Abroad

chapter 3-2

He was about to say something, anything, even something dumb, when Izzy slid off the counter, threw her carrot aside, and in a quick stride, reached him and enveloped him in a hug.

“Um.”

Nick just stood there, blinking at the ceiling, one hand still clutching Dex’s, his other arm hanging listless by his side.

“I’m so proud of you,” she whispered, and then she pulled away and looked him in the eye. Nick realized that she sort of looked—well, terrible. Or as terrible as Izzy got. Translucent blue bags stood out underneath her eyes, and her skin was so pale, her freckles looked like theater makeup. Without any thought, he pulled her back in and actually hugged her this time, letting go of Dex’s hand.

This was Izzy. Izzy, who’d listened to him when he’d had nowhere to go, and who was the first person to know him for what he was. Izzy, who currently smelled like sleep, a little sweaty, a bit stale. She smelled like an all-nighter. “Thank you,” he whispered.

It was probably too dramatic for the situation. Alex probably thought they were nuts. But Nick found himself with the simple realization that, right now at least, he didn’t care. He’d take this small victory and hoard it.

When Izzy let go, she gave him a giant, beaming smile, then hopped back up on the counter. Nick discovered that it was actually easy to let his body lean in and slump his shoulder against Dex’s. He felt a tentative touch to his back and shifted so Dex could slide his hand around his waist, and then they were cuddling. Right there, standing up in the kitchen, in front of Alex and Izzy.

“So, what’s up?” he said.

All three cracked up, and he felt Dex shift against him as he gave him a kiss on the temple. Nick warmed all the way down to his toes.

+

It wasn’t until they were all settled in the living room—Izzy and Alex on the couch, Dex and Nick squished into a chair—that Izzy told them about her sleepless night.

Nick and Dex hadn’t really gotten much sleep themselves, but his exhaustion was different from the sadness that emanated from Izzy. He felt tired in the way you did if you had to get up at the a*s c***k of dawn for something you’d been looking forward to for months. You’re in your warm bed and the world is dark and cold, but you know you have to get up in order to get what you’d been waiting for, and so you do. Izzy just looked … defeated.

Nick was also too aware of Dex’s body against his own. He was too aware of his own movements, his own breathing. Every time he took a breath, he would notice something else, like the way Dex’s breaths stuttered against his own in syncopated rhythm; the way Dex’s muscles shifted against Nick’s body and bone ground uncomfortably against bone. Dex smelled like last night. He smelled like Nick.

“f*****g hell, Iz, I’m sorry,” Dex sighed.

“Yeah, well,” she mumbled and pressed herself closer to Alex, who looked almost as tired as she was. They had all made tea, but the mugs all blended in with the surroundings, growing cold as the four of them sat this strange vigil over Izzy’s sadness.

“I can’t believe she told you,” Dex said, not for the first time, his breath ghosting against Nick’s ear, forcing another shiver from him. He was, Nick realized, intensely uncomfortable, but it was an ungenerous feeling, wasn’t it? His legs were going kind of numb from holding himself still enough not to jar Dex, and his neck ached from the angle. He flexed his toes.

Nick didn’t know what to think of Izzy and Natali. His brain was too jumbled, too tired and overwhelmed to have anything but uncomplicated sympathy for her. Nick didn’t know Natali, but he thought he knew Izzy, and you barely needed to know her to feel bad. It was unsettling, seeing Izzy like that. Izzy held them all together. Now, her head against Alex’s chest, hair lank and tangled, she was like a fraction of herself, and Nick felt selfish for never wanting to see her like that again.

“Well, she did, and it’s been, like, sixteen hours or something, and not a peep out of her.” Izzy looked at her phone where it was tucked in between her belly and knees, then slumped down again.

“This is her MO, though,” Alex said quietly. “She’ll emerge soon enough.”

“Where do we think she is?” Nick could tell from Dex’s tone that he was trying to lighten the mood. But as soon as he said it, it became clear his words had been a mistake. Izzy stiffened, and Alex shook his head at Dex, like, Dude, no.

“Probably at some girlfriend’s,” Izzy spat. Nick could feel the tension of Dex’s muscles against his own.

“She could be with Steph,” Dex said quietly. It was clear he only wanted to believe that.

“Maybe.” Izzy mumbled this into her knees, and her face sort of … sagged, like it was tired of holding it together. Alex squeezed her shoulder, and there seemed to be nothing more any of them could say at the moment.

+

He startled awake, disoriented. Dex’s face swam into view. The room around them was quiet, and Nick winced at the crick in his neck as he made to move. Izzy and Alex were both gone. Nick couldn’t believe he’d fallen asleep on her, after all of that.

“Hey, you seemed tired,” Dex whispered. “D’you … do you want to stay the night? I mean, I could walk you home, I just thought—”

The last thing Nick wanted was to be alone. He managed a smile and unfolded himself with minimal strain. “No, I’d—I can stay.”

Dex’s smile really was something else.

They made their quiet way upstairs in the dark, Dex leading him by the hand. Nick’s brain seemed to match the atmosphere—fuzzy and dim, with tiny physical jolts where Dex’s fingers shifted in his grip and a step came up to meet him in a stumbling rhythm.

Dex was the one to shut the door behind them, and the one to prod Nick gently toward the bed. Nick began to wake up slowly.

He reached for his own jeans with only slightly shaky fingers. He couldn’t quite tell if the shaking was fear or anticipation. Dex was quiet beside him, only a rustle of cloth giving away his intentions.

He wasn’t asking for anything, Nick reminded himself. He was giving. And Nick—Nick wanted to give back. He wanted to give back and not think, but the thoughts crowded in his head anyway, like they’d just been waiting for him to fully wake up and engage.

He tamped them down. There was no one else here but him and Dex. Every atom in his body knew that—now if he could only stop thinking.

At first they just kissed, lying side by side in their underwear on the unfamiliar bed. It was bigger than Nick’s, an adult bed—the sort of bed made implicitly for this, not like Nick’s, which made any other person in it feel like an illicit thing. No, this bed invited two people to sink into it, into each other.

They did. Nick’s heart was a heavy thud in his chest. Dex was an overwhelming presence. He’d only said, “Is it okay if I—” before Nick was right there, rolling them over so Dex pinned him down and didn’t let him think beyond the moment.

His mind kept racing back to Dex’s texts to Izzy. To think that Nick could have been the one Dex thought to be lovely. It dizzied him. Everything dizzied him, every single touch where they met—their bellies and chests, the inside and outside of Dex’s warm thighs where they surrounded Nick’s, their hard c***s, their wet mouths and soft tongues.

With Lena, s*x had always made a certain amount of physiological sense. It was s*x as nature had intended—hard d**k and wet v****a, seemingly one made for the other. Mechanically, it had made sense. It was just that in order to get himself hard, Nick had always had to disengage some crucial part of himself, as if splitting himself into two separate beings. Now this crucial part was pulsing through his entire body, and he was whole.

Dex’s hard length nestled against his own made the sort of sense he couldn’t make on his own. This shouldn’t have been making sense, but it was. Nick’s body surged up against Dex’s, his limbs growing heavier, sparks zinging through his blood. His briefs chafed him, and he could tell the two of them needed a good, long shower, but for whatever stupid reason it made him harder. Dex’s sweat was the sweat they’d made together. Where Nick tasted his skin—his stubbled jaw, the crook of his neck, the hardness of his collarbone—he tasted Dex. He tasted his gasps when he sought his mouth again, he tasted his sharp breaths, staccatos of surprise born of his own making.

“Nick—baby—”

Nick whined, pressed himself up harder against Dex. He knew it was too quick, too much, and, truth be told, for Dex, it was probably boring. Been there, done that. Nick knew, deep down, this was child’s play for Dex. It was only a revelation to Nick. But he had missed a crucial step where he could have stopped, could have asked with some bravado, even, What do you want? like Dex had asked him the night before.

Stupid, how even after the first time, he couldn’t bring himself to stop and recalibrate.

Dex didn’t stop him. He only stilled him with a soft hand at his jaw and a whisper of, “Let’s get these off, want your skin,” and Nick barely even had time to be embarrassed.

He was hungry, beyond the point of no return. Kicking off their underwear was an excruciating interval made of frustration and ungainly limbs, and then Dex was hiking up Nick’s hips to fits against his own and Nick hissed, threw back his head, and let go of thought altogether.

It didn’t take long. He tried to keep his eyes open because the sight of Dex, so hungry and just as lost, was so f*****g good. He had one arm propped on the bed next to Nick’s head, the other had hold of Nick’s a*s, and they moved together like a surging of water over stone. Nick couldn’t get a deep breath in. Then, right as pleasure gathered at the base of his spine and tingled his fingers, just as he stopped breathing altogether and whined so deep inside his chest it hurt his throat, Dex bore down and bit his neck.

Nick came. He shuddered through the blissful pleasure of it and only became aware of having grabbed the meaty part of Dex’s shoulder blade after coming down.

Dex came, too—Nick felt a tiny surge of sadness at having missed it. But he felt the heavy warmth of it mixing with his between their bellies, felt the hard thumping in Dex’s chest pressed up against his own. This, too, was right—nothing extraneous in the way of this coupling of heartbeats.

Nick gulped for air as Dex slipped off him, landing on his side. He wanted to keep touching Dex, making sure he was still with him in the moment, but he was coming back enough to himself that he was aware it was probably too needy. He occupied his hands with his curls, instead, tugging his fingers through them, scratching an itch on his scalp.

“You all right?” Dex asked, his breath close and warm against Nick’s shoulder.

Nick couldn’t help the tiny laugh that escaped him. He swallowed and turned his head. “Yeah.” A rasp in the dark.

“You sure?” Dex sounded so uncertain, Nick could barely believe it.

“Of course.” It was a bit hard to see Dex’s face in the dark, but his eyes were adjusting. Dex’s eyebrows were drawn together, and he had his lower lip caught in his white teeth. “I’m—I’m more than okay,” he admitted.

Dex’s exhalation was a tiny gust of heat. “Good. I guess it’s just—” He looked, Nick thought, uncertain. Oh, no. Nick knew he should have done something different. Taken more control, maybe, not made Dex do all the work. It was just that he didn’t know how, and it burned him from the inside out. He wanted to shut his eyes and disappear into the softness of the bed. “You’re so very quiet … you know, during,” Dex whispered. “You don’t say much in bed, do you?”

Nick’s skin prickled all over. He blinked. He hadn’t—hadn’t ever thought about it. Necessity had been the biggest reason for that—both he and Lena lived with their parents. Plausible deniability was the least his mom or Lena’s parents could ask for.

Slowly, he shook his head.

Dex made a series of decisive moves—propped his head on one hand, ran his free hand through the mess on Nick’s belly, then leaned down and kissed Nick on the lips. Now that he wasn’t burning up from want, Nick became aware of how tender his mouth felt, how raw the skin around it. He couldn’t have stopped the whimper from escaping his lips if he tried—and he really, really didn’t want to try.

“I—” He paused. “Is that … okay?” God, he wanted to die. But he wanted to please Dex, too. Dex had given him so much. It was uncharted territory, this asking.

Dex shrugged easily. “’Course.” Nick shivered as Dex spread more come over his belly. It probably should have been gross, but that wasn’t what he was feeling. Not even a little. “I would love to make you lose your mind someday, though,” Dex whispered, and Nick shuddered. “Get you all shouty and hot.”

Jesus. Christ.

He wanted to ask how, but the question died in his throat as Dex raised a messy finger and licked it, never breaking eye contact. f**k.

Dex slipped the finger from his mouth with a tiny pop. Nick felt completely immobilized on the bed. A flare of pain jolted him where his fingers dug so deeply into the sheets, his nails throbbed. “With my mouth, maybe,” Dex mused. “Or fingers? Maybe both.”

Nick’s mind filled with images. And questions, God, so many questions.

Nick had always felt out of step with most things, but s*x took on a special unknowable quality, even as he and Lena explored each other over the years. They’d tried a lot, but most of it had come from her curiosity, not Nick’s.

He’d shut that part off, too. He’d never even tried watching p**n, it just made him feel embarrassed and gross.

And here was Dex, experienced and proud and knowing, and it was like encountering a wall where you expected a door. Except the wall was Nick, not Dex.

Fuck.

He pressed the heel of his palm hard to his eyes and saw stars.

“Is not that—It’s okay if you don’t want that, seriously, just tell me and—”

“No, it’s…” Christ, he wanted to disappear into quicksand or something. Please, God, create a Nick-specific hurricane and whisk him away to where he wouldn’t have to expose this stupid childlike part of himself. He dropped his hand but kept his eyes closed. Dex wasn’t touching him now, and Nick could practically feel the tension as Dex kept himself so still, he was nearly vibrating. He really deserved so much better than Nick and his baggage. “I’m just … I have no idea what I’m doing,” he blurted out, then slid one eye open to peek at Dex. Shut it again. “I’m sorry.”

An excruciating pause, then a warm weight jolted him again as Dex leaned in and ran his big hand over Nick’s belly and up to his chest. “Babe, you’ve got nothing to be sorry for,” he said, his tone soft and only slightly bewildered. “You’ve no idea how f*****g hot you are, do you?”

Nick snorted.

“C’mon, look at me.”

Reluctantly, Nick opened his eyes.

“Do I look, I dunno, bored to you?” He sounded like a blanket being settled over you after you’d resigned yourself to never feeling warm again. Nick was pinned by his gaze. “Does it feel like I didn’t enjoy myself?”

Firm, he took hold of Nick’s hand and laid it openly against his softening c**k. Or maybe hardening. Jesus. Nick’s throat went dry, and he made himself keep eye contact. This wasn’t his first time touching Dex’s c**k, but somehow he had evaded it more than not. f*****g scared as hell, that’s what he was.

“No,” he said.

Dex leaned in until their noses were nearly touching. “You don’t have to, like, be anything you aren’t, or … or do anything you don’t want to. I just—I really b****y like you already.”

A pleased heat sluiced through Nick’s veins. He felt fluttery, like he had a sudden excess of energy.

“I—want it,” he said and leaned up just enough to find Dex’s lips with his own for a second. “Seriously, I just—I really don’t know what I’m doing.”

“’S’all right.” A peck to his lips. “I’ll show you.” Another. “If you want.” A lingering kiss.

Nick was so glad of this darkness.

“I want.”

“Good.” It buzzed against Nick’s lips. “I’m glad.”

They fell asleep kissing. Everything else could wait.