16
Izzy was, much to Dex’s annoyance, right. He was in a bit of a pickle. A sticky wicket, if you will. A somewhat unpleasant state of affairs.
Dex was fucked. Because no matter how hard he insisted that if Nick’s emotional unavailability wasn’t going to solve his whole crush situation, Nick’s inevitable decampment from the country would, anytime Dex saw him, he just couldn’t stop watching him. Or being aware of him in a way so intensely physical it was weirding him out. Had it really been so long since he’d liked someone that he’d forgotten what it felt like?
They arranged the cooking night over text, because Dex simply didn’t have the balls to do it in person. He also didn’t want any witnesses to what could potentially become an excruciatingly embarrassing scene, so he suggested going over to Nick’s.
Mistake, as it turned out.
When he got to Nick’s room, he couldn’t help thinking back to the one other time he’d been there, when they’d all gone out dancing and he’d watched Nick jumping up and down from a distance, wondering how someone so fucking shy could have let it all out when dropped in the middle of a club scene.
It looked like Nick had acquired a few knickknacks and oddities since that night. He’d pasted a few typical postcards of London to his board, and Dex was sort of amused to note the miniature TARDIS sat on his desk. Nick himself was only marginally more relaxed than when he’d experienced Hurricane Isabel tearing through his room.
Dex, not wanting to spook him too much, dropped his bag of shopping on the floor and hovered by the door while Nick got ready. He wondered if Nick always wore skinny jeans when hanging out in his room or if he’d dressed up special. Dex looked at Nick’s bony feet and felt as out of place as he had ever experienced. It was too intimate. The room was too small. It was too full of Nick, even just in the spare way he inhabited it.
“Ready?”
Too soon, he found himself in Nick’s halls kitchen with a knife and cutting board in hand, Nick hovering nervously by his side while Dex surreptitiously examined him for the smallest signs that Izzy had been right about something else—that Nick liked him back.
He had decided on spag bol from scratch. The kitchen didn’t feel altogether unfamiliar, but only in the way that all halls kitchens felt the same. The crusted-over toastie maker sat in the corner sent him back to first year of uni.
“This looks like a lot,” said Nick, glass of wine in hand. It was possible Dex had gone overboard. He just hadn’t known what Nick would and wouldn’t have, and if he was going to do this, he was going to do it properly.
“Well, I thought this would help with the basics.” He indicated the onions, the garlic, the tomatoes (tinned and otherwise), the olive oil, the rosemary and basil, the mince. He cleared his throat. “This was the first meal I learnt how to make, so I reckoned it might be a good start?”
The impish corners of Nick’s mouth deepened, and Dex took a deep breath. It was quite a bit of pressure, teaching someone to cook, it turned out. He lined up the recipe in his head and focused.
“Normally I’d be frying up bacon, but you don’t eat pork, right?”
“What do you mean?” Nick asked.
Dex stared at him. “Oh. Sorry, I just thought. You don’t keep kosher?”
“Oh.” Nick’s eyelashes looked long and vulnerable. He was pink-cheeked just like that. “We didn’t. W—we weren’t religious,” he said, looking back up and taking a sip of wine. “Being Jewish in Russia was sort of a … a problem. Plus, there was no religion during Communism. So.”
“Wait, hang on.” Dex picked his knife back up just to have something to do. “If you weren’t religious, how were you—”
“Jewish?”
“Well, yeah.”
“It’s weird, I know, but for us, Jew was an ethnicity, not a religion.”
“How is that?”
Nick made a noise that sounded frustrated, but Dex didn’t think it was at him. “Basically, my whole family is Jewish. Going back to the eighteen hundreds, maybe earlier. And they probably were religious, but not the recent generations. For me, for us, it said Jew in our passports. We weren’t considered Russian.”
“What?”
Nick shrugged. “All the better to fuck with us.”
In the fluorescent lights, Nick’s eyes looked a pale, stormy grey. Dex swallowed, then glanced back down at the cutting board. He had yet to start dicing. “What about in America, you never picked it up?”
Nick shifted beside him, and Dex felt his every move. It was as if his body was attuned to Nick. “I think my parents tried, but it didn’t really take, I guess?”
“Why not?”
“They’re hardcore scientists, through and through. My dad mostly enjoyed it as fables more than faith.”
Dex smiled. “I guess I get that.”
“You know, they’re chemists. Did I ever tell you that?”
“Seriously?” Dex returned the grin Nick gave him. It was impossible not to. Nick had uneven teeth. They gave his open-mouthed smile a silly look, really. If he normally looked like an oil painting, the illusion shattered every time he spoke or smiled just like this. It freed him. He wasn’t perfect, not like a painting. He had a spot on his cheek, for one.
“Yep. That’s how they met, at university. Chemistry students.”
Dex watched him, caught up for a moment, before remembering why they were here in the first place. “Well, we’ll add bacon another time, then.” He offered Nick the knife. “Do you want to try your hand at dicing the onion?”
Nick shook his head immediately. “Uh, no. You go ahead, I’ll watch for now.”
Dex laughed but agreed. When he was halfway through, his eyes began to sting. “Crap. You might want to back up a bit.” Nick nodded, his hand already slapped over his face.
“Ah, shit, my contacts.” He hunched over. The ridges of his spine looked prominent up close—one, two, three. “Sorry, sorry, hang on.”
Dex wiped his eyes with the back of a wrist. “Sorry, mate, I did try, but these are pretty vicious.”
Nick waved a hand as he ran to the other side of the kitchen.
It went smoother after that.
Dex diced and then sautéed his veg. Nick looked into the saucepan curiously.
“You know,” he said after Dex threw in his rosemary and narrated his aromatics are the key to every good sauce bit, “Cooking has always seemed like magic.”
“Magic?” His own approach had always been on the side of culinary science. “Magic in what way?”
Nick shrugged again. “I could never quite figure out how all these disparate ingredients could make up a whole like this. I guess it’s stupid.”
Dex watched him and waited. After a long moment, Nick continued.
“It’s just that I was never part of the process, you know?” A brief glance up at Dex, then down again. “And my mom is a really good cook. So it just never made sense to me how someone, I don’t know, even makes a broth or a stock or whatever, even though she does it all the time.”
Dex reached for the mince slowly. “I think I get it.” Trust dreamy historian Nick to believe there was magic in a simple Bolognese. Dex felt as if his bones were dissolving on the spot and had to brace himself on the counter for a moment. The mixture of rosemary and basil wafted up between them in a slow sensory takeover. “Cooking has always calmed me,” he said quietly. “It’s so methodical, and it makes sense, but it’s not just that, I guess.” Nick was watching Dex almost without blinking. His messy eyebrows were drawn together. Preternaturally serious. Dex swallowed. “It’s soothing, and maybe there is a bit of magic in that.”
The room was so quiet that Dex nearly jumped when the door creaked open and a stocky white boy walked in.
Nick moved away from Dex as fast as if he’d been burnt. “Oh hey, Jack.” He sounded breathless. Dex felt it in his toes.
“’Sup.” Jack made a beeline directly for the fridge. Dex willed his heart to calm back down and waited until Jack the Interloper had gone before he showed Nick the next step.
Nick consented to give stirring the mince a go. Dex felt an absurd relief at that. Something about it made the distinction between a cooking lesson and Dex cooking for Nick, which had too much of a date whiff about it.
His earlier reticence notwithstanding, Nick looked comfortable enough at the hob. Despite his every misgiving, Dex felt his pulse flutter every time Nick swayed into his orbit, smelling like aftershave and just a bit of sweat. He’d missed a spot shaving at the dip of his jaw. Steam wet Nick’s curly fringe, and Dex had to beat a hasty retreat, nominally to start the process of boiling the pasta.
Truly, he had never sweated as much over spag bol, not even the first time he’d made it at fourteen years old.
He narrated the rest of the recipe, all talk of magic versus science left off for the time being. He added the tinned tomatoes, some stock, the rest of the herbs. When asked, Nick would pass him what he needed, but apart from those acknowledgements, they neither one of them looked at each other again.
They should have done this at Dex’s, witnesses and all. The kitchen was beginning to smell like heaven, but Dex could not imagine choking down a single bite around his constricted throat, feeling like this. He needed Izzy, or Jonny, or fuck, give him bloody Niall and Lance, he didn’t care, anything to break up the tension. They danced around each other as the sauce simmered and the pasta boiled and Dex just ran his mouth on the best way to strain spaghetti and how adding parm and red wine gave a piquant, sharp note to the meal like he was Nigella bloody Lawson. Nick polished off his wine and bustled around as he set the table with bowls and forks and spoons.
Finally, it was done and they were sat across from each other, both staring into their bowls of pasta like they held all the answers in the universe.
“Tuck in,” Dex said, attempting to follow his own orders. Luckily, after the first couple of bites, it wasn’t a hardship. It was just right, not too spicy but full of flavour and texture. Their grins were slightly obscured by the steam rising from the bowls. “Good?” Dex asked, feeling well satisfied with his own efforts.
“Really good,” Nick confirmed and wiped the corner of his mouth.
“Think you could recreate it?” He didn’t mean to sound cocky or challenging, but Nick sat back and tilted his head.
“I could chance it.”
Dex wanted to draw him out until he had him pinned against a wall and see what Dex could chance. Before he could think about it, he said, “It’s a date, then. Spag Bol: The Reckoning.” Then his own words caught up with him, and he quickly looked back down at the ball of spaghetti rolled around his fork.
Nick cleared his throat. “Sounds good.” His voice sounded distant through the pounding in Dex’s ears. “Just name the date and time.”
It felt like nothing less than a challenge to a duel. Dex had no idea how things had slipped out of his control this fast.
Dex’s phone buzzed as they were washing up. Nick had insisted that he be the one to do it, and now it was Dex’s turn to hover awkwardly nearby with an occasion swipe at a dish with a towel.
He was set on ignoring his phone, but it wouldn’t stop, so he sighed and fished it out. His heart jumped in his chest. “It’s Al,” he said, answering Nick’s curious face. “I’m so sorry, d’you mind? He never phones.”
Was it Mum, or Dad? What happened? He was already swiping at his phone as Nick said, “Of course.”
“Al? What’s wrong?”
Al was slow to respond. “Uh, nothing. Just felt like a chat?”
Relief flooded every single muscle in his body, swiftly followed by rather unwarranted annoyance at having his night interrupted. But then it hit him. Al wanted to chat. He gave Nick an incredulous look even as he said, “A chat? Sure, I’m here.” He mouthed sorry and turned around, planting himself in a corner as Nick continued washing up. He thought he could trust Nick to understand.
“This place is shit, Ambidexter.”
“Oh, Al.” He sank down onto the nearest chair. “What’s happened? Or is it just general shittiness?”
“It’s just shit, all right?” God, he was stroppy. “I don’t know anyone, and like, I had Ralph back home, but he’s all busy and he’s got a girlfriend now, so we never talk, and I hate this fucking school. It’s crap.”
Dex had no idea what to say. What was it Nick had told him? Just let him talk and listen? “I’m sorry, Palbert. Is everyone a total idiot?”
He thought he heard Al sniffing. His poor Al. Christ. “I guess not everyone, but—” Dex waited even as he hated doing it. Just be patient. He watched Nick finishing up the final pot like he was trying to make the task last, to give Dex space. Hunched over the sink, Nick looked a bit like a dark question mark in the dingy white kitchen.
“It’s like. The teachers are fine, but I’m … Dunno. I guess it’s boring and stupid and I hate it and have no friends. There.”
Well, at least it was concise.
“Pal, I’m sorry. School can be such shit.”
“You didn’t have a shit time,” Al said, an accusatory edge to his tone.
“Mate, I was gay. It was shit enough.” A stray thought caught him. “You’re not telling me—”
“No! Christ,” Al interrupted, then said, voice lowered, “Sorry. Guess I didn’t think about that.”
Well, he was definitely the most fourteen he could be. “Don’t worry about it. But I do remember how that went.” Of course, his school had not been Posh Hell Central. At least there’d been that.
“I’m well sick of it. And Mum is constantly on my case and can’t leave well enough alone.”
“She cares, mate. Mum will be Mum.”
“Whatever, I’m not a kid.”
“But you’re her kid, and you’re clearly unhappy,” Dex snapped. “I mean … I only mean, she worries about you. She doesn’t want to see you miserable.”
“Well, her asking me about school and all that every time I see her isn’t helping. Whatever.”
Dex breathed in and out. He heard the water shut off and twisted around to see Nick drying that one last pot. He really had to wrap it up.
“I know,” he said. Mollifying. “I’ll talk to her. If you want.” Oh God.
“Please. Just tell her to get off my case.”
Christ almighty, he was happy to no longer be a teenager. “All right, but you have to do your part, too.”
“What?”
“Don’t be a proper dickhead to her. She’ll worry less.” Straight talk sometimes worked, didn’t it? Dex was sure he’d heard it work on telly from time to time.
“Fine. Anyway, what’s up with you?”
Dex almost pulled the phone away in shock. He couldn’t remember the last time Al had asked him anything about himself. “Not much, I guess.”
“What’re you doing right now?”
“Having dinner with someone,” he said carefully.
“A boy someone? Are you on a date?” Al went on, sounding gleeful. “What are you doing answering your phone on a date for, you plonker? You’re the worst!”
“Oh my God, shut the fuck up. I answered because you called, you fucker, so thanks for that.”
“Oh.” A pause. “All right. Well, thanks, I guess.” Another shocker. Talking to Al these days was very like riding a bloody seesaw.
“No problem. Look, phone me anytime, all right?”
“All right. Thanks. Bye.”
The call was dead before Dex could say another word, and he stared at his phone in bewilderment for a full five seconds before looking up and catching Nick staring at him.
“Sorry,” Nick said. “I was about to give you space.”
“Oh no, no, please.” Dex got up and shoved his phone back in his pocket. “I’m sorry about that, it’s just, he never rings.”
“Sure.” Nick gave him a small smile. “Do you want— If you have other plans, you don’t have to, but there’s still that other bottle of wine.”
“I’d love some.” Whoa, slow down, Cowboy. In truth, he had wanted an excuse both to stay longer and to leg it out of there, and it was good to have the choice taken out of his hands. “If that’s all right.”
Dex felt rooted to the spot in the dingy kitchen.
“We can go back to my room?”
God. Could they, though? Dex pictured them scrunched up on Nick’s single bed, breathing the close air of his tiny room. Dex indicated the door. “’Course.”
+
Two bottles consumed between two guys over the course of a couple of hours was not exactly a recipe for drunken debauchery, but Dex still felt the buzz of it in his bones. Low instrumental music played over Nick’s computer. Sorting themselves out on Nick’s bed had taken some pains, but Dex had finally settled at the foot of the bed, knees drawn up, shoulder propped against the wall. Nick had settled by the pillow, mirroring Dex in position, and they faced each other as they downed the wine.
It was a red, because Dex had thought it’d go best with the meal, but now he was conscious of potentially having purple teeth even as Nick’s turned a shade of maroon. Absurd, but it didn’t stop Dex from wanting him. All it really did was make him want to kiss the traces of wine from his lips, lick it from his teeth, share it with his tongue.
Dex had just finished telling him about Al and his troubles and was wondering what the fuck to say next when Nick asked, “How is Izzy? I haven’t heard from her in a while.”
Dex smiled despite himself and settled more comfortably against the wall. It wasn’t comfortable at all, in fact, but he was scared to upset the equilibrium. “She’s all right, I guess. Confused as all fuck, but she’s Izzy, you know? She’ll pull through.”
“Good. I hope. Is Natali—”
“I think she’s coming around. It’s hard to explain, but she just needs time to get past—” He sighed and scratched the back of his head. “Her own stuff, I guess.”
“Is it that she likes Izzy?” His tongue sounded like it wasn’t quite catching up with the words, and you could hear the traces of an accent. Could tell that English wasn’t the first language his tongue had learnt. Dex wanted to hear even more.
“Yes and no. I mean, you have to sort of know where she’s coming from.” Nick was too distracting. He focused on the few books Nick had lined up on his shelf. A couple were definitely not in English. Dex squinted. Or any alphabet he knew. “She had a really hard time coming out, so she sort of believes that if you haven’t sweated blood out of it—” He was making Nat sound like an arsehole. He may not have agreed with her anger, but it wasn’t his anger to agree with. “It’s just hard on her. This came out of nowhere.”
“It makes sense.” Dex waited to see if Nick would offer anything else more personal, but of course, this was Nick. Nick, who only shared when the information was pried out of him with blood and gore. Dex had none of Izzy’s gift of insistence, so he was left to wonder if Nick had a story of his own and if one day he would share a part of it.
Like a padlocked gate, this boy was.
“I hope she comes around.”
“You and me both, mate. Living with the both of them right now is a bit like trying your hand at being Switzerland.”
Nick’s uneven teeth glinted wine-purple in the light. “Sounds rough.”
“You’ve got an accent when pissed, did you know that?”
Nick clamped a hand over his mouth. He mumbled something, but Dex couldn’t make out a single word. He was across the bed before he could think about it and grabbed Nick’s wrist to pull his hand away from his mouth. He felt them both stop breathing for a moment.
“Sorry.” His throat felt like he had gorged himself on wine-flavoured candy floss. Their pulses thrummed in counter-rhythm. Nick’s wordless music saved them from having to hear only their own hard breathing. “What were you saying?”
“You weren’t supposed to notice.” Nick said. It was too quiet in the narrow space between them. Dex became aware of where his knees were digging into Nick’s hard shin, of how small Nick looked this close up.
Dex dropped his wrist and shoved himself backwards. “Well, I did,” he said in a pathetic attempt to restore some balance between them. “It’s not a bad thing, though, is it?” God, he was so obvious. Nick had to know.
“I don’t know.” Nick’s shrug looked like a stilted thing. “I guess I like that I pass. Most of the time.” He picked at the frayed bottoms of his jeans.
“Why?” He wasn’t drunk, but he didn’t feel entirely in control of himself either. Get a fucking grip, Dexter, he’s just a boy you sort of like. His heart beat hard.
“I don’t like—” He huffed out a frustrated breath. “This will sound worse than I mean it, okay, but I just don’t like talking—”
“I’m sorry—”
“No.” A fraction of a smile. “I didn’t mean with you. I just mean in general. It’s always a thing if you have an accent. People are always asking my mom where she’s from, even if she’s buying groceries. My sister, too. It gets … exhausting.”
“Are people arseholes about it?” Of all things to float to the front of his mind, his dad’s face wasn’t what he had anticipated. He pictured their old Sainsbury’s, the one around the corner from his school.
Nick shook his head slowly, like he was really thinking about it. “No, not usually. You know how there’s one thing about you that people focus on all the time, but it’s not the only thing about you, but nobody ever gets past it? That’s sort of what being an immigrant feels like. Except, I mean. It is important. It’s a huge part of me, but it’s not the only part.”
“I do,” he said. He pointed to his own face. “Black.”
They watched each other for a long moment. Nick said quietly, “Yeah. Except I can pass.”
“Do you think that I might want to?” His heart felt hollow inside his ribcage.
“No! God, that’s not … that’s not what I’m saying, shit, I’m sorry. I just always do. I always want to pass. I wish I didn’t, but I do. And I can, because I was young enough when we moved that I lost my accent. God, I’m saying it all wrong, I’m sorry. You probably think I’m such an asshole.”
“Nick, Christ, slow down, mate, I don’t think anything.” Before he could think better of it, he grabbed Nick’s hand. Nick was looking at him almost desperately. “It’s okay. I get it. I’m sorry that it has to be that way.” He let go of Nick’s hand carefully.
“I look like my dad,” Nick said abruptly, and Dex stopped breathing. “I mean, I look mostly like my dad, except just different enough that I never—this will sound awful, but just hear me out—I never looked Jewish. Not like the rest of my family does.” Dex watched his throat move. Nick was so thin, his neck was all fragile definition. “My mom and sister, they’re the most obvious. My sister was walking home once and got threatened on the staircase of our apartment building.”
“Jesus,” Dex breathed. “Was she okay?”
Nick nodded. “I mean, she was upset, but they didn’t physically hurt her or anything. But she was only thirteen at the time. They looked at her face and knew.”
“How?” Dex asked, despite himself.
“Long nose, big hooded eyes. Curly dark hair. She looked like a Jew, so she was treated like one.”
“God, Nick. I’m sorry.”
“Well, don’t be, honestly. It’s done. It’s different in the States. But I just got used to being invisible, and coming to the States and not speaking English made me visible, and I hate that.”
Dex could not begin to wade through all the layers of fucked-up-ness Nick had just spilled between them. He was just near enough a question he thought he could get away with when Nick said, “Anyway, sorry. Guess I’m drunk.”
“No, it’s okay.”
“What about you?”
Door shut again. Dex could have laughed. “What about me?”
Nick sucked in his lower lip, ran his teeth over it. Christ, his mouth. “I don’t know, tell me about you.” It could have been a trick of the light, but Nick’s cheeks looked flushed now.
Lightness stole over Dex. Like bubbles fizzing through his system. “But what about me?”
“Anything. Doesn’t feel fair that I’ve said all this crap, and you’ve listened, but you—”
“It’s not crap. Honestly, I like hearing you talk. I mean, if you don’t mind,” he added, the lightness quickly replaced by panic. Stop talking, stop talking, stop talking. “You’re interesting.” Fuck.
Nick, shrinking even more inside himself, smiled. Dex was all tension waiting to be released. “Thanks. You’re—you’re interesting, too.”
“I’m so not, man,” Dex laughed and scooted back, propping himself up on the wall again. He felt like a thread between them snapped as he did so. Tension seeped out. He could breathe again, but he found he didn’t want to, after all. Too late.
“Okay. Well, why were you so grumpy when we first met?” Even as the question left his mouth, Dex could see Nick panic. His own panic hit him full-on in tingling fingers and his stomach dropping to his toes.
“Um—”
“Sorry, that was stupid—”
“No. It was just—” He couldn’t. How could he begin to explain or to attempt to defend himself? “It wasn’t you. To be honest, I was just grumpy in general then. I was—getting over someone.”
“Oh. Shit, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
“I’m over it, mate.” He found it was true. “Honest. It’s good to talk about it, actually. Now, I mean.”
“What happened? If it’s okay—”
“Yeah, it’s okay. He cheated on me. For a while, apparently. I didn’t know. Broke my heart, really.”
It was hard to read Nick in that moment. Harder than normal, that is. “I’m sorry. That’s really fucking shitty.”
“It is, isn’t it? Oh, well. At least I found out eventually, I suppose. Reckon I’m better off now.”
“Yes.” They both laughed, sounding so bloody self-conscious.
Dex grabbed his glass from the floor again and took another sip. He was in danger of sobering up, and it was the last thing he wanted. Feeling reckless, he said, “What about you? Anyone back home?”
As soon as it was out of his mouth, it occurred to him he didn’t want to know. What possible answer could Nick give that would satisfy him? What if he did have someone? What then? What sort of someone would it be? And what business was it of Dex’s, anyway, from where Nick stood? God, maybe he needed to sober up, after all.
Nick took ages to respond. “No. No one.”
He had more questions than answers now, but he knew when to leave well enough alone.
“I should probably get going,” he said. It was way past time. He had to get out. He needed air. He needed his own room. He needed to clear his fucking head.
“Oh, okay.” Did Nick sound disappointed?
“Yeah, I’ve got loads of work to do tomorrow.” It was only half a lie.
He got up, barely swaying on his feet, and reached for his jacket. Nick was still sat on the bed, and Dex quashed another reckless impulse. They’d never hugged before. What made him almost do it now? Nick’s posture did not look encouraging of hugs. A thought about how Nick might feel with his defenses down flitted through Dex’s head. Impossible.
He really had to get the fuck home.
“Thank you.” Nick was smiling. “This was nice.”
Dex smiled helplessly in response. “It was. Next time, you cook for me?” It was out before he could stop it.
“Deal.”
“Well, have a good night, man.”
He blinked in the too-bright corridor for a full minute, stood against the door, rooted to the spot. It wasn’t until he finally started walking that he heard the lock clicking shut.