Title: Liminal
Fandom: Check Please!
Pairing: Nursey/Dex (but mostly Nursey & Dex)
Word Count: 1,627
Summary: Will looked like a wet dog almost, with his head hanging, his neck bent slightly from a teenager’s slouch he never really outgrew. (Takes place after Chapter 4.08: “Haus 2.0.” Dex apologizes.)
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Also read on AO3]
Note: I'm having some trouble with the "cut" function so this is left whole for now. Apologies!
EDIT 12/8/2018: Got it.
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Two days—two days of blissful silence, with no five a.m. alarms and no Nursey-pick-up-your-shit-that-I-can’t-even-find and no Nursey-please-stop-humming-Drake-in-your-sleep (like he could even control
that)—it was two days of Derek Nurse having his own room in the Haus, rightfully his, Bitty’s Solomon’s-dib-flip be damned. And Derek had been living the hell out of the place in those two days: stretching his legs across the room, playing his music on full blast, getting his rhythm back in general—maybe writing a couple pieces of angry poetry, you know, as a change of style. Two days of peace.
Then at midnight of the third day Derek heard the hallway floorboards creak and knew the way you just did sometimes: what was coming, and who.
Two soft knocks—at the second, the door opened gently inward, letting in a slice of the hallway light. Will was on the other side. He looked like a wet dog almost, with his head hanging, his neck bent slightly from a teenager’s slouch he had not outgrown in three years. It was more pronounced now, made him look all the more gangly and awkward for it.
“Nurse?” he asked. “You awake?”
“Yes,” Derek said.
“Are you sleeping soon?”
“Why? Did you want something?”
“Just want to talk. It’d be quick.”
Derek sat up, draped a blanket over his bare shoulders because it was cold, and fuck Will for never letting the temperature go up above fifty-eight. Rubbing his eyes, he said, “Turn the light on. And stop standing at the doorway like a serial killer please.”