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Derek wakes up disoriented, still half-drunk from what must be just a few hours ago, and more than half-naked. It’s all a blur -- he knows he’s not in his room because from where he’s turned on his side he can see the lack of posters and polaroids up on the wall. Once his vision clears a bit more maybe he’ll recognize it. His head hurts and his throat is dry -- he’s probably never felt so thirsty in his life. At least, he thinks, at least he’s alone in this strange bed, if the stillness on the other side is any indication. He’s not even sticky or anything, so. He closes his eyes again. Maybe he can get a bit more sleep in before he really has to leave -- it must be so early, there’s barely any light streaming in through the window.
He’s just about ready to slip back into an alcohol-induced haze when --
“What? When? How?”
Derek’s eyes fly open and he feels his heart lurch in fright. He’s not alone in this bed, in, yep, Dex’s bed. He’s in here with Dex, who is apparently on the phone. William John Poindexter’s bed. Practically naked. Is he wearing any pants? He’s still got a beanie on his head, for fuck’s sake. What is going on? Did he and Dex...? That would be... Well.
“Fuck,” he says, and suddenly a hand is closed over his mouth tightly, so fucking tightly he grunts from the force of it.
“When is--” Dex starts from beside him, his voice sounding -- scared? small? shaky, a bit? Whatever it is, it stomps on Derek’s urge to lick Dex’s hand, which he knows for a fact Dex hates, because he’s done it before.
“All right. I’ll... Yeah. I’ll find a way to be there. No--Mom--don’t worry about my classes. Just... I’ll be there, all right? I’ll see you tonight. Yeah. You too. Bye.”
Dex’s hand falls away and Derek turns, as curious to see what Dex looks like as he is concerned over what could possibly make Dex lose his chill so early in the morning. It must be a record.
“Why are you driving up today? It’s fucking Sunday,” Derek says instead of oh yep you’re naked from at least the waist up too. “That’s a six hour drive. And your car is in the shop.”
“Yeah, I fucking know where my car is,” Dex says, but the tone is diminished by him taking a deep, shuddering breath halfway through. He looks paler than normal, freckles stark against his skin.
“Hey, hey, Dex,” Derek says, sitting up and ignoring the spinning of the room, “what’s wrong? Why do you have to go home?”
He wants to put his arms around Dex but he’s kind of sensing that the vibe isn’t right for it so instead he just lays a hand on Dex’s forearm, where the muscles are tight from clutching his phone in a death-grip.
Dex releases another long breath, before: “My grandmother died. I have to go.”
“Okay. Okay. Fuck, I’m so sorry, Will,” Derek says. He still doesn’t know what to do with his hands.
Dex huffs out something that might be a laugh. Might not be, too. “It’s Liam. You didn’t know that? My dad is Will. I’m Liam.”
Derek is pretty sure he’s sober now, and notices that Dex is shaking, just a bit.
“All right. Liam. Okay. How about we get you in the shower, then dressed, then we can talk about how you’re going to get to Maine?” Derek says, going for soothing -- ironic, considering he usually does the opposite of comfort Dex when he’s upset. “Actually, you know what, you’re going to borrow my car, so that’s not a problem. Shower, now.”
Dex looks up, startled, phone still tight in his hand. “I... you’re sure?”
“Of course I’m fucking sure. Now come on. Let’s get you hydrated and clean, okay?” He himself slides out of bed -- definitely fully naked -- and his feet hit the floor with a thump. One dizzying moment later and he’s up and searching for his clothes, keeping an eye on Dex, who seems to be in a trance, staring straight ahead.
Derek hasn’t had much experience with death, or even grandparents -- all he’s ever known is his mom and his Nana who is still young enough that he doesn’t have to worry about her for a while. But he knows Dex has a big, close family, and he thinks he might have to try to understand, for Dex. Which is -- strange, because since when does he care about Dex’s feelings or family? And since when does he wake up naked in Dex’s bed? God, this is getting complicated.
“Dex, Liam, come on,” Derek says gently, walking over to nudge Dex’s shoulder a little. Dex’s eyes are big and glazed over a bit which could be from the lack of sleep or the hangover but is most likely because of the death of his grandmother and if this keeps up, he won’t be able to drive anyway, so Derek takes a risk. “You can sleep it off in the car, all right? I’ll drive.”
Dex gapes. Breathes deeply. Closes his eyes. Leans into Derek’s hand still on his shoulder.
“Yeah. All right.”
They’re on the road two hours later -- they sent off emails and assignments to their profs and stopped at the Haus, where Dex stayed in the car and Derek went in to find Bitty in the kitchen and tell him why they’d be missing practice tomorrow night, so could he please pass the message along to the coaches and Rans and Holster?
“You’re going with him?” Bitty had asked, incredulous. He was the only one awake it seemed, as it was only just ten in the morning, but Derek thought he might have heard some Tango-esque groans from the living room.
“Yeah. Don’t make this weird, all right?” It was already weird enough without the team making a big deal out of it.
“No! No, of course not. Here, take some muffins. And -- coffee? I could make smoothies if --”
“Bitty, coffee sounds great. Last night was--” He hadn’t known how to finish that, mostly because he couldn’t remember. All he knew was that he was hungover and doing this. “Well. Leave room in Dex’s for--”
“--cream, I know. Here. Drive safely, okay?”
Derek had bent down to kiss Bitty’s cheek while Bitty batted him away with a fond smile.
“Get. You’ve got a ginger that needs you.”
“Thanks, Bitty. See you Thursday.”
Now, with Dex in the passenger seat holding onto his travel mug for dear life, legs drawn up and resting on the dash, two duffels thrown haphazardly in the back and two suits hanging up against the right window, Derek wonders what the hell he’s doing here. Dex hasn’t spoken more than one or two words at a time since the phone call, and is ignoring the texts popping up on his screen, choosing instead to stare blankly ahead at the road. Normally he’d be chirping Derek for his -- admittedly hazardous -- driving, or his prim button-down, or his car which is at least six years younger than Dex’s crappy Cavalier. He’d grunted a thanks when Derek had shoved the coffee at him and that was about it. No mention of anything else -- not the funeral, or his grandmother, or Derek’s uncommon kindness, or the fact that they woke up naked in bed together that morning.
Derek looks at him in his peripheral vision while passing an eighteen-wheeler.
“How are you doing?” he asks, and even to his ears, his voice sounds too gentle. Dex should be sneering, slapping him, at least clenching his fists, but there’s no change of expression.
“Why do you have a car? Don’t you live in Manhattan?” Dex says instead of answering the question, and Derek doesn’t miss the raspiness of his voice from disuse, and partying, and -- well.
“She’s never seen Manhattan, only ever Massachusetts. Stayed at a friend’s near Andover when I was home, and Shitty’s last summer.”
Dex grunts in answer.
“Her name is Stella,” Derek adds. All his friends from Andover and even his mom and grandmother call her Stella -- at this point he barely even knows what kind of car she actually is. Shitty had been delighted.
“All right,” is all Dex says.
There aren’t many cars on the road; it’s a grey October Sunday so Derek makes good time, and Dex doesn’t say a word when he plugs in his phone and selects a soft, moody playlist.
Around twelve-thirty Derek is getting hungry and is thinking Dex is too, because he hasn’t even touched his muffin or coffee, so he pulls on an off-ramp into a small town where he finds a diner.
“There’ll be food at my house,” Dex finally says when Derek stops the car.
“Well, there’s no food in my car as far as I know. Eat, you’ll feel better,” Derek says, prodding Dex’s shoulder.
“I feel fine.”
Derek resists the urge to roll his eyes, something he’s never had to hold himself back from doing around Dex before. “I meant the hangover.” He hadn’t, not really, but it must appease Dex somewhat because he nods and steps out.
Both Dex and the waitress raise their eyebrows when Derek orders the veggie burger, which tells him it’s not a common thing around here, but she marks it down anyway -- and laughs in embarrassment when she asks if he wants bacon on it.
“Sorry, right, no bacon. Fries?” she asks. She’s young, maybe a year or two older than they are, and pretty, even with the dark circles under her eyes that tells Derek she’s been here for hours. He reminds himself to leave a good tip.
“Yeah, thanks. Just water to drink. Dex?”
Dex jumps -- he’d been looking at the space above Derek’s shoulder -- and stares at the menu with a confused expression on his face.
“Two-piece fish and chips, pan-fried. Extra tartar sauce. And, uh, yeah, water. Thanks.” He hands her the menu and turns back to Derek before she’s even fully gone. “You’re vegetarian?”
“Yes? Not really a secret,” Derek says slowly. “Have been since the eighth grade. I tried the vegan thing for a while but it’s inconvenient in the dining hall, and hard when we have to travel so much for hockey.”
“Huh.”
They lapse into silence again, and Derek thinks that they really don’t know much about each other at all.
“Okay, Liam,” he finally says when the waitress -- Danny, her name tag states -- has brought their food, “what do I need to know about your family?”
“Oh, uh,” Dex says through a mouthful of fries. “Hm. My mom is Sandy, she’s an English teacher. My dad is Will like me, and right now he’s fishing hard shell lobster on his brother’s boat. My uncle Grant.”
“An English teacher!” Derek exclaims. “All the times you chirped me for being an English major, and your mother is one too!”
Dex shrugs. “I’m sure you’ll get along with her. She’s got eighth and ninth grade English this year. The Giver, The Outsiders, you know.”
“Oh, I do know. This is very exciting information,” Derek says before taking a big bite of his burger -- it’s actually not that bad, if a little mushy.
“Well, don’t bother her too much with your theories on The Lord of the Flies this week,” Dex says, and Derek almost chokes on a piece of lettuce.
“Shit, yeah, you’re right. I’m sorry.” He’d forgotten. “Is it--”
“Her mom, yeah. My Gram.” Dex looks down at his food and bites his lip. “There’s Pops on my mom’s side too, but he’s... he won’t know what’s going on. And on the Poindexter side there’s my Deedee.”
“Deedee sounds adorable,” Derek says, anything to get Dex’s shoulders relaxed again. It works somewhat, because Dex snorts.
“Adorable? Yeah. She has one glass of wine and starts telling us dirty jokes over the dinner table.”
“Sounds like my kind of lady.”
“Yeah, she’s great. Kind of like a grandma version of Bitty. Her real name is Deirdre, but most people call her Deedee.”
Derek frowns and pushes around a few fries. “That’s... all right. Do I call her...?”
“Whatever you want. She’d probably love it if you called her Deedee too. I don’t know if we’ll see her, though.”
“Please eat some more,” Derek says softly. Dex jerks up, then deliberately cuts a piece of fish and pops it in his mouth, staring at Derek the whole time.
Satisfied when Dex keeps going past that one bite, Derek continues in his questioning. “Siblings?”
“You sure you don’t want to start writing this all down?”
“Why, what are you? The Weasleys?”
Dex rolls his eyes. “No, and for your information, I’m the only ginger. But I haven’t gotten to the extended family yet.”
“The only ginger?” Derek sits back and crosses his arms -- that can’t be true.
“The other ones are grey now.”
“Please. Once a ginge, always a ginge.” This is better. It’s easy. He can almost forget the absurdity of the situation by falling back into these comfortable, familiar chirps.
“Fuck off, Nursey. Do you want to hear this or not?”
Derek waves him on.
“All right. Jake’s the oldest, twenty-seven. He’s a pharmacist down in Portland. His wife is Melissa, and they’ve got Ava, my niece. She’s, uh, four? Five, maybe? Shit, I can’t remember. No, four. Her birthday’s in December.”
“Cute.”
“Yeah. Mostly non-verbal though, so don’t be offended if she doesn’t talk to you. Unless you know basic ASL.”
Derek splutters. “You know ASL? Jesus, Dex, how did I not know this shit about you?”
“You never bothered to ask.” Dex raises his hands and signs along to the next sentence. “I don’t know much, and I’m out of practice, but, yeah, a bit.”
Derek can’t stop looking at Dex’s hands. Those hands can play amazing hockey, type up computer programs faster than even Chowder, fix even the most ornery of ovens, play guitar (Derek’s never heard it but he knows it’s there in Dex’s closet), and now, this. It’s fucking mesmerizing, is what it is, especially now that he knows just how far those freckles go.
“Anyway,” Dex says, startling Derek out of his thoughts, “then there’s Jennifer, she’s twenty-four, works at an insurance office in Augusta. She’ll probably make it down for the funeral, but not before that. And then me, you know me--”
“Apparently not,” Derek grumbles.
“--and then Katie, she’s eighteen. Graduated last year.”
“What’s she doing now?”
“Welding at community college.”
“Cool.”
“Yeah.” Dex sighs, and looks down at his plate, which is only half-empty, but Derek doesn’t think he’s going to get any further in his prodding, so he pulls out his wallet.
Before Dex can protest, he holds up a hand. “Let me get this, and you get the gas. Fair?”
“Yeah. Thanks. I’ll drive the rest of the way, if you don’t mind.”
Dex looks better, less pale, definitely less tense, so Derek nods.
“Yeah. Onwards.”
The town is small and colourful but oddly empty -- Dex says only a bit more than 4000 people live here year-round, and that it gets pretty dead in the fall and winter. It’s almost unthinkable to Derek, a place this small. He feels antsy, vulnerable, but doesn’t miss the way Dex’s shoulders seem less square, his jaw less tight, his eyes roving around as he drives through. The marinas are bare when they pass by, the sailboats and speedboats in storage for the season, but there’s some activity on the wharves. Three of the five people they meet on the road lift their fingers to wave a Dex from their car, and Dex answers back, an odd little salute of a gesture that fascinates Derek. The affect is altogether quaint, though Derek is pretty sure Dex would punch him for saying that, nevermind why they’re here.
They finally pull up on the side of the road on a stretch already lined with cars in front of a soft yellow house with a bright red door surrounded by trees, an old swing-set clearly fallen into disuse on the front lawn, a shed and an ATV just visible behind it. The trees are slowly gaining colour -- where there must have been just green there is now a mix of brown, red and yellow in with it, and the leaves sway gently in the wind. It’s stunning, and Dex, in his brow flannel and jeans, looks like he fits. Derek thinks that he finally knows the reason why people write poems about autumn.
“You look good here, man,” Derek says. Dex just gazes at him impassively before shaking his head and stepping out of the car.
“I didn’t really tell anyone you were coming so just, brace yourself for questions,” Dex says when they’re walking through cars on their way to the door.
“Questions?”
“Yeah, so just behave. And don’t, like, swear or fart or anything.”
“Hey! I went to a private school, I had etiquette lessons.” Derek hurries to catch up with Dex and hoists his bag up higher on his shoulder. His plan is to stick to Dex’s side all week. It’s a good plan, he thinks, if it a little vague, but Derek’s always been the type to go with the flow, and this day is just further proof.
“Even if that were true, so did Shitty, so forgive me if I don’t have high hopes.”
“So little faith in me,” Derek grumbles as a tiny little girl, obviously Ava, bursts out of the door running towards them, long wild curls bouncing behind her. Dex immediately drops to a squat and opens his arms to catch her, his bag falling to a thump on the ground. Derek is happy he has the suits over his shoulder.
“Ava, Baby Girl,” Dex says before dropping a kiss to her forehead, and Derek is pretty sure he’s just stepped into Narnia or somewhere equally unreal. He’s incredibly tempted to take a picture and send it to the team -- they’ve been messaging the group chat all afternoon asking if there’s anything they can do -- but thinks better of it, not wanting to intrude on this sweet, if slightly unnerving, scene. He’s pretty certain Bitty would cry too, and he’s not sure if he wants to be responsible for that.
“Yes, I know you’re not a baby anymore,” Dex is saying. The girl signs something quickly and he whispers something in her ear as a tall woman steps out onto the porch step, watching them.
“Ava, let Uncle Liam breathe. You can have him after, all right? Come on. And who’s this?” the woman calls, waving at Derek who smiles awkwardly. Ava’s head shoots up from where it was stationed on Dex’s shoulder to stare wide-eyed at Derek, before hopping up and running to who must be her mother. Melissa, Derek remembers.
“Hi, Mel,” Dex says, staying up and dusting off his jeans. “This is my friend Derek. We play hockey together. Derek, Melissa, Melissa, Derek.”
He doesn’t think he’s ever heard Dex, or anyone from the team, call him by his first name. He’s been Nursey since high school -- even his teachers from Andover fell into the habit.
Ava squeaks when they get closer and buries her face in her mom’s leg. “Hi Melissa, nice to meet you. And you too, Ava.”
Ava emerges to sign something at Dex, who laughs for the first time all day.
“He’s not that tall. He’s the same height as me, Baby.” She signs something else, and this time both Dex and Melissa laugh while Derek is left awkwardly wondering what’s so funny.
“He is, you’re right,” Melissa says, smiling. “Why don’t you go get your Gram and tell her Uncle Liam’s here?”
Ava nods and runs off inside.
“What did she say?” Derek asks finally, and Melissa laughs again.
“She said that you’re the same colour as her.”
“Oh,” he chuckles. “You’ll have to tell her she’s prettier because she’s got freckles to go with it.”
He doesn’t miss Dex’s blush as he follows them inside the house.
There are so many people. They all ask Derek so many questions. If he has to explain his major -- English with a focus on creative writing -- or his plans for after he graduates -- oh, that’s still three years away, I’m sure things will fall into place by then -- or how he knows Dex -- we’re both defensemen on the hockey team, yeah he’s a good player -- or where he’s from -- Upper Manhattan, really it’s not so bad, no I’ve never been to the top of the Empire State Building -- or why he keeps calling Liam Dex -- just a hockey nickname, we all have them -- one more time, he’s going to scream. He feels distinctly unchill, and it’s exhausting.
His plan to stick to Dex had worked at first, but he’d underestimated the power of aunties and neighbours, who’d pulled Dex away quickly to talk in the kitchen, and he’d reemerged only twice: once to go to the bathroom, squeezing Derek’s shoulder as he went by and mouthing sorry, and once because Ava wanted to show him some toys she’d brought with her. That time, as he’d walked past where Derek was cornered by Dex’s kind yet extremely large older brother Jacob, Dex had quickly pressed a cold beer in Derek’s hand before following Ava.
For an occasion that Derek expected to be somber, they are all surprisingly loud, and there’s more laughter than he had thought there would be, even if sometimes the conversation stills all at once and there’s a soft, collective sigh. He thinks they’re all mostly avoiding speaking of Gram because he hasn’t heard much of her. Maybe they’re gathering their strength before the wake tomorrow and Tuesday, and the funeral Wednesday. Saving up their stories for the neighbours who will come see. Derek is selfishly glad that he has this time to speak with them freely, even if it is mostly repeated questions, because knows soon he will be even more of an outsider, and he doesn’t quite know what he’ll do with himself then. Being here for Dex is more complicated than he’d imagined.
He’s made tentative friends with Katie, Dex’s younger sister, who reminds him so much of Dex it’s almost uncanny, even if she doesn’t have red hair. She has the same deadpan voice, which was at first a bit jarring coming from her mouth instead of Dex’s, and she comes over to show him memes on her phone when she notices he’s alone in a corner without Dex.
Another thing he hadn’t quite expected, even though Dex had mentioned it, is the sheer amount of food. Every hour or so, a different neighbour shows up with a casserole, or a tray of squares, or a crockpot filled with soup, and soon the kitchen island is overflowing with it. It maybe says something about a community’s support or coping mechanisms -- he’d have to mention it to Bitty, who has the same kind of reaction whenever something goes wrong with the team. Cook, bake, give away. It is so starkly different from the life he knows in Manhattan, and adds it to the growing list in his head of things that make Dex Liam.
Around nine, when the family who lives in town and the various neighbours start to trickle out, Derek goes into the kitchen looking for a plate to fill and finds Dex in deep conversation with one of his uncles and his mother, a short plump woman who’d hugged Derek upon his arrival and who had insisted he call her Sandy.
“Derek,” she says when he enters, and Dex startles out of his conversation to look at him, “this must be so overwhelming for you. Let’s fix you a plate. You don’t eat meat, right? Liam, would you get one for me, up there?”
“You don’t have to, Sandy, let me get it myself,” Derek says half-heartedly, but she busies herself with getting him a glass of water and some silverware and piling food onto his plate anyway. Maybe she’s one of those people who grieve by doing. He wonders if he could distract her by talking Flowers for Algernon.
“Thank you,” he says once she’s literally pushing him into a chair at the table. “Please don’t worry about me.”
“Liam,” she says, patting Derek once more on the shoulder before turning to leave, “I think he’s a good one.”
“I’m a what?” Derek asks when they’re alone and Dex sits across from him.
“Nothing. Try these, they’re good,” Dex says, pointing to a section of his plate filled with what looks like hashbrowns and cheese and a sauce all mixed in together. “Cream of mushroom, don’t worry. We call them funeral potatoes.”
“What? Why?”
“Because Priscilla-up-the-road makes them and then only ever when someone dies,” he says, as if it’s the most obvious answer in the world. Derek takes a bite and yep, they are delicious.
“Mm. Yeah. Why don’t you just ask Priscilla-up-the-road for her recipe?”
“Huh. I don’t want to tempt fate,” Dex says, shrugging. They lapse into the same silence they’d fallen into on the drive here.
“How are you doing?” Derek finally asks when he’s starting to feel full.
“Me?”
“Well, yeah?” Derek pushes his plate and fork to Dex who doesn’t hesitate before taking it and eating.
“Uh, it’s weird, I guess. I keep expecting to, like, turn a corner and see her there.” He frowns. “Which is kind of stupid because it’s not like she was very mobile the last few times I saw her. She was pretty old.”
“That’s not stupid,” Derek says softly. Dex meets his eyes for a second before focussing back onto the food.
“I’m sorry I left you to flounder with my relatives out there. Mom’s right, it must be a lot,” he says.
Derek smiles at the sentiment. “Look at you,” he says, unable to resist, “being all concerned about me. It’s a good look on you, Poindexter.”
“Fuck off,” Dex says with emphasis. He stabs a particularly stubborn piece of broccoli. “I regret everything that’s ever led me to care even a little bit about your feelings.”
“Hey, you really don’t have to worry about me. You know me, I’m always chill.”
At that, Dex snorts and finally looks up. “That’s the biggest lie you’ve ever told.”
“Hardly,” Derek says, glad he’s the one who’s made Dex smile this time, “I once told some kids in my first grade class I was allergic to dandelions and needed to get shots in my left butt cheek once a week, and they believed it for years. I don’t think I’ve ever even seen a dandelion in Manhattan.”
Dex actually laughs, and is still laughing when Ava comes running into the room and hops up on his lap like he’s the most comfortable armchair in the world. She is so small, and smaller still in his arms, like a tiny little doll he could break so easily, and yet Dex is gentler with her than Derek has ever seen him with anyone or anything.
“Hello Ava,” Derek says. She just bites her lip and stares before turning to Dex.
“You going to bed now?” Dex asks into her hair. He’s wiping tears of laughter from his eyes and seems the most relaxed Derek has seen him all day. “It’s pretty late to be up, even for a big girl like you.”
She yawns into his neck.
“Why don’t you go find Pops and ask him to read you a bedtime story? Bet he’d read you the one about the birds you like,” Dex whispers. Derek almost has to look away at this display of tenderness. He is trying to reconcile this Dex with his image of a hard and angry Dex, the one he’s held onto for so long and just began to break a little over twelve hours ago. He hasn’t seen that other Dex once today, only small glimpses gone as fast as they came, and he doesn’t know what to do with this.
Ava hugs Dex tightly while he kisses her forehead and then runs off, ostensibly to find her grandfather, with whom Derek had spoken only briefly, and who was gruff and tall and big like his son. When he’d shaken Derek’s hand, his skin had been more callous than not. Somehow, though, after seeing Dex here, it almost makes sense that he would read little Ava her favourite bedtime stories.
“That’s a good look for you too,” Derek says softly as Dex stares after his niece, all traces of sarcasm gone from the echo. He’s expecting a jibe back -- instead he gets a shrug.
“She was born too early, and had to stay in the hospital for a long time after. We all spoil her. Developmentally, she’ll probably never... Well, she’s smart, but things are harder for her, I think. Going to be harder.”
“You really love her,” Derek says.
“Of course,” Dex says, jerking up. He looks affronted.
“No, no, I mean like...” Derek doesn’t really know what he means. “Like, I just can’t imagine having that kind of love for a person.”
“Are you telling me you don’t love anyone? Jesus, Nurse.”
“God, shut up. Yes, I do. I love my mom and my Nana, and when you extend the circle, my best friend from Andover, the team... But it’s not really the same, is it?”
“No,” Dex says quietly, “I guess not. I’d die for her. I wouldn’t even hesitate.”
“Yeah.”
“Come on,” Dex says as he pushes himself up from the table then brings his plate over to the compost, “I’m tired, and it’s a packed house, so you have to bunk with me.”
Derek can only nod at that.
Dex’s room is mostly bare, with noticeable spots where posters and frames and medals and a guitar are meant to go, but is still comfortingly Dex: there’s a toolbox in a corner, which Derek knows was replaced by a new one last Christmas but of course Dex would never throw his old one out, a Nintendo 64 and a stack of games to go with it underneath an old TV, a positively ancient and absolutely enormous translucent blue and white Mac on a desk (Derek is pretty sure they still called them Macintoshes when it first came out), hockey sticks of varying sizes taped up to the navy walls like decoration, and a plaid comforter that’s almost the exact same pattern as the shirt Dex has on -- it almost makes Derek laugh out loud.
It’s been cleaned, the sheets changed, and somehow, the room feels like it’s holding its breath, waiting to be lived in again. The bed is a double, and feels decidedly luxurious after two months of crappy dorm-room singles. Derek falls onto it and looks up at Dex who raises an eyebrow.
Dex just huffs. “You look comfortable,” he says, bending down to rummage through his bag.
“Eh,” Derek grunts, because he really is.
When Dex sticks his toothbrush in his mouth to take off his shirt Derek barely holds back a gasp -- not at the fact that Dex is taking off his shirt, he’s seen that hundreds of times, but at the pattern of bruises dotting his skin from hipbone to ribcage, mottled and purple-yellow. Derek hadn’t seen that this morning, and he feels his eyes widen.
“Jesus Christ, Dex! What the fuck did you do?” he whisper-yells, all-too aware of Dex’s family and his niece in the surrounding rooms. “Did you fall down the stairs or something?”
Dex makes a disbelieving noise and looks down at his ribs. “I didn’t do anything, thanks,” he says, turning away and-- oh. Right. Fuck. There’s that elephant that’s followed them from Dex’s other room into this one, lurking in their peripherals, and right under Dex’s flannel.
“Holy shit,” Derek says. “Did I--?” He gestures to the blossoms of purple, and feels a twinge of something rough in his chest. He can’t identify it, but it gets stronger the longer he looks at the bruises, which are really stunning against Dex’s pale pale pale skin. Derek wishes he could have a pen with ink that colour.
Slowly, Dex turns. He seems -- angry? He’s red high up on his cheeks and his jaw is tight like it gets when he’s upset over something Derek’s said, so it’s a look he’s seen too often, but it’s such a change from the Dex, the Uncle Liam, he’s been with all day, it renders him almost breathless.
“Fuck you,” Dex says, spitting out the words.
Derek scrambles into a sitting position. “Look, full disclosure, man, I have no idea what happened last night. Last thing I remember is knocking over the pong table at the volleyball house and running away. I don’t even know if you were there. The rest is kind of a blur.”
Most parties are a blur for Derek -- Nursey Patrol never was meant to be a joke -- because as soon as he steps into one party they all kind of blend in together. Same faces, same houses, same music, same liquor, same pong games. He’s not the type to go over every detail the next day -- he leaves that to Ransom and Holster. Sometimes they tell him about the shit he got up to the night before, mostly they don’t and he just moves on with his life. Except -- well, obviously something happened last night, and now he’s here, in Maine, because Dex’s grandmother died, and he has to be here for Dex even though he doesn’t know how and Dex knows sign language and calls his niece Baby Girl and his mother is a middle school English teacher and everything is mixed up in his head and Dex is still staring at him like he’s a fucking idiot. Which, all right, true, but does he have to make it so obvious?
“Dex...”
Dex visibly sags, deflating, closing his eyes and passing a hand over his face. His hard lines soften with each deep breath.
“Not tonight, Nursey,” he says. “Can we not do this tonight.”
Derek has always known exactly when to stop pushing Dex -- he’s just always ignored that line and skipped right over it. “I don’t even know what this is,” he says.
Dex just stares at him then shakes his head and turns. “Whatever,” he says, “I’m going to brush my teeth and piss. You can have the bathroom after.”
(8:04pm) Bitty: Hey, how’s Dex doing?
(8:05pm) Bitty: And how are you? Heard you two had a fight last night, guess you figured it out? Bet Maine is gorgeous this time of year.
(8:07pm) Bitty: WOW that sounded insensitive of me. Just, silver lining and all that!! Tell Dex we’re all thinking of him and I’ll make him his fave raisin pie when u get back!!! If I had had more time I would have sent some up with you!
(10:34pm) Me: Hey, sorry I didn’t answer before. So many people here. TBH it’s overwhelming.
(10:35pm) Me: I think he’s doing fine so far, spent a lot of time with his family. I dunno what the next few days will be like.
(10:37pm) Me: I don’t remember fighting??
(10:39pm) Bitty: Yeah, he has a big family, right? I’m sure that helps. And idk about the fighting, Whiskey just mentioned something about finding you two yelling at the beach?
Dex returns from the bathroom blinking sleepily and doesn’t even hesitate before roughly pushing Derek out of the way and climbing into the bed.
”You gotta hold down the flush, the toilet’s old,” he mumbles. “And turn the light off when you come back.”
Derek bites his lip and nods while Dex covers up his bruises with the comforter.
(10:41pm) Me: Why tf were we at the beach?? Why tf was WHISKEY at the beach?
(10:43pm) Bitty: I never know with you two!!! And Whiskey’s WORSE, probably was with some lax bros.
(10:45pm) Me: Ew. Anyway.
(10:45pm) Me: Did you know Dex knows ASL?
(10:48pm) Bitty: Yeah, bc of his niece right? Tango’s a CODA, sometimes they sign w/ each other
(10:51pm) Me: Huh. Cool.
(10:54pm) Bitty: I’m gonna get one of them to teach me sometime. Anyway, goodnight!! If it all gets to be too much, don’t forget you can call me. Either of you!!
(10:57pm) Me: Thanks Bits. GNight
“You took for-fucking-ever,” Dex huffs when Derek returns and glares until the lights are off.
“Chill. I was just texting Bitty.”
“Yeah?” Dex’s phone lights up in his hand. “I got Chow.”
“Figures they tag-teamed it.”
The bed, though bigger than any on campus, is smaller than Derek had originally thought, though that might be because of their size or the fact that Derek feels too big for his skin right now. Every movement he makes as he gets comfortable somehow causes him to touch Dex, and he can’t stop thinking about those bruises -- hickeys? -- and the fact that it’s the second night in a row he’s falling asleep next to Dex though really it’s more like the first time because he will actually remember it and Jesus, Dex really is close and smells so minty, and--
“For the record,” Dex says close to his ear, and Derek startles, “I am fine. I don’t think it’s hit me yet.”
“Will it?” Derek asks, wanting yet unwilling to turn around to face Dex.
“We’ll see, I guess.”
“I’ll be here,” Derek says. It comes out soft and sweet like a breath. There’s a long pause, and Derek feels it stretching out into the unfamiliar darkness. Then:
“Yeah. Night.”
“Night.”
Dex rolls away and Derek curls in tighter on himself and takes a long long time to fall asleep.
Early grey morning comes quickly as Derek, despite having less than a reasonable amount of sleep, wakes before Dex, and crawls out of bed quietly so as not to disturb him. He thinks maybe he should go for a run, or even a walk, just anything to relieve the tension, so he quickly pulls on some sweats and slips out into the hallway. As he’s making his way to the stairs, a little head pops out of a bedroom and stares at him.
“Good morning, Ava,” he whispers. “I’m just going for a run. It’s pretty early for you to be up, but I bet if you wanted to go sleep some more with Uncle Liam in his bed, he’d like that.”
She says nothing and goes back into the room, closing the door, but when Derek reaches the bottom of the stairs, he’s certain he hears the light scampering of tiny feet in the hallway above.
It’s colder than he’d expected, but then again, he doesn’t know why he’s setting any expectations at all this week. Cars rumble past on their way to work, and Derek’s almost certain he sees a few people turn their heads to look at him running on the side of the road. He’d been asked by two different people yesterday who his parents are, which he thought was strange, but had answered his mom’s name anyway. They’d just looked thoughtful until Derek had helpfully supplied them with the detail that he was not from here, and then they’d nodded knowingly. In Andover people had asked, expecting his parents to be alumni -- his mom was, in fact. But he’d always assumed that was an elitist thing, a way of parsing through who was a legacy and who was not. Here it seems different. People around here are a bit nosy, or curious, he thinks, or maybe wary of strangers. Maybe it’s a small-town thing. He’ll have to ask Bitty.
Anyway, it is gorgeous even in the overcast, like he’d noticed yesterday and as Bitty had thought, with the trees awash in colour and the houses and neat yards blending in perfectly. He can’t even imagine it in any other season -- it feels like the town was founded expressly for it to be beautiful in autumn. It’s almost too easy to imagine Dex running this same route, waving at neighbours peeking out of their windows and stepping outside, nodding at the cars that pass by.
He doesn’t run for long, just enough to break a sweat, because he doesn’t really know the area and where is best to go, so he returns not long after to find some of the family in the kitchen around the table, extended with a leaf, eating leftovers from yesterday. Ava is sitting at her own chair with Mel next to her cutting up an apple, and Dex and Katie, both sleep-mussed and bleary, are nursing twin cups of coffee in silence.
“Oh, there you are Derek,” Sandy says when he sits at the table across from her. Dex’s eyes barely flicker up though Katie grunts in acknowledgment. “Ava said you went out. Cold out there?”
“Bit chilly,” he says, grabbing a plate and beginning to fill it. “The trees are pretty, though.”
“Hmm, yes,” Sandy hums, though she’s already looking down again at some papers she’s got in front of her instead of food. Her lips mouth along with whatever she’s reading, and she marks something down, brows furrowed.
“You smell,” Dex says when Derek leans over to get the pot of coffee.
“Well, I went for a run. What’s your excuse?” he throws back, and Katie snickers.
“All right, I think I’ve decided. Can someone take a look, make sure there are no mistakes?” Sandy says, pointing down at the sheets on the table. “I’ve got to send this off to get printed before ten.”
“You’re an English teacher,” Katie points out. “Check it yourself.”
“It’s for the memorial cards,” Mel says to Derek, rather unhelpfully, because Derek doesn’t know what that means.
“Nurse'll do it,” Dex says, so Derek reaches out to take the pages. He should chirp Dex for that too, something about Your Highness, but thinks better of it. Bitty would be so proud of him, though probably Shitty would retch at his impulse-control.
It’s Dex’s grandmother’s name, Eileen Michaud née Clark, in curly script, followed by her date of birth and of death. She’d been 91 years old. Underneath there’s a poem, and not a very good one, about God taking back one of his angels, though Derek supposes it’s meant to be comforting, and anyway, the death of a loved one isn’t the time to get creative. There aren’t any mistakes he can see that Sandy hasn’t caught, so he hands it back over with a nod.
“English major, right?” Melissa asks. Ava’s happily munching on some apples and peanut butter. “Any plans for after? Hockey?”
Derek half-laughs. “Nah, I’m not that good.”
“You’re not that bad either,” Dex mumbles into a tea sandwich.
“Please, you’re half the reason I’m any good at all.”
Dex looks up, surprised, but says nothing, only opens his mouth once, twice, then closes it.
“Nah,” Derek continues, “I’d like to write, but I’m actually thinking about a teaching degree. Maybe eventually get a Masters in counselling.”
“Really?” Dex asks. Derek shrugs -- he’s never really thought about it in detail before, and never says anything about this to strangers, so it’s the first time he’s said anything like it aloud. He kind of likes the sound of it.
“So you’d, what, be a guidance counsellor?” Katie asks, propping her chin up on her palms.
“I guess. I’m not one for planning too far ahead though, so nothing’s set in stone. It’s just an idea.”
“Derek is chill,” Dex says, rolling his eyes, and Derek doesn’t miss the inscrutable look that passes between the women at the table.
“Hmm, I try,” Derek says, falsely cheerful because he knows it annoys Dex. “What about you, Ava? What do you wanna do when you grow up?”
Ava jerks her head up and stares, wide-eyed, at Derek, before ducking her head again, watching him through her eyelashes.
“Why don’t you whisper it in my ear, Baby Girl?” Mel says softly. Ava bites her little lip and tilts her head, obviously pondering the questions, then shakes her head vigorously.
Derek nods. “It’s all right. You don’t have to decide anything for a long, long time.”
They fall into a silence filled with the clink-clink of forks against plates and gulps of coffee and juice and the crunch of apples, the soft occasional whoosh of cars driving past, a dog barking in the distance. It’s different than any silence he’s ever known -- Derek thinks it’s a bit like music. Eventually, Jacob comes in and eats too, and when Derek is just about done Dex’s father sits at Katie’s recently vacated spot. The sounds of the shower squealing add to the quiet. There are no sirens, no honking taxi cabs, no one yelling out in the street. No boys rushing up the stairs, no Ransom and Holster arguing over Mario Kart, no beep of the oven preheating, no roommate listening to Metallica through crappy headphones. Just this -- soft morning, strength-gathering morning, Ava humming a song, seagulls screeching outside. It doesn’t even bother him when Dex finally speaks, because Dex’s rough-low-raspy voice is part of the song. It feels like it always has been.
“Go shower,” Dex says, “Katie’s done. We’ve got to leave by eleven.”
“Towels are in the closet outside the door, dear,” Sandy says absently, staring somewhere above his shoulder and slowly stirring her cup of coffee. Her eyes focus on Derek when he stands. “Will you help me again, later? With the obituary?”
Maybe it’s that he doesn’t want to add his voice, his accent, to the thrum of the morning, but something compels him to reach over and clasp her shoulder briefly, nodding, before turning away. Dex is biting his lip when they catch each others eyes, holding them there for a second. Nothing outright is said, but it almost feels like something, like everything.
This place is fucking with his mind. He finds, under the hard pressure of the shower-spray in the coconut-scented steam, that really, he kind of likes it.
Dex is back into his lost-boy headspace, so Derek, dressed in one of the nice outfits he wears to games, follows Sandy and Will’s car through the town with Dex in the passenger seat, Ava, having opted to join them instead of her parents and grandparents, in a car seat in the back with Katie at her side. He silently hands the auxiliary cord to Dex who plugs in to play some -- some Tracey Chapman? Derek kind of wants to chirp him for it, but then Katie starts humming along and Dex smiles a bit so maybe it’s a family thing.
To Derek’s surprise, they pass the funeral home and keep going, taking a left further on and driving up a steep hill surrounded by trees to find an enormous, long, red building with a large parking lot out front -- a sign declares it a seniors’ home and Derek suddenly remembers that Dex’s grandfather is still alive. What was it that he’d said? That Pops wouldn’t really know what’s going on. He swallows thickly at the thought, can’t decide if it would be awful or blissfully blank to forget your wife, the life you’d built, your children.
He parks and stops the car just as Dex puts a hand on his forearm.
“It might be best if you... Well, you can come in, and hang out in the visitors’ lounge, but...” Dex says. Derek’s never seen him look so unsure.
“Hey, it’s fine. I’ll go in, flirt with some old ladies,” Derek says, winking at Ava in the rearview mirror who ducks her head into Katie’s elbow. “I told you not to worry about me.”
“He just gets confused, and you’re...” Dex trails off.
“Not white?” Derek tries.
“A stranger,” Dex says firmly, exasperated. That’s better. That’s familiar. Though Dex still has his hand on Derek which is -- not. But still good, possibly. Maybe, he thinks, if he rolled up his sleeve he would be branded.
They file out, Ava leading the way up the path to her parents. Somewhat predictably, Derek trips up some cement stairs, scuffing his hands but saving his clothes, a split-second after Dex calls out a warning. He’s still picking rocks from his palms when they reach the front door and Dex’s dad punches in a code on a keypad that unlocks it. They have to take their shoes off inside, and Derek finds some antibacterial foam stuck to the wall and washes off his hands before feeling Dex’s hand -- startingly warm, solid -- on his shoulder this time.
“We’re going down there,” he says, jerking his head down one side of the corridor, “but the lounge is down the other end. I’ll come find you. Half an hour at the most. Don’t break anything.”
“Have a bit of confidence in me,” Derek mumbles, waving them off.
The place smells like a mix between hospital and old people, and a nurse passes by and nods at him as he’s making his way down the hall. There are photos on the wall of workers and residents and one section with a lot of people holding a specific cat which looks like it must have lived here at some point. There are inspirational sayings painted on wood here and there, more calendars than are really necessary, and the whole thing leaves Derek feeling a uncomfortable. He’s aware that’s an awful thing to feel -- he’d never say it out loud. There’s an old woman sitting hunched up in a stationary wheelchair holding a doll at a corner who smiles at him when he walks by, and the scene simultaneously breaks and warms his heart.
The lounge is a large room with bright orange plastic chairs placed all around it against the walls, which are covered with more photos and a bulletin board with the names of each resident that have birthdays in October. Edna Price is turning 89 today, Derek notes. There’s a little kitchenette in a corner, a shuffleboard in another, and, to Derek’s surprised delight, a piano against the far wall by the windows. He hasn’t played in two years, not since the practice rooms at Andover, having not touched his keyboard in Manhattan once during the summer, and when he walks over to touch a few keys he realizes the piano is definitely a bit out of tune, but he decides that these past couple days have been odd enough, so why not through in a bit more absurdity into his day. He looks around surreptitiously to make sure he’s alone, then sits down and plays.
It’s harder than he’d expected, due to lack of practice and the scrapes on his hands from earlier, but soon he’s making less mistakes and lets muscle memory take over. He plays old pieces from his classical days, and finds himself enjoying it so much he doesn’t notice when a few workers wheel in residents to listen, until they start clapping at the end of a song.
He startles and hits a few stray keys, and turns to find a small congregation of people watching him like he’s been putting on a show which, well, he supposes he has.
“That was beautiful, dearie!” says one old lady sitting atop her walker.
He doesn’t even remember what he was playing.
“I, uh, sorry, didn’t mean to...” he mumbles, unsure where he’s going with it.
“No, don’t worry about it!” one of the workers in scrubs says -- he’s short like Bitty and skinny and has a mop of ringlets that Derek feels the urge to poke his fingers through. “Play some more, I’m sure the residents would like that.”
“Ah, hm, all right.” Now that he’s aware of his audience he decides his next song -- a version of Amazing Grace he’d had to learn for a recital when he was fourteen. It’s obviously the right choice, because he hears a few wobbly fews pick up the tune, singing or humming along. It feels kind of nice, to know he’s making them happy, that maybe later on they’ll tell their grandkids about the nice boy who played the piano for them in the lounge.
He finishes with a flourish more dramatic than necessary but the residents love it, clapping with as much vigour as they can.
“That’s all I’ve got,” he says when they ask for more, and the workers begin wheeling away the residents, chatting happily. The young guy is still there though, smiling broadly.
“You’re good,” he says.
“Eh, haven’t played in a few years, so thank you,” Derek says. The dude really is handsome for all his scrawniness, with brilliant blue eyes and pink cheeks and a small black stud on his nose. “I’m Derek, by the way.”
“Andrew.” He smiles even wider. “You should come around some other time. We’ll plan it into the schedule.”
“Oh,” Derek ducks his head, consciously trying to make himself appear less intimidatingly large, “I’m really not from around here. Just visiting with a friend, and I’m leaving Thursday.”
“Oh! Where are you from?” Andrew asks, stepping closer.
Derek shrugs. “Manhattan originally, spent most of the last seven years in Massachusetts. What about you?”
“Born and raised here, went away for college for a couple years then came back. Is it your first time up this way?”
Derek doesn’t miss the way Andrew’s eyes sweep over his shoulders and down his body and it’s nice, really, it is. To be wanted.
“Yeah, yeah. This place gives me cool vibes. It’s gorgeous.” He looks out of the windows, which face the parking lot. Even that looks nice with its red-orange-yellow-green backdrop of trees.
“Definitely. I could show you around if you wanted. You go to school, or...?” Andrew says, looking up and meeting his eyes.
“Mhm. English at Samwell.”
Andrew blinks. “Samwell! I know a guy on the hockey team there.”
Of course he fucking does. Derek laughs -- he’ll probably never get used to things like this, and it’s Dex’s life.
“William Poindexter, you know him?” Andrew asks.
Before Derek can answer, he sees a flash of orange in his peripheral vision and knows Dex is back, so he takes the opportunity.
“Nah,” he says, forcing himself to ignore Dex, “but I heard he’s big dork, though. The biggest on campus, actually.”
“Yeah?” comes Dex’s voice from the door just as Andrew begins laughing. He stops upon hearing Dex. “Well I heard the other d-man on his line is a pretentious jerk. Like, Grade-A hipster.”
“He’s probably just cultured,” Derek throws at him while Dex comes up behind Andrew. “You wouldn’t get it.”
“Oh,” Andrew says, suddenly stiff, “of course, that’s, yeah. Hi, Li. Uh, Liam.”
Derek raises an eyebrow at the nickname, and Dex crosses his arms, looking every single one of his six feet two inches and his two hundred and twelve pounds. His shirt stretches tight across his chest and biceps, which Derek thinks he does on purpose, because it’s impossible to miss the way Andrew’s eyes widen.
“Andrew. How are you.” It doesn’t sound like a question.
“Uh, good. I mean, I wipe butts for a living so... You win some, you... lose some?”
Derek wants to laugh or wince in sympathy or something, but Dex’s stance tells him no, so he just stands there feeling lost.
“Right,” Dex says tersely, “we’ve got to get going. We’ll leave you to your work.”
“Yeah.” Andrew looks down at his feet then back up at Dex. “I was, uh, sorry to hear about your Gram. The funeral’s Wednesday?”
“Yeah,” Dex says.
“I’ll be, um, working, but give your family my sympathies.”
“Will do, thanks.” And Dex turns and walks out.
“Nice to meet you, Andrew,” Derek says, hoping his smile comes off as apologetic. He doesn’t know why Dex acted like that, but he knows what it’s like to be on the receiving end of such a mood.
“Yeah, same. Uh, see you around then,” Andrew says.
He probably won’t.
Derek finds Dex walking stiffly toward the door and he runs to catch up, sliding to a stop in his bare socks. Dex is muttering something under his breath like he does during warm-ups for games they know are going to be particularly violent, but Derek is pretty sure a well-timed ginger joke won’t pull Dex out of it this time.
“What was all that about?” he asks. Dex stops, turning on Derek.
“Figures. I leave you alone for five minutes--”
“Come on, it was more than that.”
“-- and I find you flirting with Andrew fucking Steele. There are like, at least five other queer guys in town, why’d you pick him?”
“Christ, Dex, chill out. I talked to him for at most two minutes before you showed up. He was just listening to me play the piano. What’s wrong with you? You uncomfortable with me flirting with a dude? He was cute, so fuck you.”
Dex blinks at him and gapes, then starts walking again. “You are such an asshole. Holy shit,” he says through gritted teeth. “Not all dudes. Just him.”
“Why!”
The old lady with the doll is still in the same spot, and smiles the same smile at them when they walk by. Dex glances at Derek out of the corner of his eye before huffing harshly.
“He’s got a tiny dick.”
“That’s not -- what!”
They reach the porch where Katie is patiently watching Ava tie her own shoes, and Dex bends down without acknowledging Derek’s confused spluttering.
“You can’t just say that and not explain!” Derek cries.
“Watch me,” Dex mutters.
Katie catches Derek’s eyes then gives Dex a once-over, taking in his square jaw and uncharacteristically shaky fingers tying his laces, then nods.
“Seen Andrew then?”
“Oh my God,” Derek says, frustrated. “Actually, you know what? Whatever. You’ve obviously got a history with this dude, which, like, what? I have so many questions about that. But whatever, fine. You don’t have to tell me. But also, you don’t get to decide who I flirt with.”
“Oh, no,” Katie says, pulling Ava up into her arms when she’s done with her shoes. “Don’t flirt with him.”
“He seemed perfectly nice!”
Katie snorts. “Yeah, well, Liam thought so at first too. Come on, we’re going to be late. Hey, can I drive your rig?”
Dex looks smug, but Derek is too preoccupied by the questions whirling around in his head to properly pout. “Yeah, yeah. Her name is Stella.”
Ava giggles -- it’s one of the first sounds Derek has heard her make, and it snaps him out of his thoughts. He smiles.
“You making fun of my girl, huh? She loves her name, I’ll have you know,” Derek says, flicking Ava softly on the nose. She shrieks and laughs and hides her face in her auntie’s neck. The parents’ car is already gone when Derek hands Katie the keys and settles in the front, keeping one eye on Dex in the back who is still tense but is carding his fingers through his niece’s hair absently. Ava sighs happily in her car seat, and Dex leans over to press a gentle kiss to her temple. With a start, Derek realizes that his words from last night are almost a lie: he can imagine having that kind of love for a person. He can, he can, he really fucking can.
Derek is a poet, a writer. Or, well, he likes to think he is. He goes to poetry readings, sometimes reads some of his own, and his professors mostly have good things to say about his words. All this to say: he’s aware of death. He likes to believe in fate. When it’s your time to go, it’s your time, and you only live once, etc. He’s made his peace with the concept. But that’s the thing; previous to this exact moment, all he’s known of death, he knew it in an abstract kind of way, from books and poems and movies and the news. Up until now, he’s never come face to face with actual literal concrete death.
He’s kind of rethinking his whole life philosophy.
Dex isn’t taking it too well either -- he can’t keep his eyes off the coffin at the front of the room, with his dead grandmother laying there, perfectly coiffed and incredibly pale in a well-pressed navy dress. Sandy hasn’t stopped crying since they first came in two hours ago, and Jacob has only let go of Katie and Mel to shake hands with the people passing through, first kneeling to pray at the foot of the coffin like the family had done at their entrance, then going through the line up of family members to say quiet words of sympathy like some kind of fucked up assembly line.
Ava seems afraid to go near the front of the room at all and sits on a couch in the back with Derek, eyes fearfully trained on the coffin, occasionally flicking to her parents, up at Derek, then back front. Eventually, she shifts so she’s leaning against him, so he asks her gently if she’d like to sit on his lap. She doesn’t answer but scrambles up and immediately wraps his arms around his neck and buries her face in it.
“It’s okay,” he whispers into her hair. They’re meant to be here until eight, and it’s only barely two -- he thinks maybe he’ll ask to take her home in a few hours, or at least to go for a break. Unwittingly, he and Ava have become part of the round, and people walk over and bend down to talk to her and, by default, him. It’s exhausting.
“Look at you!” one middle-aged woman says at some point, touching Ava’s hair from behind, which causes Ava to flinch. “You’ve gotten so big. And who’s this? A cousin?”
He sees the woman’s eyes dart quickly from Ava to Derek, assessing the scene, so he pulls Ava closer, forcing the woman to slip her fingers out of the mane of curls.
“No. Just a friend of Liam’s,” he says tersely. The woman nods knowingly and pats his shoulder.
“Good of you to come,” she says, then walks away.
Ava whimpers into his jaw.
“I’m sorry she touched your hair without your permission,” he whispers. His arms and thighs are getting cramped, sore from holding her for so long, and one quick glance at Dex tells him that Dex has been watching the exchange, and his jaw is tight. “Come on, let’s get out of here for a bit. Do you want to? Use your hands to tell Uncle Liam we’re going outside.”
Ava nods vigorously and signs something rapidly at Dex, who then bends slightly to say something to Jacob before making his way over to the couch. Ava hops off of Derek and follows them to a closet in the lobby to get their jackets.
“Ugh,” Derek grunts quietly, stretching out his muscles, “you must be so tired.”
There are now a dozen or so people aside from the family milling about in the main parlour, though there have been many more.
“They mean well,” Dex says. He carefully pulls off the tiny red silk rose pinned to his collar that indicates he’s part of the grieving family and sticks it in his jacket pocket. Ava wears a white one, so he does the same for her.
“I know, I know. It’s just, well, you’ve been on your feet for hours, and... You know.”
“Yeah.” He leads them out a back door to sit on a bench pushed up against the grey brick building. “It’s nice though, to know that the whole town’s got your back when anything happens.”
“Huh. Even that woman who just stopped to talk to us?”
Dex snorts. “All right, no. Lucille’s just a gossip.”
“She asked if Ava and I were cousins.” He jerks his head toward Ava, who’s picked up a dead leaf from the ground and is examining it thoroughly.
“So a racist gossip, then. By tomorrow she’ll have you as the father. But I mean, she’s not in the majority. And even her -- you know she rescues stray cats and gets them fixed? She runs a whole charity for it.”
“Oh.”
The wind rustles in the leaves around them, and they can hear the gulls screeching down by the wharves. It smells like salt and seaweed and dead leaves and the earth and it’s so good, so real. He doesn’t want to go back in there, some kind of liminal space where the line between the dead and the living is so thin and strong Derek can feel it wrap around his throat and slowly squeeze.
“How are you doing,” he says. Ava’s come to sit by Dex while Derek stands and hops from foot to foot with his hands stuffed in his pocket, trying to expel the anxious energy from his body.
“Um. Yeah, all right, I guess.”
Derek knows that Dex is lying, but figures he shouldn’t push it. He’ll talk when he needs to talk.
“You gotta do this again tomorrow?”
Dex sighs. “Yeah. Mom said I could stay home, but... Yeah, I’ll be here. You don’t have to, though. I think Mel and Jake would like it if you could watch Ava. Two days is...” He drifts.
“A lot. Yeah, I’d, uh, like that.”
Dex is looking through Derek’s chest, fallen back into his mind, and his eyes don’t even move when Derek heaves a sigh and sits next to him. Ava looks questioningly at Derek then back at her uncle, seeming concerned.
“I think your Uncle Liam is just feeling a bit sad,” Derek says softly.
Ava signs something in response.
“I’m sorry, Ava, I don’t what you’re saying,” he says as Dex rouses himself and sits up straighter. She leans up and whispers something in his ear, a soft hiss lost in the breeze, and Dex frowns.
“She says she is too,” Dex says. “You’re what, Baby?”
She shakes her head.
“You’re allowed to feel sad too, Ava,” Derek says. Dex is staring at him now, piercing him, and it’s so hard he almost has to look away. “You’ve been really strong today. You can be strong and sad, you know. They’re not, uh, mutually exclusive.”
“Nursey...”
“I’m, ah, going to go to the bathroom.” Derek stands and clasps his hand on Dex’s shoulder. “You two gonna stay here for a bit?” He thinks he knows the answer already, and smiles when they both nod.
When he leaves Ava is clinging to Dex and someone is crying. He doesn’t stop to wonder who.
Hours later they’re home, a sleeping Ava tucked into her father’s shoulder and the rest looking at her enviously.
“Derek?” Sandy asks, setting her purse down on the kitchen table. “Would you--”
“Absolutely, yeah. Whatever you need.”
There’s only Sandy, Will and Derek in the room, the others having disappeared after such a long day, and he finds himself listening for any sign of Dex, feeling out of place with his parents, an outsider in this home. They’ve all been so welcoming, so open, though, and it kind of winds him how still, after this fucking difficult day, Will offers him a beer and Sandy passes him a plate with some leftover desserts. He reads through the obituary and the elegy for the funeral like he’s looking at himself from above.
“Where’s, um, Liam?” he asks eventually, stumbling on the name. It still feels clunky on his tongue.
“Basement, I’m guessing,” Will says. “He’s got a punching bag down there.”
“Oh. That’s... Huh.”
Though Dex looks more like his father, tall and wide and big-eared, he has his mother’s eyes, and the familiar brown twinkles a bit when he looks at her. She’s smiling.
“You know, Derek, Liam isn’t very good at, well, dealing with his emotions,” she says gently.
“Kid kind of defaults to angry,” Will says gruffly into his beer.
“I -- yeah. I’m pretty often on the receiving end of that,” Derek says, shrugging. It’s nothing new, he’s always known that, except -- well. Oh.
Sandy hums thoughtfully, and Derek is way too dizzy for just having had one beer.
“I’m going to go to bed. Yeah, bed,” he says, standing and handing off the corrected documents to Sandy. “Goodnight.
It’s too early to sleep, really, so Derek catches up on the team group chat and texts his mother and Chowder. He has time now to look at the details of the room: the movie ticket stubs pinned up next to the closet, the shelf with a few lonely coding books left behind when Dex went to Samwell, pens and pencils in a brightly painted tin can on the desk which looks like an elementary student’s art project. His gaze lingers for too long on a picture of a younger, smaller Dex, cheeks rounder and ears seeming even bigger still, cautiously cradling a swaddled baby Ava in his arms, smiling nervously at the camera. He sighs and closes his eyes. There’s an essay due Friday he should work on, mid-terms in a couple weeks he could study for, but... This far removed from his life in this place, this room that still smells mostly of cleaning products but is beginning to have a strong undercurrent of man and Dex, he doesn’t think he could concentrate.
“Hey.”
Derek startles from his thoughts and looks up from the picture to find Dex leaning against the doorframe, shirtless and sweaty-shiny, arms crossed, red-faced. His bruises are fading into brown but they’re still there, stark against his freckles and pale skin. Derek feels his mouth go dry.
“Um.” Derek swallows, wets his cracked lips. “Feel better?”
“Yeah.” Dex pushes off. “I’m going to shower.”
“Okay.”
Dex doesn’t move.
“I’m, uh, sorry for getting mad at you today,” he says, wincing visibly as the words leave his mouth. He’s never apologized to Derek for anything before, especially not for an argument like that. ”It’s just, Andrew is...”
“Hey, you don’t have to tell me. You had your reasons. It’s fine. It’s just... Jesus, Dex. At the risk of sounding insensitive--”
“Like that would really stop you,” Dex mumbles.
“--this has been a weird fucking couple days. And forgive me if I’m misinterpreting, but...”
“You’re not.”
“Okay. So. What the hell? I thought we were friends, Dex.”
Dex snorts. “That doesn’t give you the right to, like, know shit about me.”
“Okay. Fair. But like, conservative Republican WIlliam Poindexter? What?”
“I got rid of that sticker, like, the second Trump declared his candidacy. And most of the time, when we argue about stuff like that, I just do it to piss you off.”
“That’s...” Derek trails off, feels his face drift into a frown he can’t be assed to train back into a cool mask. “So you’re still a dick, but for different reasons. You never hear Shitty’s rants about white dudes playing the devil’s advocate?”
Dex shrugs. “Sure. But you and Shitty are fun to argue with. You like it too, don’t even try to lie.”
“Okay. Okay. You’re not a Trump stan, so that’s good. And your parents--”
“Know, yeah. It’s like, an open secret around here. I mean, we got caught with... Yeah. Nevermind.”
Christ, but Derek is going to have to reevaluate everything he thought he knew about small towns, and about Dex. He runs a hand over his face, feels his stubble grate against the cuts on his palm.
“So you’re, what -- gay? Bi? Pan?”
Dex furrows his brows and looks down at his hands. “It’s not -- like that. I don’t know how to explain. It’s why I don’t tell anyone. Like, I can’t even understand it myself so why bother trying explaining to other people. You know?”
“Cool. No labels, that’s chill. I get it.”
“Anyway, I thought you, well, knew.” He gestures to his torso where Derek has been trying not to stare because every time he looks a twinge of something possessive gets caught in his throat and makes it hard to breathe.
“Are you ever going to tell me what happened Saturday night because all I know is that we were at the beach fighting and then I woke up naked in your bed, and you have hickeys the size of Texas on your ribs which I apparently put there, and it’s honestly freaking me out, and I’m trying not to think about it too much because I feel like it’s inappropriate given the situation, but it’s pretty much all I can think about anyway and Jesus, will you please stop looking at me like that? Please?” he says all in one breath, closing his eyes because Dex is gaping at him, incredulous, and Derek hates it.
“What? You didn’t give me these. Christ, Nurse. Self-centered, much?”
“What!” Derek yelps, eyes flying open.
“I was at the beach because I was there with, uh, you know Stevie from the soccer team? The goalie? Yeah. And then -- oh fuck, don’t tell Rans and Holster -- he wanted to take me back to his room and I didn’t want to, so I called you and you showed up and punched him.”
“What. The. Fuck.” Derek grabs his phone and looks through his call history -- sure enough, there it is: an incoming call from Dex, 3:04 am, 43 seconds long. “Okay. Whiskey told Bitty he saw us fighting.”
“Yeah. You were pissed I left the party without telling you where I was going.”
“Wow, look at drunk me, caring for your wellbeing. So, how did we, you know, end up naked in your bed?”
Dex rolls his eyes to the ceiling. “You spilled beer all over us, man, and you didn’t want to wear my clothes to bed, so.”
“Doesn’t explain why you were naked,” Derek points out.
Dex just smirks, shrugs, and finally walks away to the bathroom.
“Fuck,” Derek says once he’s gone. He falls back on the bed and stares at the ceiling, forcing his eyes away from the picture of uncle and niece on the bedside table. “Fuck.”
He wakes up unbearably warm and pinned under Dex’s arm. It’s heavy and hard and hot and good and Dex’s breath tickles the back of his neck and Christ, Derek needs to get out of here before the situation becomes dire, so he slips out and goes to the shower before Dex even wakes up and notices.
Katie, Jacob and Sandy are already in the kitchen when he walks in some time later, helping himself to some coffee and toast. They’re quiet again, preparing silently for the day, and no one speaks when Will and Dex join them. Mel comes in with Ava clinging to her side moments before they’re all meant to leave, drops her on Jacob’s lap, and asks Derek if she can talk to him for a bit in the living room. She goes over Ava’s routine, what she likes to eat, where her toys are, and gives him a bit of money in case they want to walk down to the store because Dex is taking his car again.
“Here’s my phone number,” she says, handing him a piece of paper with some numbers scribbled on it, “so you can text me throughout the day with updates if you want. If there’s anything wrong, please call me. All right? Thanks for doing this.”
“Of course,” Derek says, clasping her arm. “She’s a good kid.”
And she is -- they spend the day colouring, watching TV, reading (she makes him read a book about birds searching for a home three times and he doesn’t even mind) and walking around the neighbourhood. He makes ham sandwiches for lunch, orders pizza for supper. She doesn’t speak to him, and he hadn’t expected her to, but he’s starting to pick up on a few of her signs, and they communicate well enough with her nodding or shaking to his questions. She’s sweet, and it’s even fun, and when the Poindexters return later than usual because they went to visit their other grandmother, it’s to find her sprawled on his lap sleeping while he scrolls through his Twitter feed, a small smile on his face.
Dex is staring at him from the living room archway, a strange echo of last night, his lips parted, still as the others bustle around him.
“Ava, Baby, time to wake up,” Derek murmurs, tapping her on the back, and she rouses, frowning. “Your Mommy and Daddy and Gram and Pops are here, look.”
She yawns widely and rolls off him to pad over to Dex, who kneels to her level and whispers something Derek can’t hear. She nods vigorously and hugs him, yawning again.
“I think it’s time for this little monkey to go to bed,” Jacob says from behind Dex, who picks her up and goes up the stairs to the guest room without another word.
“We had a good time,” Derek says, standing and stretching. “Went for a walk, drew some pictures.”
“I’m glad. She’ll sleep well, then,” Jacob says. He seems like he will too.
Dex doesn’t come back downstairs so after a bit of waiting and chatting with Sandy, Derek goes up, yawning too. The light in the guest room is off but Dex’s shows under the door, so Derek slips in quietly, unsure of how he’ll find Dex. He spent the day playing with a cute little girl. Dex didn’t.
Dex is already in bed, shirtless under the covers, sitting up looking through his phone, but he puts it away abruptly and Derek comes in, his adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows. He’s flushed, and, God. Gorgeous. Is Derek allowed to think that of him? He is thinking it regardless. Has been since they got to Maine. Since before. Since--
“Come to bed,” Dex says, so quietly Derek thinks he misheard.
“What?” he asks, though it’s more of a gasp than anything else. He must have misheard.
“Please?” Dex says. His voice is low, rough, and Derek almost cries at the sounds of it.
“Yeah, yeah, yes, okay, yes.”
He can’t take his clothes off fast enough, but stops when he gets to his underwear, unsure. He leaves them on.
“You all right?” he asks as slides under the covers, because Dex’s eyes are a bit wild and a lot beautiful and trained on Derek, unblinking, hungry.
“Shut the fuck up,” Dex practically growls, and then he’s on Derek, lips, mouth, tongue, hands, everything on Derek, and it’s almost too much, it almost hurts, but he needs to be closer closer closer. He never thought he could have this. He never thought Dex would want this.
And Dex kisses like he fights: hard, quick, constantly pushing Derek further, and like the arguments, Derek takes it all and pushes back and it’s so fucking good, his hands grasping and scratching Dex’s back, Dex’s mouth on his neck and nipples and chest and shoulder and jaw and lips. He’s fucking hard, Dex is fucking hard and naked, and when their erections brush together while they’re doing something like wrestling, limbs and tongues twisting together so sweet so rough, it’s enough to make him whimper and gasp. It’s good. Too good. He has to --
“Stop,” he forces out, which is the most difficult word he’s ever spoken because Dex’s tongue is flicking his nipple with careful precision, and then it pulls away, leaving it cold and hard and his body thrumming with wantneedmore.
“What the fuck,” Dex gasps. He’s red and flushed and panting and it takes everything in Derek, every single ounce of willpower he’s trained himself to have, to not kiss those swollen lips again.
“You’re -- this is -- I don’t want to, like, take advantage of you,” he stutters out.
Dex’s eyes flash and he rolls away, leaving Derek missing the heat like he hasn’t gone his whole life without it before this.
“I’m a grown-ass man who can make his own decisions,” Dex growls out, staring resolutely at the ceiling, chest heaving. “And my decision is that I want to, you know, do this.”
“You’re nineteen years old, and you can’t even say what this is, anyway.”
“I want to suck your dick, and then I want you to finger me while you suck mine.”
“Jesus fucking Christ, Dex.”
“Yeah. Well. Whatever.”
“You are -- fuck.” Derek turns on his side to look at Dex, whose blush is starting to recede but it doesn’t matter because it makes his freckles stand out more. It physically hurts him, like a vice-grip to the lungs, to keep from reach out and touching Dex’s cheek. “You are not who I thought you were.”
“Fuck you,” Dex says. “I know what you’re doing. I fucking know you, Derek Nurse. And you don’t get to do this, do you understand? This town isn’t yours to analyze. This isn’t, like, a setting in a novel. You don’t get to separate me into Liam and Dex, because I’m not two different people. You either want me or you don’t. So, do you?”
Finally, Dex looks at him, and it’s so intense, Derek has to close his eyes.
“Yes,” he says, and the hiss of the s is swallowed up by Dex, who wastes no fucking time in climbing back on top of Derek, hooking his hands in Derek’s underwear and pulling down. “Christ, you have no idea how much I fucking want you.”
“Yeah, I goddamn do.”
He touches Derek’s dick, and after that, there’s no more room in the bed for words.
This time when they wake up tangled together it’s intentional, and this time Derek doesn’t leave before Dex wakes up. The early morning sun shines on Dex’s back and neck, illuminating new hickeys that Derek hopes are going to be hidden by the collar of his suits.
“Morning,” Dex says into Derek’s chest.
“Mm.” Derek brushes a kiss to Dex’s temple like it’s the most natural thing in the world. And maybe it is. “You ready for today?”
“Don’ wanna get up yet,” Dex mumbles.
“Come on, Babe. We gotta.”
That rouses Dex. “Ew. Don’t call me that.” He wrinkles his nose, and Derek kisses it, because he can.
“What about Liam? Can I call you that?”
“Ugh, not until we tell the team, please.” Dex rolls over and stretches out the stiffness, smacking his lips. “And even then, we’ll see.”
“So we are, then. Telling the team.”
“Oh.” Dex blinks at him. “Maybe I wasn’t clear last night, but like, I don’t really do, you know, hook-ups. I’m not really... Yeah. Do you want to?”
Derek kisses him in answer. “Yeah, I do.”
“Go brush your teeth,” Dex says, crawling over Derek, who can’t help but grip him close and kiss him some more. “Seriously, it’s gross,” Dex says after a minute.
“Maybe it’s you,” Derek grumbles, but he really can’t help the smile on his face.
An hour later they’re back at the funeral parlour for the final time. The coffin is gone, snug in the back of the hearse parked out front, and they’re ready to go to the church. Aunts and uncles are milling about, trying to get car rides organized, because if Derek is to understand correctly, they’re to all follow the hearse through town in a sort of procession. Derek’s car gets Dex, Katie and Jennifer, Dex’s other sister who’d driven up at dawn to be here, and who looks more like Dex than any of the others.
The procession is one of the strangest things Derek’s experienced this week, which is truly saying something: they drive through town at a crawling pace, five or six cars following the long black hearse at the lead, and all the cars they pass pull over for the length of the line-up so they can drive, for some reason, in the middle of the road.
“It’s meant to be a sign of respect,” Dex says quietly. Derek grips his hand as he drives.
The church is big and wooden and painted a soft blue, and the parking lot is packed, as are the pews when they get there. The family (and their plus-ones, which Derek seems to be) have to stand in the back and line-up in order of family. The Poindexters are the second ones because Sandy is the second eldest, her brother Mark and his wife and children up front. Dex doesn’t stand with him, which leaves him feeling vulnerable and unnerved, but Dex and Jacob and a few other are the pallbearers, and are at the very front with the coffin. When they walk down the centre aisle with an organ accompanying them, Derek feels eyes on him, but for once they don’t feel curious or nosy. Just sympathetic.
Derek was never raised with any kind of religion, not from his mother nor his grandmother, but sitting here, he almost regrets it. The smell of incense burns his nose and he stays seated when everyone else goes up for the communion, but the sense of community is so strong, that he thinks it must be nice to be part of a parish like this. At least two hundred people have come out to pay their respects to Eileen Clark.
He resolves to ask Dex about her on the drive back down.
After the funeral, after Dex holds on to Derek’s hand so tight in their pew there are white crescent marks on his palms, uncaring who sees, they walk across the parking lot to the parish hall where a group of women in town have made a lunch of sorts, with sandwiches and desserts and vegetables and more funeral potatoes. There’s more small talk, more of the same questions that exhaust Derek and push Dex to the brink of a breakdown. The punching bag is more than likely to get more action tonight, Derek can tell. Maybe he’ll go down and watch.
At three the family leaves the hall and drives to a cemetery, where the priest and funeral director meet them, and where they lower the coffin into the ground. Ava clings to her grandfather and Sandy cries silently while Katie holds her hand. Derek puts his hand on the small of Dex’s back, wanting to do more but feeling unable, though he drops it when Will catches his eye above Ava’s head.
Slowly, Will nods at him, something unspoken passing between them.
Derek finds Dex’s hand and squeezes.
“Baby Girl, I have to,” Dex is saying as Ava holds onto his leg with two arms, unwilling to let go. “I’ll see you in a month, at Thanksgiving, remember?”
“Uncle Liam and Uncle Derek have to get back to school,” Sandy says at Derek’s shoulder, and he startles.
“Sandy, that’s...” He can’t find the words. Dex had cried into his arms last night, and he’d known just what to say. He’s a poet. Words should come easy, right?
“Ava loves you,” Sandy says quietly. “And so does Liam, I can tell. Therefore we do too.”
His breath catches, looks back at Dex who is now kneeling and signing rapidly at Ava. Dex catches him looking and smiles before going back to his niece.
“Thank you,” he says softly. “And for the record...”
“Yeah, I know,” Sandy says, and pulls him into a tight hug.
“Okay, let’s get on the road,” Dex says, finally turning away from Ava and hoisting his duffle onto his shoulder. “Mom.”
“Oh, come here,” she says, and hauls him over for a hug too. “You say bye to your sisters and your brother?”
“Yeah, yeah. Dad in the shed?”
“Oh, yeah. You know.”
“I won’t bother him. Tell him I said bye. Okay, Baby Girl. One more hug.” Dex bends down to pick up Ava and hold her close. She whispers in his ear, and he nods seriously. “Yes, that’s a good idea,” he says, and Ava twists in his arms to reach out for Derek.
“Oh, hello, Ava,” Derek says, taking her in his arms. He kisses her cheek, and she giggles and kisses his back. “Maybe I’ll come see you at Thanksgiving too. Would that be all right?”
She nods, but he’s looking at Dex.
“I think it would be,” Dex says. Sandy waggles her eyebrows at him and he rolls his eyes. “Goodbye, Mother.”
Derek sets Ava down almost reluctantly, but when they step outside in the autumn town and twine their fingers together, Derek knows he’ll be back.
“Ready?” he asks. He feels light, like laughing.
“Come on, you fucker. Bitty’s got a raisin pie waiting for me.”
Derek does laugh, and Dex kisses him breathless. Yeah. He’s ready.