#stares at my weird thoughts in religion and my queerness. why are they looking at me like that

[navysealt4t]

killing myself.

[flowerfan2]

Everything You’re Looking For

David/Patrick, 2000 words, A03

S05e06 coda

In the days after what Patrick thinks of as the Ken incident, Patrick finds himself hyperaware every time a guy around his age comes into the store.  It’s bordering on ridiculous, but each time Patrick approaches one of them with what he steadily maintains is his usual cheerful greeting, he can’t help but wonder what they see when they look at him.  Is he now giving off some kind of gay vibe?

Adding to the insanity of this preoccupation is the fact that Patrick still, for the most part, has no idea whether any particular guy he looks at is queer.  He’s actually pretty sure that making that judgment based upon a guy’s appearance is incorrect, and yet he doesn’t have the time to banter with everyone he meets for a few weeks to find out whether their eyes linger on his lips when he calls out their sloppy mouth, so he’s not sure how to discover if there might be an attraction between them.

It’s not as if he wants there to be an attraction between them – he doesn’t want to be with anyone other than David, that was never really in doubt, and now it’s firmly established.  But he just can’t help considering what people think when they meet him.  If Ken had seen something in Patrick that told him “yeah, he might be open to this” does that mean that Patrick has changed?  In his whole life, before meeting David, no guy has ever hit on him.  Something must have changed.

Of course it might also be that Ken saw Patrick interacting with David, or looking at David, or existing near David… Patrick thinks he’s pretty obvious, at least now, when it comes to his attachment to his boyfriend.  Stevie has gone so far as to describe him as “besotted,” at least when she was high.  On the other hand, if it was clear that Patrick was in a relationship, why would Ken have asked for his number?

It’s confusing, and distracting.  Desperate to get his mind off the topic, Patrick tells David that he’s going to hide out in the back room for the afternoon and work on the books.  David seems fine with this – he’s got no reason not to be – and so Patrick sits himself down with his laptop and proceeds to stare unseeingly at a half-finished profit and loss statement until his eyes start to cross.

Patrick wonders if this would all make more sense if he knew any other queer people their age besides David. He thinks that’s part of why David wanted him to experience a date with Ken.  Having someone to talk to seems like it might help.  But the last thing he wants is to make David think he wants to meet other gay guys because there’s something lacking in his relationship with David – there isn’t.  David is gorgeous and impossible and everything Patrick had never known he wanted.  Patrick can’t imagine being more deeply in love than he is with David, and in his heart of hearts, he doesn’t see that ever changing.

But Patrick is, for lack of a better word, curious.  He’s never been a gay man in any environment other than Schitt’s Creek; no one knew he was gay until he became David Rose’s boyfriend.  (His parents still don’t know, but he pushes that thought away – it’s a problem for another day).

He finds himself poking around online, looking at LGBTQ+ community center websites.  There’s one not too far away with a wide range of programming, including groups that center around identity, advocacy, mental health, and the arts.  There’s even a book club.  Patrick tries to imagine showing up to a meeting with a dozen other queer people.  He’s not sure how it would feel.

A few more searches bring him to an online chat group.  He meanders about for a while, reading threads on coming out, and religion, and the challenges of being gay in a small town.  He finds one that seems friendly, and without letting himself think too hard about it, he posts.

I haven’t been out for long, even to myself.  I’m pretty happy hanging out with my boyfriend and his   - he rapidly backspaces, deleting “his” and changing it to “our” - our most likely straight friends, but should I be making an effort to meet more queer people?

Patrick forces himself to tab away from the chat group and spend some time entering data on vendors into a spreadsheet.  It’s easy work, though, and not nearly distracting enough.  He doesn’t know why he thinks random people who have nothing better to do than screw around online are going to have anything valuable to say, but he’s still dying to know if he’ll get any responses.  

Finally five o-clock rolls around, and he joins David out in the store to get ready to close up.  David’s in a good mood, humming and strutting around the display tables with a broom that is serving more as a prop than a cleaning device, and Patrick forgets all about his post.  They pick up a pizza on their way home, and waste time faux arguing about whether they’re going to go to Ray’s house next weekend for game night (they will, in the end, but David needs to get in a good rant first to feel like he’s being heard).

Alexis stops by for a few minutes, and she teases David for a while about a haircut he once got while drunk – in her opinion it was even worse than the one Jocelyn got at the casino.  Patrick thinks Alexis is lonely now that David spends most nights out of the motel.  He doesn’t mind her lingering in their space as if she has a right to be there.  It’s nice, really, feeling like he’s part of David’s family, and he doesn’t like the idea of Alexis feeling alone.

David kicks Alexis out around ten, and they get changed into sleep pants and t-shirts and climb into bed. Patrick grabs his laptop and David smirks at him, finding a magazine and tucking himself close against Patrick’s side.  It’s not weird for them to read for a while before going to sleep, even if it means that they don’t mess around every night.  Patrick tips his head and kisses David’s forehead.  He always felt guilty if he told Rachel he wasn’t in the mood, but it doesn’t work that way with David.  David doesn’t have any doubts about the fact that Patrick finds him sexy.  They’ve played with this often enough, David cranking Patrick up just with a sultry smile and a finger trailing along his skin in just the right place.  But tonight, at least for now, Patrick has other things on his mind.

Bracing himself for disappointment, Patrick goes back to the chat.  There are a number of replies to his post, and he bites his lip as he reads them.  There’s a good smattering of “don’t worry, there’s no way to do it wrong” responses which are nice enough, but he’s already had David’s voice in his head telling him that.  There’s one comment about how he should ask himself why this has occurred to him now, and if someone in the friend group is making him uncomfortable (no one is).  Another tells him to consider whether this is a situation of internalized homophobia or if he feels safer with straight people than gay people (he doesn’t think that’s it).  Another asks him if maybe he’s just not that into group activities, which is off the mark but makes him chuckle.

The response that resonates the most, though, that makes his shoulders relax and his nervous finger tapping subside, is this one:  Do what feels comfortable for you now, and stay open to other possibilities.  There’s no rule that you have to pick one way to be queer and stay that way forever.  Maybe next year you’ll decide to express your sexuality in different ways, or feel the need to meet more people.  If you are fortunate enough to have a few good friends, and someone who loves you, you’re doing just fine.

Patrick breathes deeply, thinking this through. It feels right. David stirs next to him.  

“Ready to go to sleep, or is there still a spreadsheet that needs your attention?”

Patrick hesitates for a moment, and then turns his laptop towards David, who props himself up on an elbow to read the screen.

“I was considering an LGBTQ book club,” Patrick says, as lightly as he can.  “Or maybe a bowling league.”  

“Ugh, please.  I know you’re just saying that to torment me.  Who came up with an activity that requires you to wear unsanitary shoes?”

“I think they’re cute.”

“You do not.”  David scrolls up to see Patrick’s original post, his eyes flickering over to Patrick’s face and back to the screen.  “I was in a queer book club for a while.  Mostly because Adrien’s caterer had a Cordon Blu trained pastry chef on staff.  Those chouquettes…” David lets out a little groan of appreciation.

“Did you like it?  The book club, I mean, I know you liked the pastry.”

David slings his arms around Patrick’s neck and looks at him steadily.  “Patrick, I ran art galleries in New York City.   I lived in Chelsea.  I didn’t need a book club to find my people.”

Patrick feels silly for a minute, remembering again how very different David’s life has been from his.

“But it was fun, on occasion.  When does it meet?”

“I don’t know, I didn’t get that far.  I wasn’t seriously considering it.”  Patrick pulls away from David, needing just a little less eye contact.  He slides down on the bed, and David follows, tucking his head on Patrick’s shoulder.

“Well, let me know if you change your mind.  I’ve exhausted all the reading material at the motel.  I wouldn’t want to risk our relationship by taking any more of those quizzes.”

Patrick’s brain trips over this for a minute.  “You’d want to come with me?”

David turns to him, and it’s clear that he understands that this conversation is more than just Patrick trying to decide what to do with his Sunday nights.  “I’d like to.  There’s a definite dearth of non-straights in Schitt’s Creek.  But not if it’s something you wanted to do for yourself.  That would also be fine.”  

It dawns on Patrick that maybe David could use more gay friends too, or pan, or just friends in general that aren’t his sister or Stevie.  And he imagines going to a queer group with David at his side, David’s arm in a fuzzy sweater wrapped around his own, David’s chin tucked over his shoulder.  He likes the idea.

Patrick turns and kisses David, his mouth lingering on his lips.  “I think that’d be good,” he says against David’s cheek.  “If we both went.”

David hums his agreement and kisses Patrick back, heating it up, his hands roaming around Patrick’s body in the way that never fails to turn him on.  Things fall away from Patrick for a while after that, as they strip off their clothes and press close, David’s naked body grinding hot against his under the sheets.

“I wondered about it too,” David says later, after they’ve caught their breath and nestled back together, sweat cooling on their skin.  “How Ken knew right away.”

“Yeah?”

“Mmm.  I thought maybe he saw the way I looked at you.”

Patrick can’t believe there’s enough energy left in his body to blush, but he knows he’s doing it.  He rubs his nose in David’s hair.  “Yeah?  How do you look at me?”

David laughs softly, digging his chin into Patrick’s shoulder.  “Alexis says besotted.  And she’s right.”

Patrick holds David tighter and kisses him again.  “The feeling’s mutual, babe.”  It’s love that’s changed him, Patrick thinks, as he drifts off to sleep.  And it’s changed David, too.   It’s shining out of them so brightly, it’s no wonder people can see it.

[nurseydexunsolved]

My first ever nurseydex fic! Please go on ao3 and leave comments and reblog & all that jazz, I’ll love you forever. Also! If you have a prompt you desperately want someone to fill, just send it my way! Okay enjoy :)

//

William Poindexter was wheeling someone, but for the life of them, no one in the haus could get him to confess who.

Nursey noticed it first, entirely on accident. Dex had walked into the kitchen, shoulders at least two inches lower than they usually were, expression calm, and when Nursey knocked over his water, Dex just laughed and said, "Don't worry, I'll clean it up."

Nursey stared at him, shocked. The shock had to be the reason he said something as stupid as what he said next: "Whoa, bro, who took the stick out of your ass? You're acting... weird."

Unfortunately for Dex, Ransom, Holster, AND Shitty were all in the kitchen (preparing for the kegster that night) when Nursey said this, and the way they all immediately stopped their conversation and zeroed in on him was truly frightening. Dex barely had time to give Nurse the stink eye before he was being devoured by their well-meaning but invasive friends. Nursey wanted to join in on the chirping, but he realized he was feeling a little bit sick to his stomach, so he escaped upstairs.

Despite this, or maybe because of it, Nursey was the first person Dex told.

A couple days later he still hadn't cracked, to the endless irritation of Ransom's spreadsheets. They were hanging out in the library with Chow, but when Chris went to the snack shack downstairs, Dex tapped Nursey's foot with his.

"Hey," he said, which made Nurse's heart start thumping a little bit harder, because what could he possibly have to say that Chowder couldn't hear? And Dex's expression didn't help. He looked... nervous. And a bit vulnerable, like he was made of glass, which of course was never a good combination with Derek's clumsy ass.

"Yeah?" he said, trying to be delicate.

"I kind of have a question."

"What's it about?"

"Well, it's about... poetry," he said, looking anywhere but Nursey's eyes."Poetry? Bro, have you been holding out on me?? Do you need me to critique your couplets? I'll do it, I promise, there is nothing I want more than to read poetry written by Mr. Grumpy—"

"Shut up," Dex laughed, the tension eased a little bit. "No, it's not my poetry. It was written... well. It's kind of, um, about me. And I want you to tell me if it's good."

Nursey's heart plunged into a cold lake. "Oh, for real? Well, I mean, there isn't really such a thing as bad poetry, you know. I'm not elitist about that sort of thing." The look on Dex's face told him that was the wrong answer. "But, I mean, I'll take a look. Do you have it with you?"

Dex wordlessly handed it over, and Derek read.

 "I've never been very religious I believe in entropy and science, experiments and evidence, gravity and stars But then I look and I swear, there is something in the glow of your golden eyes and well that is an unexplained phenomena if I've ever seen one And perhaps you were always meant to disprove my hypothesis Because I swear I found Virgo in the constellations on your collarbones And there must be a gravity around you because I feel it like a tug on my sternum when you leave And if there is a God, he must be a sadist Because I am sure he made you and thought, "Here is a smile they will start wars for.""

 There was a lot going through Derek Nurse's head.

First, his English major brain started critiquing it: too short, not a very smooth flow, some odd sentence structures.

Then he thought, God, who could describe Dex in cliches. Gravity? Constellations? I would have said—

Then he stopped himself. And started to panic. And realized this person was really in love with Dex, because duh. They weren't wrong about the smile.

He glanced down and saw he'd been gripping the page tight enough to crinkle, and smoothed it onto the table.

"So?" Dex said, searching Nursey's face almost desperately. "Is it good? Do—do you like it?"

Nurse almost laughed at that. Was it good? Yeah, maybe. Did he like it?

Fuck no.

He focused on the first question.

"Um, well, I really liked the way she tied the subject to her questioning religion and science, almost making him a messiah-like figure, and the continuity of that metaphor—"

"Nurse. This isn't workshop. I asked you if you liked it."

Derek tried to imagine that he'd been presented this piece in workshop, and not by his d-partner, who was currently giving him the most unbearably eager expression. Nursey couldn't imagine why his opinion mattered to Dex, but he glared down at the paper and said, "Yeah, overall, I liked it."

Dex stared at him for another really long moment, and Nursey didn't know what to do with his hands, and then Dex grabbed the paper and shuffled it around.

"So. I mean, not to pry, but obviously—"

"His name's Evan," Dex said. "I met him at that Sunday kegster, the day party. He told me he wanted me to 'look' at his poem, but it's obviously about me, and I don't know. He's really nice and cute and it's just." Dex sighed, avoiding Nurse's eyes. "It's nice to know someone looks at me like that. That someone could, in any fucking universe, describe my eyes as 'unexplainable phenomena.' But I didn't know if it was just bullshit or what, so I wanted to show it to—to you."

Dex finally looked him in the eye again, and—oh. Nursey had been so fucking stupid, he was so mad he hadn't thought of writing poetry about Dex's eyes first. They were so raw, so expressive. He was a tad dumbstuck, until he managed to sputter out, "Well, do you—do you like him too?"

"I think I could," he said, like it was a confession. He looked away, toward the window, and Nursey really wished he was a photographer in that moment, so he could capture that look. "I really think I could."

//

In the end, Evan gave himself away.

Dex and Nursey were sitting alone at the kitchen table, with Bitty humming happily at the counter, when Derek saw it.

Before he could help himself, he whispered to his phone, "Oh, you know not what you do."

This earned him a very confused look from Dex. He simply handed over his phone, watching Dex's eyes bug out, as he raced to unlock his own phone and delete the incriminating evidence.

It was too late. They heard the loud, "Dude!" followed by Holster's booming "DUDE!!!" before Dex had even pulled up instagram. Ransom was on insta almost as much as Bitty was on twitter.

Dex's fate was sealed.

"Ummmmm DEX?" came Holster's voice down the stairs before he thundered into the kitchen. "Who is this HOTTIE commenting WINKY FACE EMOJIS on your selfies??"

"It's not a selfie—"

"Actually Holtz, I believe the comment in question was, 'looking good dex,' then the winky face emoji."

"Oh, of course, how could I be so foolish."

"Did y'all already send the screenshot to the gc?" Bitty asked, looking down at his continuously vibrating phone. "Oh, give Dex a break, will ya?"

"Yeah, I would love to, Bitty," Rans said, grinning at his phone with what could only be called malicious glee, "but it turns out Dex's new boo-thang has been posting delightful candids of our boy here along with captions written in—wait for it—free verse poetry."

"How the fuck did you find--? He's on private!" Dex objected, the confusion momentarily distracting him from hiding his very red face.

"Dude, this kid can write," Holster said. "Are you sure he's not only dating you for an excuse to write autumnal prose?"

"YES!" Rans yelled. "The poetry drew her in! Lardo joined the flaming!"

"GOD," Dex groaned, muffled into his sleeves since he was facedown on the table. "LET ME DIE HERE.”

"Now, of course we all support you and your sexuality, but in the interest of equal opportunity chirping—"

"SHUT UP HOLSTER!"

//

The real problem began when Nursey went to his poetry writing seminar on Wednesday, because now he knew what Evan looked like. He’d put a face to the poem, and discovered the proof confirming Evan’s sadist theory that God was personally TiVo-ing Derek’s Actual Life and laughing his ass off, because Evan?

Evan was in Derek’s poetry writing seminar.

Even better, when the prof counted them off into groups for mini-workshop sessions, Evan was in his group.

Guess which poem he brought to workshop?

Derek would have been the first to admit that he maybe didn’t handle the situation as maturely as possible. He had a reputation in their class of being opinionated, but even he knew as the words were coming out of his mouth that he was going overboard. He talked about this metaphor not hitting just right, that line maybe wasn’t totally accurate? (After all, he did know who the poem was about. He could judge accuracy.) By the end of class, he had practically rewritten the whole thing for him, but to his credit, Evan took the whole thing like a champ, taking notes on everything Derek said.

“By the way, are you married to the whole second-person thing?” Derek said, hating the words even as they came out of his own mouth.

“Um, well, I kind of conceptualized it as a literal love letter. Like, I wanted to evoke the feeling in the reader of like, the person who I love is pouring out their soul to me in an ode, and all that’s missing is some cursive and a postage stamp in the corner,” he said.

“That’s a really cool idea,” Derek gritted out, mostly because he meant it. “Is that why it’s so vague?” he asked, because maybe there was hope. Maybe he really just wanted Dex to read his poem.

“What?” Evan replied, looking surprised.

“Well, I mean, you don’t have any particular details in it: this could be about anyone. Did you do that intentionally so the reader could envision it being addressed to them?” And, honestly. His prying was getting a little pathetically obvious now.

“Oh. Um, I guess you’re right, but that wasn’t intentional. Actually, it is about a really specific person. Ha, guess it’s just the closeted queer kid in me, avoiding any obvious markers of gender or whatever. You’re totally right, I’ll work on that.”

Derek sunk back into his seat, real guilt settling on his chest as their groupmates sent Evan sympathetic looks.

It would have been much easier to hate Evan if Derek didn’t like him so much.

//

He didn’t mean to write the poem.

Honest. It just spilled out of his fingers, typed into a shame-note on his phone, not even titled.

Well, until the third draft. Then he titled the note, “Freckles.” And then he had to transfer it to google docs, where all his poetry went, just to be safe.

And somehow, some way, Derek ended up in the library printing out 20 copies for his entire workshop to read.

It wasn’t that he hated himself; nor even that he was convinced that it was that great of a poem. The whole “having feelings for Dex” thing was too confusing and intense and new for him to be able to be objective at all. It was just, he’d procrastinated the hell out of the assignment, since he'd had two essays due the same week and thought, “It’s a poetry prompt. I have notebooks stuffed with poetry. I’m sure I have something.”

Except, then it was the night before Wednesday, and he realized he didn’t have anything that fit the prompt.

Well. Except one poem.

Which was how he printed out and handed his own ode to Dex right into his boyfriend’s fucking arms.

Oh yeah, because that was a thing.

A couple weeks ago, half the team had “accidentally” run into Dex and Evan on a date, where Dex had introduced Evan as his boyfriend and Evan had tried to chat with Nursey about their seminar and Nursey had excused himself to the bathroom, to quiet his shaking hands.

Since then, whenever Dex went to kegsters and the bars and even a house party at one of Rans's Weird Sciencey Friends's place, Evan was with him. Which like. If you didn't know they were together, you probably wouldn't even guess it. Nursey had never seen them kiss, and the most PDA he'd spotted was Dex dragging Evan out of a kegster by his hand. Technically. But the thing was, Dex was so...different when he was with Evan. Evan made him laugh, like belly laugh, all the time. Dex was constantly smiling or laughing or joking whenever Evan was in the room, and Nursey really just could not deal. If he'd thought he had it bad before, that was literally a joke compared to the sight of Dex animatedly telling a funny story, swinging his arms everywhere, barely able to finish for laughing so hard.

The problem was that he wasn't telling the story to Nursey.

All this, maybe, possibly, Nursey could handle. He could move on. If Dex hadn't walked into their room looking extremely distraught less than a week ago.

Well. Extremely distraught on Dex looked like mildly perturbed on most other people but Nursey could read Dex pretty well at this point.

"Dex?" he said, "Are you alright?"

He expected a brush-off, like every other time Nursey inquired after his emotional state. What he got was, "I don't know."

Nurse swiveled away from his laptop, full attention to Dex. "What's up?"

Dex gave a frustrated huff. "It's just...ugh. It's gonna sound shitty."

Nursey raised an unimpressed eyebrow.

Dex huffed again. "Okay. But I might not say it right. Um, so Evan has some... mental health issues. Which is fine! That isn't the problem. I like all of who he is, not just... ugh. The problem is... I don't think he's really... dealing with it?"

Nursey kept his face impassive. Dex knew about Nursey's mental health struggles as well, and yet he chose to come to him for this. He would withhold judgement until Dex said what he had to say.

"Like he... he makes me happy, and he makes me laugh, and he makes me feel good about myself. But he puts himself down all the time. And I don't think he's fishing for compliments or reassurance or anything, but it feels like, if I don't reassure him every time, I'm just feeding into it and reaffirming those thoughts and making everything worse. And that's like, a lot of pressure? And he has some really concerning symptoms. Like, he'll just casually drop that he had a panic attack in class or that he dissociated for hours this morning and I don't know what to do. I don't know how to help. I can't, I am so not qualified for that. So I'll be like, 'maybe you should see a therapist or get a diagnosis or like...talk to someone'? And he'll just be like 'I probably should' and then do nothing. And I try to tell him nothing will change or get better if he doesn't do anything, and I'm just starting to feel like if I don't make his mental health a priority then no one will, and because I care about him, I want to see him, I don't know, be okay. But that means taking it all on, and I just, I don't, I've been monologuing about this for long enough and please help."

Nursey nodded, face still carefully composed. He'd been in a similar situation with a cousin, and told Dex he was on the right track and had to take care of himself first, and to talk to Evan about it first, and if after that he couldn't prove he was making an effort to improve his health then Dex should end the relationship. All in all, Nurse was quite proud with his maturity in handling the situation, and could sleep well knowing he gave Dex the advice he would give anyone.

Except.

Knowing this was so detrimental to Nursey's dumbass feelings-for-Dex heart balloon, which expanded with shallow, selfish hope with the knowledge that Dex wasn't totally happy and that Evan had, like, at least one flaw.

It was the stupid balloon that had made him write the poem in the first place. He just had to let some of the air out before it popped. How could he have known it would end up like this?

He reread the poem nervously while class was winding down, tuning out the prof's droning about atmosphere.

 i bet you heard that your freckles were constellations, stars scattered across shoulders but i have never heard something so wrong stars are dead things, explosions of heat and gas, and what we see are the remnants of light, hanging on only to the echo but your skin is a living masterpiece a splattered miracle of pigment and sundrops and pointilism you might be the water droplets that bead up on the car ride home, as i watch two drops race each other to avoid looking at your hair or your eyes or your freckled fists on the wheel, because i know if i look i will do something stupid like fall in love— but it's too late. i didn't see it coming because i always thought it would be gradual, but all it takes is for me to see the fireworks of freckles on your sternum, permanently burned onto your skin like the imprint of the sun on the back of my eyes and it explodes in my chest, this thing that i let happen so no, dear, you are not like the constellations so fickle, disappearing every morning, hiding behind the clouds your freckles are like freckles because i have tried and tried, but i cannot for the life of me think of a more beautiful word

 An elbow in his side jolted him back to class. It was Evan's.

"Can't wait to read your poem!" he said.

"Haha, thanks," he said.

Haha, fuck, he thought.

//

"Nurse. I read your poem."

Nursey's eyes tracked slowly up from his reading to the puppy-dog eyed boy in front of him. Evan. Shit.

"I can explain," he said.

Evan slid into the booth next to him at Annie's. "I need your advice."

Nursey repeated Evan's word in his brain once, and then twice, and then a third time, really breaking down each word, and he was still confused. "What?"

"With Dex. I have eyes. You obviously really care about him. Like, you're in love with him, I mean. And maybe that makes me stupid for asking you, but I don't really have anyone else I know who'll hear what I have to say and have Dex's best interests at heart, and so I'm trusting you to be honest with me, because I don't really think I'm capable of being honest with myself right now."

"I'm sorry, are you asking me for relationship advice?" The words left his own mouth but they still didn't make sense.

"Kind of. It's just. Has Dex told you anything about me?"

He knew what Evan was asking. "He told me you had some mental health issues, yeah. And that it's been... well. A support system can't be one person."

Evan nodded, like this was what he had been wanting to hear, which only succeeded in confusing Nursey more.

"Yes. Exactly. So. I wanted to ask someone who actually knew Dex about it, because I don't think he's being honest with me. I mean, I think he's trying to hide his feelings because he's afraid it will like, break me, or make me feel worse, or whatever. I guess my question is... am I hurting him?"

And, fuck. All of Nursey's irrational dislike of Evan flew out the window when he heard that soft little question, Evan's voice almost too raw to bear.

Which was why Nursey knew he was being honest when he whispered, "Yes." He rushed on to amend, "Well, it's not actually your mental illness, whatever that is, Dex never specified. It's that Dex feels like the responsibility for your mental well-being is entirely on his shoulders, which is not healthy for anyone to feel, ever. He really cares about you, Evan. But from what I gather, you're putting a lot of weight on him. You need to have someone else besides Dex: your family, other friends, maybe a therapist. Okay, no, as someone with bipolar, you actually should definitely have a therapist. But it's gonna take a while, dude. And until then... yeah. You are hurting him."

The fucking look in his eyes, man. "I need him," he said.

"I know," Nursey replied. "Which is probably why you have to let him go."

Evan sighed, a release of understanding, of learning something you already knew. "Thank you. I just needed someone to say it out loud to me." He looked down at his hands, picking the skin off the side of the nail. "Um. Do you know how... where would I find a good therapist? Do you think?"

//

Things after that were harder. But also better.

Dex was devastated, he was. But Nursey could also see the relief in the set of his shoulders. That Evan would be okay, or he was on his way to being okay, and it wasn't Dex's job to fix him. Or anyone's job but Evan's, honestly. Nursey had almost forgotten the whole ode to Dex thing.

Almost.

Until Dex burst into their room, paper in hand, yelling, "Hey, Nurse? What the fuck is this?"

Nursey froze at his desk. He didn't have to look. He could feel the words on the paper in the room with them, haunting him. Why did he have to be so melo-fucking-dramatic all the time?

"What's what?" he said instead of all that, swiveling around calmly, thinking maybe if he acted chill his blood pressure would be fooled and decrease.

(Or maybe it would increase just enough that he could have a heart attack and be in the ER and not this room?)

"Nursey. Please don't insult my intelligence."

He risked a glance up to Dex's face, which didn't look mad or embarrassed or any of the emotions Nursey would immediately associate with an unwanted love confession.

"Look, you were never supposed to see it, okay—"

Dex let out a laugh, one of those laughs when there's some sort of emotion in you and you don't really know where to put it and it just bursts out into a laugh. Nursey thought of volcanoes and pillow fights and popped balloons. His fingers itched for a pencil.

"Oh, so you were just gonna let me be ignorant forever? You were really never gonna tell me this is how you feel?"

"I—" Nursey watched Dex's face, but he really couldn't reconcile Dex's tone with his words with his face. They were all criss-crossed, like Dex's eyelashes when he woke up from a nap.

His hand actually made it all the way to the pen on his desk, screaming to write it all down, before he forced it to return back to his lap just to fiddle with. It wasn't his fault Dex looked so beautiful like this. So alive.

"I don't know what you want me to say."

This was clearly not the right thing, because he saw the irritation settle into Dex's face, like tinder on a campfire, before he closed his eyes, leaning back, and breathing in deep.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to come in here picking a fight. I want you to be honest with me. Please."

"I—" Three seconds ago, he'd been composing poetry, prose, metaphors about his feelings. And yet somehow in this moment, he couldn't think of one single thing to say.

"I'm obsessed with you," he blurted. "It's kind of embarrassing, actually. I think about you literally all the time. And I always write what I'm thinking about. So I wrote that."

Dex shook his head, his lips turned up faintly in disbelief, like he was laughing at a joke no one had told yet. "I'm sorry, when did you write this?"

"Um...like... a month ago? I think? Maybe."

Dex's eyes closed, like he was having trouble with the math. Dex was really excellent at math.

"So you're telling me you've liked me about as long as I've been with Evan."

Nursey mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like "maybe."

"What about his poem?"

Nurse blinked. "What about it?"

This time Dex really did laugh. It sounded a bit delirious. "When I showed you his poem! Did you really think I wanted your opinion on his prose?"

Nursey said nothing, but the look on his face probably betrayed that yes, that was what he'd thought.

"For someone who can write such brilliant shit—" he waved the paper around, "—you really are dense sometimes. I was giving you a chance! To say something, to stop me, I don't know. But then you said you liked it, so I thought, 'well, that settles it, he's not into me. Time to move on.' And then I did. And then you have the audacity to write this motherfucking—"

Dex looked like he was edging into full on rant mode, so Derek stood up quickly and interrupted with, "Hey Dex?"

Dex hit the brakes, looking up at Nursey like he very much wanted to finish. "What?"

"Can I kiss you?"

And, man. Dex was so beautiful like this, arms askew in the middle of the point he'd been making, hair mussed, face confused, like his words had stopped but his brain was veering off course. He kind of looked like a mess. Derek's heart swelled.

"Okay," he said.

Derek rushed in, worried if he waited any longer Dex would keep talking.

He didn't.

Dex's hands found Nurse's waist, paper still in hand, gripping at his back and grabbing him, pulling him closer. Nursey framed his hands around Dex's face, dragging him into the kiss. One of his hands gripped at the back of Dex's neck, sliding up over his short hair, like he'd wanted to do for months.

His mouth was so warm, just like the rest of him, but more, somehow. Nursey opened his mouth, sucking on Dex's lip. Dex's hand reflexively squeezed Nursey's waist. Before he could get too cocky about that, Dex caught Nursey's bottom lip in his teeth, scraping slow over it, sending chills down his scalp over his whole body.

"Wait, wait, wait," Dex said, pulling away, kinda, in the sense that his mouth was no longer attached to Nursey's, but he was still pretty entwined all up in Derek. He leaned his head down to catch his breath, his panting blowing over Derek's neck, giving Derek the mental image of Dex kissing him there, which, fuck—

"I was gonna say something," Dex said, eyes still looking kind of scrambled.

"Mm-hmm," Derek hummed, leaning in close again. One of Dex's hands left Nursey's waist and brushed his own lips, and yeah, Nursey knew the feeling. His mouth was literally humming, floating away from the rest of him.

"I can't remember," Dex said, grinning, already leaning back into Derek.

"That's okay," Derek murmured against Dex's pulse, which he could actually feel thrumming rapidly against his lips. "We have time."

And he kissed and kissed and kissed him, until there wasn't a single freckle left untouched.

[munchbunch97]

An Open Letter From a Small Bi Human

Hi hello this is a bit of a personal thing but hey hoooo, if you don’t want to read this it’s really okay. I just want to talk about religion and my relationship with it.

I’m a member of the LGBTQ+ community I am also a Muslim.

From the age of twelve I have not really prayed and I began to question my beliefs in god. Around this time of my life I slowly started to realise that my feelings for women aren’t “normal”. I believe that deep down I knew I wasn’t straight but I was terrified of it. So I berried it deep. I live in Saudi so twice a year we’d receive talks in school that were very anti gay and trans. I grew up being taught that gay sex leads to your anus to lose it’s muscle strength and that lesbians raped people. I was never introduced to the term bisexual until high school. I was taught that if you wanted to be gay you had to pick a side. Either you were with god or against him. Either you loved your sinning self or you love god. There is no in between. It is black and white.

So since I’m queer I can’t be Muslim, right? The answer to my small 12 year old body, I believe, was yes. I knew I wasn’t like everybody else and I knew that that meant I couldn’t feel as spiritual as them. 

I’ve also been struggling with depression and anxiety for as long as I can remember. I hated myself and looked for anyone who could validate me and I didn’t feel like that was going to happen in my home life. Then came music.

I always saw people crying in the mosque praying to god, shaken, and I always wondered why I never felt like that until the day my thirteen year old self heard Bohemian Rhapsody for the first time. I couldn’t stop myself from crying. I loved it so much. I felt like I’d never heard anything that made me feel like that before. I was in a hotel room in Syria crying on the bed listening to the guitar solo on repeat. And that’s when I decided I loved music.

I made it a goal that I was going to learn how to sing and I did. Pretty much all day, no matter how I felt, I sang. And the more I did the better I got. I started writing and I was so proud of myself. Then one day in Art class I joked with my friend that I was going to go on Arab Idol and she just stopped everything she was doing and told me to stop, “You want to bring shame to your entire country?” and I realised that this wasn’t an option, this is something I couldn’t do. I don’t hate my friend, I’m not mad at her, she was young and grew up and the toxic environment that I did. 

I stopped writing music then but for some reason I couldn’t stop myself from singing even though I felt like dying most of the time. Music has saved me when no one else could. I love it more than anything because when I was struggling with mood swings and a constant racing heart it was the only constant in my life.

When I got into high school my mental health got worse. I fell into a much deeper depression that reached it’s lowest in my year. I couldn’t sleep, I was self harming, my grades struggling, basically I was a cliche. And my friends started to notice and worry, they sat me down and said they were worried about me. That’s when I realised, fully, this isn’t what everyone goes through. 

That year I dug my nails into my skin, took pain killers, overate, starved myself, isolated myself... Any way I could hurt myself was fair game. Because it was a release for all my frustration. I was angry and hurting and I couldn’t fix it. I was stuck and felt like I always will be. 

Until the day in my bathroom, with a handful of pills and no more hope. I sat there for what must have been an hour just starring at my hand. A million thoughts running through my head. Will I do it? Why wouldn’t I? It would all be over. I would be done. Until it clicked in my head, I hadn't written a note. I was going to end it all and I hadn’t even written a note. I was going to leave my mother, my friends, everyone I loved without a reason. I was going to leave them blaming themselves, wondering if they could have done more. I was going to make them suffer because I forgot to write a note. I flushed the pills down the toilet. And sobbed.

They always tell you that killing yourself isn’t the answer, that you’ll pull through whatever you’re going through but they never tell you about the shame that’ll follow you for not going through with it. I felt like a failure for not being able to let it all go and just die.

One day I was looking through YouTube trying to make my friend a mix CD. I came across this band called Panic! At the Disco. They were weird and I didn’t know how I felt about them. But as the time passed I fell in love with them more and more. I began dissecting the lyrics in my room. I looked up to Brendon Urie so much. This weird, ridiculous band helped light that spark I had as a kid just a little bit again. And the song Girls/Girls/Boys helped making me feel a little bit okay with being not as straight as I wanted to be. 

A few months afterwards, I “jokingly” came out as bisexual to one of my friends. “Don’t say that, you’re not one of those people.” Needless to say I went so deep in that closet I was in freaking Narnia. Again I’m not mad at my friends for anything they have said in the past. I understand the environment they were raised in because I was raised in it too.

After high school I felt very lonely because I went to a university all on my own and the friends I had for the past six years (at that time) were scattered all over the country and even the world. I had to learn to make friends which didn’t go very well because I look very different and people treated me like an outsider. So that`s when I turned to the internet. 

Back then I was a huge fan of Dan and Phil, and I met a group of young people that helped me accept a label I thought fit me at the time, asexual. I think I was so scared of the idea of being attracted to the same sex that I denied myself all attraction. These women, man, and gender fluid human validated me in a way I had never experienced before. They loved me and thought I was funny and talented and didn’t care what I was. If I said I think a girl was cute they wouldn’t call me a “lesbo” they would actually join in. After a while we drifted apart but their kindness will stay with me forever.

After a while I saw this boy online called Vincent. He was one of the prettiest boys I had ever seen. I crushed on him hard. One day he posted on his blog that he wanted to make new friends and I sent him a stupid message saying that I would love to be his friend. We started talking and I found out he was asexual too. I really liked him and the more I talked to him the more I liked him. Then he told me about this guy he really liked... and boy oh boy had I ever felt heartbreak like that before? nope! (JK it lasted a day and I was over it I’m just dramatic). But I decided to encourage him to go for it and that’s how we got closer as friends. 

After a while I realised I didn’t feel like the label I used fit me anymore. But I was terrified he would hate me because I had somehow lied to him. When I told him his response was so... chill. “Oh okay, that’s cool.” That was it. He was so okay with it and that was exactly what I needed. For a while I went without having a label and slowly became more comfortable with the label Bisexual.

I also became very close with two other people, Nea and Jamie. Both of them mean the world to me. Thy have helped and continue to help with my depression and constant struggle with my sexuality and gender identity.

Through this time all three of my new friends encouraged me to upload my covers online. I started covering Panic! songs pretty regularly and through that I befriended Beth.

Beth is someone who I owe so much to. When we became friends she told me she made music and I just fell in love with everything she made. I really looked up to her. I found her so talented and interesting so when she believed in me and told me that I should start writing music I took it as my fucking life mission. I kept getting better and she was always there for me when it came to both music and life. She taught me everything I know about music and reminded me just how much I loved it. She gave me a sense of purpose I had forgotten I had.

Skip a year forward and Pulse happened. I had never felt so shaken to my core like I did that day, any little sense of security and faith I had in the western world for people like me was gone. With the shooting came the pretending I wasn’t hurt, I was stripped away from my right to mourn because of my society. I had to listen to someone I loved say that he “doesn’t condone the shooter’s actions but he wishes he could burn all those people alive” and I had to laugh. Like it was a joke. The fact that this person that I care about would burn me alive if he knew. It hurt so much. Every part of me hurt. But I wasn’t allowed to show that hurt.

But when my younger brother made a joke about me being gay I just broke. It was only us together so I stood in the middle of the H&M and stared him in the eye and the words just left me. “I’m bisexual” I just said it. He was shocked and didn’t know what to say. He said that he loved me even though he didn’t agree with it. And that may sound awful to someone on the outside but there was nothing more comforting.

After that I came out to my two best friends, their response was the same as my brother except for the fact that apparently it was obvious to them. Which isn’t ideal but at least they don’t hate me. Ayy?

I’m not sure what the point to all this is. I know my story isn’t particularly special. I am just a human being struggling with my religious identity and my sexual one. I don’t have the answers to all the questions I have. All I can say is one thing, it’s okay to be unsure. It’s okay to not know. It’s okay to still be figuring it out. I still live in Saudi and I’m very closeted when it comes to my every day life. But the idea that I am somehow living a lie is so untrue. I am still me and my sexuality isn’t all of me. There are people who won’t care who you love. You will eventually find your safe space, it took me 18 years but I wouldn’t trade those people for anything. I believe in you if you’re reading this. You get to live your life the way you want to. You get to believe in what you want to. And I promise you, you will be okay. We’re all broken a little and that’s why we need each other.

I love you all and stay safe,

em