE WERE JUST FRIENDS
You: HOLS NO
HolstleTakeOver: He was so relieved, bro! Like a thousand pound weight came off his shoulders!
You: NO this is MASOCHISM Hols!
HolstleTakeOver: Hi kettle its pot and ur black. How’s sleeping with Dex next door going for you?
Derek started, and the burning press of heat at his back seared with renewed intensity. The light on the walls had dimmed, and Derek twisted around to see that Dex’s phone was now dark and silent on his side of the mattress. Dex was stretched in one long line of pale freckled skin and dense, lean muscle. His ruddy head was tucked, nose down, into his pillow, and as Derek watched, he shuffled closer to his pillow, then sighed and rolled onto his back, arm stretched up and curling behind his head. The smell of clean sweat, musky and body warmed curled into his nose hairs, just to the nicer side of sour.
You : Shut up.
You: I know it’s masochism at its finest.
You: the difference is that *I killed Dexs kid*, and we were never best friends.
HolsterTakeOver: and ur gonna live with him for one summer. Not for one or more years. You and dex isnt me and rans. What we have is too big to go and ruin it.
Derek thought back to Snowy.
Snowy and Dex pulled apart, still holding each other by the shoulders and smiling at the other. Then Snowy twisted, flashing Derek a smile.
Dex deflated, joy punched out of him.
He drew Snowy around once more with one pale, freckled hand against a stubbled jaw.
He just shook his head.
You: I’m less and less sure of that, Halsy.
Derek stared at the message in stark black and white on his screen, the cursor blinking at him judgmentally. A savage thumbbing deleted the message and Derek dropped his phone over the edge of the bed and settled into bed.