[Nurseydex] Liminal

[lyrithim]

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.)

[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.

 

—

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.”
 

Will followed his words. He sat by his side of the desk—what used to be his side of the desk—and faced Derek, head up. There was that stubborn set to Will’s jaw, like he was about to start a fight again, and Derek was so not in the mood it wasn’t even funny. He eyed his pillow, ready to flop over and sleep through the whole thing if necessary.

 

But Will said, “Chowder came to talk to me after morning drills.”

 

Derek was surprised. “He broke his vow of silence?”

 

Chowder had declared a vow of silence after Derek and Will had that huge fight soon after Derek’s sports injury / not sports injury a few weeks before. You guys are roommates now, sort this out between yourselves, Chowder had said when they turned to him for arbitration. He had continued that the vow of silence for weeks—until, it seemed, that morning.

 

“He told me to get my head out my ass,” Will said. “And be an adult about all of this.”

 

“Then let me guess,” Derek said. “Your way of being an adult about this is to come up here, blame me for you leaving this room, and then have an argument with me all over again.”

 

To Derek’s surprise, Will snorted out a laugh.

 

“I guess you two know me too well,” he said. “No. Chowder was ahead of you on this one. He made me stay behind and practice slap shots with him—wouldn’t let me leave until I got a goal in or came up with an answer he liked.”

 

Derek let out a low whistle. “How long were you guys there?”

 

“Doesn’t matter,” Will said. “Point is: no. I thought things through. And I think—I think I owe you an apology.”

 

Derek stared, stunned. “Huh,” was all he could say. “Really.”

 

It came out sounding almost sarcastic—which Derek didn’t mean—but before he could correct himself, Will was saying, “Like, look. I’ll never consider what you had a sports injury—and if it is, it’s the dumbest sports injury to ever exist, and definitely not something you can use to flirt with—but I thought through the other things. The clothes weren’t that bad—my last roommate was worse—the music I could hear but you do that during roadies and I was fine—and the pie—”

 

And here Will trailed off, struggling, at his limits about what he could forgive.

 

But Derek was gracious, and he said, “The pie thing was my fault, really.”

 

Will sighed. “No, you meant well—probably—but either way I overreacted.”

 

“You did.”

 

“I did,” Will said, but more clipped, and Derek decided not to push it.

 

“But why?” Derek said. “You know, if you really mean what you said but you still went on to blame me for shit like that, it’s not exactly helpful.”

 

“That was the part Chowder was beating me into submission to figure out—sort of,” he said, and moved hastily on: “There were some other things but— Anyway. I figured out in the end.”

 

“And?”

 

“And I think it’s what you said, last semester, about how I would be out by September—”

 

“Dude,” Derek groaned.

 

“I know, I know. But I think, I thought, that—I think part of me always was wondering whether or not you were doing stuff to annoy me on purpose—”

 

“No, dude, Dex— You know I was joking. Come on.”

 

“I did. I do. I should’ve known better,” Will said. “Trusted you more. Been less suspicious. We argue all the time and shit but we’ve been—you know, friends—for a while too now. So I’m sorry.”

 

Derek considered him, looked at the dip of his chin, picked at the guilelessness in his eyes. Finally he was satisfied and let himself savor the apology. And savoring, of course, turned almost immediately to preparing to lord over. Will saw this change and gave him a glare. Derek raised his eyebrows innocently.

 

“I am sorry too,” Derek said after a bit, a little hesitantly, “for invading your fortress of solitude and all that. Swear to god I didn’t go in since.”

 

“What?” Will asked. “Oh that, yeah, no, that was kind of just the last straw, but by itself—I almost forgot about it, to be honest.”

 

“Oh,” Derek said, feeling a lightness in his heart. He slipped from the warmth of his blanket and climbed down the bed. “So we’re good now.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Good—chill. When are you moving back then?” Derek asked. He was preparing to move a few of his Whitman books—which he might or might not have thrown in front of Will’s side of the closet from spite—out of the way.

 

“Hm?”

 

He sounded distracted, and Derek straightened. “I asked when you’re moving back here.”

 

“Oh,” Will said, standing. “No. I mean, to be honest I think it’s probably still best if I stayed there for a bit.”

 

“Really? There? ‘In the darkness’? Dex—”

 

“Yeah,” he said, looking away. “I mean, I installed lightbulbs and everything. And it’s a good space. I got some planks from a shop class and made a sturdier bedframe and everything. And it works out for both of us this way. It’s not that I don’t want to live with you right now—”

 

“—but you don’t want to live with me right now,” Derek said, sighing. “No—don’t sweat it. I get it.” And he did. Even Ransom and Holster, after all, had the space of the attic to split between themselves.

 

Will’s shoulders slumped. “Thanks. We can come up with a roommate agreement at some point. Also I think taking some time off would be good—we spend way too much time on ice anyway. And between classes too, now that we share that one core.”

 

“We’re not Ransom and Holster,” Derek agreed.

 

“But I’ll probably move back—after Thanksgiving? When it gets really fucking cold.”

 

Derek grinned. “You’ll migrate back up here like a Canada goose.”

 

“If you want to call it that,” Will said, smiling.

 

When Will moved to leave, Derek remembered something. “Wait, hold up,” he said, “since when did I flirt with anyone with my sports—my injury?”

 

Will turned red, as red as the stripes on his flannel, as red Derek had ever seen him. “I—I mean, there was that once with Chowder, right?”

 

“With—” Derek almost burst out laughing. “Are you talking about when he signed my cast? Will, you can’t be serious.”

 

“I just—I just throw out words sometimes, okay? I didn’t mean flirting as in— Just drop it.”

 

“God, I can’t. You thought I was flirting—with my sports injury—with our best friend Chowder—”

 

“Drop it,” Will called from the hallway.

 

“I’ll see you at team breakfast tomorrow!” Derek said. “At least, if you don’t mind me flirting with basically-Caitlyn’s-fiancé Christopher Franklin Chow—”

 

Will popped a middle finger into the room, then closed the door.

 

Derek was still chortling to himself when he climbed back up to his bunk. Of course, he thought, his head hitting the pillow, only someone as emotionally repressed as Will could consider chatting about an injury with your best friend flirting—

 

Sleep was coming, quickly and lightly. But then in the liminal space between wakefulness and slumber, a memory came: he was in the sterile bed of the ice rink clinic after the last game—high as a reindeer on painkillers, probably. Will was there, looking down—but he already knew this, Will would complain about babysitting a high Derek for days afterwards. Will had then, in his memory, such a look of concern on his face—it was there, behind the look of incredulous annoyance—and Derek did just score a goal for Samwell, and perhaps he was high on that too— Then he remembered that Will never gave him a proper celly before he went and hurt himself, heroically, in the sports arena, and couldn’t Will, Derek was asking now, at least give him a kiss—?

 

The human consciousness could come up with the weirdest shit, Derek thought, squirming to flip himself to the other side, at which point he promptly fell asleep.

 

*