19
Dex was sick of the same four walls of his room but too lazy to get his arse to the library. Plus, he was starving. He shut his laptop and allowed himself a luxurious hour break with a promise of enjoying it if he got right back to his desk for more data sifting. Right now, his eyes were fucking crossing.
He went searching for some sort of sustenance that wasn’t caffeine in a jar and found Jonny rooting around the cupboards in the kitchen like a rabid fox.
“Hey, mate. We have nothing but biscuits and insta-noodles in here. This is highly unsatisfactory.”
“Maybe we should suck it up and get a Tesco order. This is pretty dire.” He peered inside the fridge. Pickle, cheese, brown sauce, and something that had probably at one point been some delightful leftover roast chicken, which looked like Dex should toss it into a hazardous waste bin and wear a protective suit in the process. He shut the door. “Takeaway?”
“Please.”
They ate their curries on the sofa with the telly, as always, on half mute. To the drone of the BBC, Dex filled himself on poppadoms and green curry and washed it all down with beer. “So, what’s up with you?”
“Dunno. A shitload of essays. You?”
“A shitload of experimental data. Bloody well sick of it, to be honest. I can’t believe it’s basically end of term.”
Jonny nodded and took a long sip of his own beer. He was looking at the television like it actually had something good on.
“Y’alright, man?”
“What? Oh yeah, ’course.”
They’d been missing each other due to everyone’s mad last dash of term, but now he could see the restless way in which Jonny shifted on the sofa, like he couldn’t get comfortable.
“You are so lying.”
“What? I’m fine! What the fuck are you on about?”
“You look bloody knackered and cagey and weird. Is it your parents? Has something happened?”
Jonny’s expression melted into something Dex did not expect—an impish sort of pleasure. Not his parents, then. Dex narrowed his eyes.
“All right. But you can’t tell anyone, all right?” Jonny set his beer down onto the coffee table. “All right?”
“All right, all right! Spill it, and leave no detail untouched.”
“So, I’ve been seeing someone? Dating. Proper dating.”
Dex grinned. The penny had dropped about two seconds before Jonny said it, but now the shadows under his baby blues made sense. Dex missed those sorts of sleepless nights. The closest he’d come recently was losing his shit on Nick’s bed and running out like an idiot. “Thought so. And who’s the lucky—” Another penny dropped. “Oh blimey, fucking hell, it is not—”
“Dexter.” Dex shut up. “Look at my face. I am happy. Do not fucking ruin this for me.”
Dex took a deep breath. “It seems like you and Lance are, in fact, quite happy together.” Just because Dex thought Lance was a bloody idiot didn’t mean the dude didn’t have excellent taste in the people he chose to date. By the looks of things, he was making Jonny properly happy. Well.
Jonny beamed like someone had turned a torch on inside him. “It’s brilliant. He’s so lovely. I know he can be a lot sometimes, but he isn’t always like that, all right? He’s so kind, and he really is super clever.”
Jonny looked down at his beer, and his face broke into the sort of smile that felt almost too private for Dex to be witnessing. A pang shot through him. Jonny deserved no less than someone who was kind to him, and if nothing else, Lance had always seemed to appreciate him.
“And the sex is. I can’t. I can’t even tell you. It’s off the charts amazing.”
Dex was trying to be nice, but he wasn’t a saint. “Really? Lance?”
“Yes! Lance! He’s, like. Yeah.” Jonny’s cheeks flushed red under his lowered pale lashes. “Like … really. Yeah. Wow.”
It was impossible not to smile back when Jonny grinned. “That’s great, mate. I’m so happy for you.” And he was, too. If he was also wistful, that was all right. Dex bit adieu to referring to Lance as Tweedle Dee, even in his head. “So, is it serious?”
“It is for me. I’m pretty sure it is for Lance, too. He actually— He invited me back to his family’s for Christmas.”
“Whoa. That is pretty serious. Are you going to go, d’you think?”
Jonny sighed. It appeared that only the thought of home could dim his light right about now. “I dunno. I want to, a lot, but there’s my mum and dad.”
“Have they said anything?”
“Well, no. It’s assumed I’ll be there. I really don’t want to see them, though,” he said quietly.
“It was pretty bad last time, wasn’t it?”
“It was shite. Before Lance asked, I had considered staying here for hols.”
“But?”
“But it’s selfish to take him up on the offer, innit?”
“Is it? Or is it protecting yourself from crap you don’t deserve?”
“I guess.” He didn’t sound convinced at all, but at least he did appear to be considering other options. That was a good step, probably.
“I’m sorry,” Dex offered. It felt wholly inadequate.
“Not your fault. Thanks for not being a dickhead about Lance and me.”
“I may be a sort of dickhead, but I’m not that much of a dickhead,” Dex protested. “You’re a dickhead.”
“I have never been a dickhead in all my life,” Jonny protested, and to be fair, he was absolutely right. How they wound up with Jonny in their lives was unclear, but Dex was not about to look a gift horse in the mouth.
+
Izzy had decided that they needed a group study session. It was a strange thing to arrange. They all studied completely different topics apart from him and Alex, and at best they’d all be sat in a room going bonkers simultaneously. But Izzy had sounded so off her rocker when she’d suggested it, Dex had acquiesced just to keep her from rolling off a cliff.
Now—as Dex had predicted—they were all squashed into their living room, every piece of furniture and available floor surface taken up by humans, books, and laptops.
Nat, for the first time in a couple of weeks, joined them. Dex did his best to suppress both his surprise and his pleasure, lest he spook her. Alex had pulled him aside and told him that Nat had been feeling horrifically guilty for blowing up but was still fucked up over the whole thing, so this was her own small step back to normal. Alex had had to drag her there a bit, but she did come, which seemed to be a good sign.
Nat had brought her laptop along with a pile of marked-up papers, and she settled in to working on her thesis two feet away from Izzy, whose hopeful face said it all. Dex wanted to hug her. He hoped Nat being there was a good thing and not an awful distraction for her.
So between those two and Jonny and Lance on the sofa completely unaware of anybody else in the world, Dex was having a hard time concentrating. And this was before you threw Nick in the mix.
Dex had managed not to see him since the night in Nick’s room. He hadn’t been avoiding him, he had been genuinely busy. He’d gone home one weekend to see Al and his parents, and every other day he was either revising or working, working or revising. His only nod to civility had been to send Nick a text and arrange for another cooking date. Not a date-date, just a cooking thing, but even so, when Izzy opened the front door and Nick walked through, Dex’s heart kicked up like he was being chased.
Nick had smiled politely at everyone, giving Dex the barest of glances, and then settled in close to Izzy’s side and buried himself in his laptop. It was a strange feeling, this slight resentment towards Izzy.
They’d had a moment. Dex knew it had been a moment. He couldn’t quite put his finger on what sort of moment it had been. Had it been just him? He didn’t think so. He’d locked Izzy’s assumption that Nick fancied him inside his brain, and every now and then he would pull it out and consider it. Like a kid, he had memorised her every word and repeated it to himself.
He watches you. All the time.
Not today, he wasn’t. Nick kept his nose either in his laptop or in one of a thousand printouts he had brought with him. Every now and then, he would say something to Izzy.
Dex shook his head to clear it. This was stupid. If nothing else, he had a shitload of revising to do. He clicked his laptop back to life and concentrated.
+
“I can’t bloody think anymore. Like, the word zeitgeist no longer looks like a word. I need a break.”
Having made this pronouncement, Natali unfolded herself from the floor and began an odd stretching routine. Dex noticed Izzy watching her.
“A break sounds good,” he said and stretched his arms over his head. When he looked around, everyone else appeared to unfreeze, as if Natali’s words released some sort of spell. An awakening of the zombified.
“Should we get food or something?” Izzy asked.
Dex’s stomach growled. “Chinese?”
“Pizza,” Jonny said without looking up from his phone. Dex scowled at him but gave in. Pizza was cheapest anyway.
“Fine. Pizza. Everyone good with that?”
It took a while to work out what to order. Between the veggies and Steph, who was coeliac, three different orders had to be placed. Once accomplished, though, he could finally escape for a slash.
He ran into Nick on the way back from the bathroom.
“How’s the Peterloo stuff going, mate?” he asked. Nick pushed his glasses back up his nose before responding, and Dex tamped down the ridiculous desire to kiss the dip in his lower lip.
“Pretty good.” His gaze was slightly unfocused, like he was a thousand miles away in his head. “Though another week to finish it all up would be nice.”
“Tell me about it.” Dex had stood apart from Nick, for his own safety or Nick’s he wasn’t sure, but now he wished he had engineered a close-body situation. Which was obviously stupid, because if you had to engineer it, it wasn’t going to happen either way.
He wanted Nick to acknowledge it. To acknowledge him. To acknowledge this thing between them. He wanted Nick to strip that wall he’d built around himself and to show Dex that he maybe mattered in a different way from everybody else. If Izzy was right, of course.
Izzy wasn’t always right.
Maybe Dex was making a fool of himself for no reason at all. Maybe Nick really was straight. Maybe he’s gay and just not into you. What a bugger of a deflating thought.
He let Nick pass him without another word.
“Sit with me, Dexter, and tell me I’m pretty,” Izzy commanded as soon as he walked back into the living room. “Well?” she demanded.
“You’re very pretty,” Dex intoned dutifully.
“And?”
He should never have shown her Firefly. “And,” he went on, “were I not gay, I would take you in a manly fashion.”
“Good,” she grinned and pecked him on the cheek. Across from them, Nat was frowning down at her phone. He felt Izzy sigh next to him.