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When Nursey sees the option on his list of classes, at first he doesn’t even think about it. He is a poetry guy, he likes obscure metaphors and overwhelming imagery. And he’s good at it, so he doesn’t have any reason to branch out of his comfort zone. Then he makes his schedule and realizes that all the English electives he wants to take are during practice or when he already has a scheduled class that’s fulfilling a credit. All that’s left over is Creative Fiction and Straight White Guy Novels Only (he may be paraphrasing the second one a little.)
So Nursey checks the box next to ENGL145, Creative Fiction Writing.
The class is every Tuesday and Thursday at 3:00 in the afternoon, so at that time on those designated days, Nursey walks over to the English building and listens to Professor Jiménez talk about the joys of fiction writing for an hour and fifteen minutes. It’s not as bad as Nursey thought it was going to be. He likes reading, sure, but it’s hard enough for him to write one poem and make it meaningful and beautiful and those are hardly ever longer than a few pages, at most. Not that writing fiction is harder than poetry; it’s all subjective. He’s just better at poetry than prose.
But the first two classes aren’t really difficult. The first class is basically just pointing out the basics of fiction writing and a couple other students rambling about why they write for a little while. The second class consists of Nursey joining a group of other English majors and writing a short, two-page scene involving the four people in the group. It’s pretty relaxed, for which Nursey is glad. He has a couple of high-stressor classes in his schedule this semester and on top of that he’s got the playoffs, so an easy class is just what he needs.
The third class, though, throws him for a loop. Professor Jiménez walks into class with a huge grin on his face, a grin that all teachers have and all students fear. The meaning is clear; there is an assignment. He sits down on his desk, tossing his satchel to the side without looking at it, and claps his hands together to get everyone’s attention. The room falls silent, all of the other kids (it isn’t too big of a class, only like twenty students) turning their attention to the professor.
“I have your first assignment prepared,” he announces, giddy clear in his voice. The room doesn’t emit a groan, because this isn’t high school, but the mood swiftly changes from loose and relaxed to tense and dreadful. As Professor Jiménez gestures to a pile of papers on his desk, he says, “Come up and take a prompt from my desk. Every prompt is different. Your instructions are also on the sheet.”
Nursey, along with the rest of the class, stands from his seat and shuffles up to the front. He grabs the first prompt he gets his hands on and doesn’t read it as he brings it back to his seat. To be completely honest, he’s kind of disappointed. He was hoping that the class would be mostly in-class work with the other kids who actually enjoy fiction writing. This is not nearly as simple.
“Every prompt must be at least 1,000 words long and that is a minimum, people. Please try to create an actual story out of your prompt. It will be due next Thursday.” Professor Jiménez walks around his desk and picks up an Expo marker that writes in green and starts printing the explicit instructions on the board. “For everything you turn in to me, I would like it in 12 point font, Times New Roman, and double spaced.” He puts the marker down and turns around again, still smiling but not as cruel as the “I have an assignment” grin.
As Professor Jiménez starts his lecture on dialogue, Nursey looks down at his paper and reads his prompt.
Write a short story on an emotion. It can be any kind of emotion of your choosing, but it must be intense and passionate.
Nursey is fucked. If there’s one thing he isn’t good at, it’s intensity.
*~*~*
It’s cold, but it’s always cold on the ice. Nursey hurts everywhere, from his calves from pushing off to his shoulders from checking people into the boards. Holster and Ransom are so tired and there’s only a few minutes left on the clock. It’s close, 3 to 2, and Nursey and Dex have to keep any pucks from getting in. The crowd is screaming, reverberating around in Nursey’s helmet, and everything is filled with adrenaline and Nursey loves it.
Someone on the other team zips past Nursey, heading for the goal. They don’t have the puck but they are open and if it comes anywhere near Chowder this guy will have a perfect shot. Nursey is about to take off after him but then he sees Dex rush past, intention clear. By the tilt of Dex’s shoulders, Nursey can tell that he’s got this.
Then something happens. As Dex maneuvers the guy away from the net, words are exchanged. The guy from the other team is smirking under his helmet and Dex is turning so red that it looks unhealthy. It isn’t Dex’s soft pink, embarrassment flush, oh no, this is the deep red tint of unbridled rage. Dex doesn’t even hesitate before dropping his gloves and swinging at the guy and Nursey winces for the other guy instantly. He skates over to try and break it up.
“Dex, man, stop!” Nursey yells over the noise in the stadium. Dex continues to punch, even as the other guy gets in a few hits. Nursey thinks Fuck it and puts his hands on Dex’s shoulders to physically pull him off of the guy.
There are a few long moments before Nursey actually manages to remove Dex from the fight and in those moments Nursey notices something. The deep flush of Dex’s skin, the sweat dripping down his forehead and neck, the pure anger in his eyes, the clench of his jaw, the vein popping in Dex’s neck. These are all extremes; they are all intense displays of emotion, of anger. For a quick second, Nursey’s mind flashes back to his fiction class prompt and he suddenly knows what to write.
Dex is ejected from the game and Nursey spends a minute frantically skating around the rink, trying to keep the puck on the other side, but they still end up winning 3 to 2 and they all are pretty satisfied. They head back to the hotel after quick showers and go up to their rooms with tired goodnights. Dex and Nursey are rooming together, as usual, so Dex lets them both into the room and then heads straight for the bed. He starts tugging off his clothes, as he sleeps in as little clothing as possible, and Nursey winces when he sees the purple bruise covering Dex’s side.
“What was that fight even about, man?” Nursey asks, sitting on his own bed. He plans on at least starting his prompt now when it’s fresh in his mind so he isn’t getting ready for bed yet. Dex glances over his shoulder, giving Nursey a look that he can’t decipher.
“The guy said something.” Dex shrugs, pulling back his blankets and climbing into the bed. He seems to think that, with that statement, this conversation is over.
“What did he say?” The line of Dex’s shoulders tenses up. Whatever the guy said, it’s gotten Dex really worked up. Nursey burns with curiosity.
“Nothing, Nurse, just go to sleep.” And with that, Dex turns off his light and pulls his blankets over his face. Nursey sighs, pulling out his laptop to start the prompt. Usually he likes to hand write his poems first, but he does not want to write one thousand plus words by hand after the tiring game he just played. So he settles into the bed, laptop on his lap, and pulls open a fresh Word document.
Some say that fire was a gift from the gods. A stolen present bestowed upon us by a thieving immortal man who was then punished for the rest of eternity. Fire gives us life, brings us light in times of darkness, warmth in time of cold, and a hearth to commune around and learn how to love one another. However fire is also destruction; fire is uncontrollable rage, a hungry being that is never full, eating away at everything in its path until nothing is left but ash.
It felt as if fire was running through his veins, burning him from the inside out, igniting a rage within him that could not be tamed or tempered or soothed. He was on fire and he wanted everything to burn with him.
Nursey glances over at the fiery orange hair poking out from under the blankets. Fire is an adept metaphor, he thinks to himself.
*~*~*
A week later, Nursey is sitting in his fiction writing class when the TA hands back his assignment. At the top of it, it says B+ which is much better than Nursey had been expecting. There are lines underlined in his prompt with bright red this doesn’t translate well to prose, lines that are, admittedly, a bit poetic for fiction writing. What can he say? He likes his metaphors. Despite that, he’s very happy with his grade. Maybe he can do fiction writing after all.
The next prompt he receives a week later. This one isn’t as abstract.
“I want you all to write a few pages of dialogue between two characters. Let’s say, about four pages minimum, six pages max. No descriptors aside from Character One and Character Two. Just pure dialogue. I want this by Thursday.” Professor Jiménez glances at the face clock on the wall. “Alright, be free.”
Nursey starts packing up his books, slipping them into his bag and then hanging that off his shoulder. He isn’t used to dialogue really. In his last prompt, he had about six lines of dialogue in total and he doesn’t use it at all in his poetry. He’s going to have to start this prompt tonight if he has any chance of figuring it out by Thursday. There’s a pie-tasting session in twenty minutes at the Haus, as Bitty is trying out a new recipe, so Nursey resolves to go to the Haus and then the library so he has no distractions to write his dialogue.
When he reaches the Haus, the only people there are Shitty, Dex, and, of course, Bitty. There’s a pie cooling on the windowsill and Bitty is shaking his head at the rest of the room as Nursey walks in the door.
“No arguing politics in my presence,” Bitty says, his scolding expression on.
“Sorry, Bitty,” Dex says, as he always tries to please Bitty. Dex is always nice to Bitty for some reason. Though, come to think of it, Dex is nice to everyone. Just not Nursey.
“What’re we talkin’?” Nursey asks because he likes inciting conflict. Well, with Dex at least.
“Dex was explaining why he doesn’t like the health care reform,” Shitty says as Bitty says “Nothing.”
“What up, Poindexter? You don’t like people getting the treatment they need?” Nursey drops into a chair opposite Shitty. Dex’s face gets flushed.
“We’re not talking about this anymore. Bitty asked us to stop.” Nursey rolls his eyes.
“What about you, Bits? Don’t you think that people should get the treatment they need?” Nursey turns in his chair to look at Bitty, who is resolutely not looking at them as he washes the dishes from his pie prep.
“Well, yes,” Bitty says, but then adds, slowly like he’s afraid of the reaction they’re going to have to his words, “but that isn’t the only thing this health care reform is doing.”
“Thank you, Bits,” Dex says, face still flushed but looking pleased. “It’s driving rates through the roof for some people.”
“Chyeah, like my parents, who can totally afford it,” Nursey says. Dex turns his angry gaze on Nursey.
“And mine, who totally can’t. My mother is paying for bloodwork that her insurance always covered before. My brother didn’t have healthcare for a month because the “marketplace”-” Dex literally puts air quotes around that word, “-lied to him about their real qualifications. My parents had to switch their insurance to something that is significantly more expensive because their jobs could no longer provide the previous insurance because it didn’t meet the standards of the new health care reform. So yes, it’s doing other things.”
And Nursey feels… well he feels kind of stupid. He isn’t exactly completely clear on all of the fiscal aspects of government and the new policies. He’s usually more focused on the social issues, since that affects him more directly. He’s going to have to admit that he is a little too privileged when it comes to money to actually speak on this kind of stuff. He doesn’t even know how much his insurance costs exactly and Dex seems to know way more than that about his own.
“Oh,” Nursey says simply. Bitty swoops in and saves him from being further embarrassed, putting pie down in front of all three of them sitting at the table. It’s incredibly delicious, the new recipe, and they all tell Bitty as much. The praise makes Bitty flush and smile with delight and he sends both Nursey and Dex out the door with more pie to-go. Dex, apparently, is going to the library as well, so they end up walking together.
It’s quiet as they walk, the breeze rustling the fallen leaves around them the only sound. Most people are inside for studying, as it’s pretty cold out today, and Nursey pulls his jacket closer around himself for the warmth. Out of the corner of his eye, he sneaks looks at Dex, trying to figure out if he’s still mad about earlier. It wasn’t as bad as their usual fights, which mostly end with yelling and Chowder sitting between them for the rest of the night. Today was just, well, intense. And Nursey doesn’t want Dex to think he’s an ignorant asshole.
“Hey, I’m sorry about earlier,” he says as the library enters his sightline. “I didn’t know it was so personal to you.”
Dex glances at him with a look on his face like he thinks Nursey could be being sarcastic, but when he decides Nursey is sincere, he says, “It’s alright. I do it, too, to you, sometimes.” That’s all he says. They reach the library and somehow end up continuing on in the same direction. Dex sets himself up at a computer a dozen or so feet away from the table Nursey usually sits at. This part of the library is quiet and Nursey usually likes to play his own music without his headphones, as they can hurt his ears after a while. He has a feeling that playing music out loud would start a fight with Dex that he really doesn’t want to have right now.
Nursey stares at the blank Word document for a good ten minutes before inspiration hits him. Dex is right there and what is the dialogue between them like most of the time?
“I don’t know how this is going to work.”
“Well, don’t ask me.”
“We can’t stand each other. How are we supposed to do this together?”
“I told you not to ask me.”
“Well, who else is there to ask?”
“Stop asking me questions!”
“Stop not answering them!”
“Dickface!”
“Asshat!”
“I hate you.”
Nursey doesn’t know if he’s allowed to use curses in his prompt. He does end up going with it and he writes a five page scene of just dialogue. It’s pretty obviously a fight between two people. In Nursey’s mind, it’s two bakers who have to work in the same bakery together but can’t stand each other. Bitty’s pie may or may not have influenced this particular scene. Dex definitely influenced this particular scene. Nursey is just wrapping it up as the clock on his laptop reads 10:00. He really should be getting back to his dorm soon.
“You aren’t listening to me, asshole!”
“Then tell me! Tell me.”
“…this really isn’t going to work, is it?”
“We have to make it work. We have to.”
“Then-then we have to figure something out. We can’t be at each other’s throats all of the time. We’ll never get anywhere.”
“…tell me about yourself.”
“What?”
“Tell me about yourself. Your family, your hometown. Your hopes, your dreams. Maybe if we know each other, we’ll be able to really see one another.”
A pause.
“Well, I have a big family. Five siblings. Colleen, she’s the oldest…”
It’s at six pages and Nursey knows he can’t write anymore. But he wants to write more, wants to write these characters into the night, sharing pieces of themselves with one another until they can understand the other person. Until they can work together in a way partners are supposed to. Nursey looks up from his keyboard, sees Dex sitting at his computer, curved over the screen as his fingers whip across the keys. Nursey watches Dex code and he wants. He wants.
*~*~*
“You have all gotten back your dialogue assignments,” Professor Jiménez says on Thursday. “I have read them all personally and assigned you all types of scenes to go with your dialogue. I want you to bring your characters to life now, with descriptors and the works. But you must incorporate the theme I gave you.”
Nursey looks down at his dialogue assignment to see the following written in red pen at the top; I want you to turn this into a love scene, but keep this exact dialogue (aside from my corrections, of course.) Nursey has to turn the fight scene he wrote with him and Dex in mind into a love scene. What?
He tries, sitting down at his laptop later that evening.
The couple sat on the floor of their apartment. Broken plates and toppled furniture scattered the space between them. It was only a dozen feet at most between them- their apartment was small- but it felt as if a canyon separated the pair. Will, with his hair as angrily orange as the fury inside him, let his head thunk back against the wall behind him, his posture slumped with defeat.
“I don’t know how this is going to work,” he said. It was an admission, something softer than his usual yell, and Derek, sitting straight across from him, ached at the words that sounded too much like a surrender.
“Don’t ask me,” Derek said back. He had no idea, either; all he knew was that he couldn’t let this go.
“We can’t stand each other. How are we supposed to do this together?”
The question was rhetorical, Derek was sure, but he loved to be contrary when it came to Will. “Don’t ask me!” he repeated, this time as if he was angry. He wasn’t angry, though, just tired. Tired of yelling at the person he only wanted to speak to in soothing murmurs and pleasant words.
Will glared back at Derek. “Well, who else is there to ask?”
“Stop asking me questions!”
Will flushed with anger and Derek wished that he didn’t love that shade of red so much. “Stop not answering them!”
“Dickface!”
“Asshat!”
Derek’s face softened with the following silence and he sighed, beginning to crawl over to Will’s side of the room. Will watched, a caged animal afraid of being hurt, but he allowed for Derek to get closer and closer until he was within touching distance. Derek sat back on his haunches and raised one hand up to cup Will’s cheek.
“I hate you,” Derek said softly. He knew that Will would hear the words beneath that, hear the “I don’t hate you, not at all, and I hate it, but not you, never you”. Because, as much as they fought, they understood each other in a way that no one else did. It was so easy sometimes, easy to look and see the things that were meant to be hidden, covered under layers of façade and practiced ease. They understood each other so well, which was probably why they fought, when Derek thought about it. Neither of them was used to sharing the things inside them. Maybe, though, Derek reasons, maybe that’s why they had to try harder to keep this whatever-it-is between them alive.
Life imitates art, Oscar Wilde said, far more than art imitates life, Nursey thinks to himself. Which of those two is this?
*~*~*
Derek and Will become reoccurring characters in Nursey’s creative writing assignments, kind of like Sims characters that Nursey gets to make do whatever he wants. There’s “Take a cliché and rework it”, so Nursey writes about Derek and Will yelling and then subsequently kissing in the rain. Another prompt they get is “Write about the aftermath of a disaster”, so Nursey kind of tweaks it and writes about Derek trying to make dinner and failing horribly, so Will comes home (oh yeah, they live together at this point) with take out and they snuggle on the couch. Nursey’s least favorite so far is “Write something in second person”, which he hates. He hates being too involved in the narrative; he reads books to get away. Even first person is a little pushing it.
But he tries, this time keeping Will and Derek a little more in character.
You see him and it’s not like anything you’ve ever felt before. It’s-it’s fire and it’s ice and it’s terrible but it’s not and sometimes all you can think about is putting your mark on him, with your hands, with your fists, with your mouth.
You fight with him, a fight that ends in harsh words that are too true, too painful, but you say them anyway because they cut your lips bloody as you do and you must love the pain because you love him, don’t you? You love him, words you never say, never think, because acknowledging them would be acknowledging that you have a problem and that’s not what your parents taught you to do. Problems go in the back of the closet, behind your pristine suits and expensive shoes and the mask that you made in the fifth grade so that you could smile through a forgotten birthday.
He was taught differently, which is ironic, because he’s Irish. He uses his problems like weapons, pulls them out of his back pocket and sets them to detonate, hurting himself and anyone else in the vicinity. He was taught to do something about it, whether it be talking or fighting or exploding. Maybe you like him because he’s the opposite of you; maybe you just like the idea of being caught in the explosion. Maybe you want to see if his way is better because it has to be, it has to be because anything else is better than this.
Maybe if you touch him, you’ll explode too. Maybe you want to find out.
Nursey deletes his first draft, then presses undo and saves it in his emotions folder where he puts the poems he writes after 1:00 A.M.
*~*~*
Nursey blames his creative writing class for making him love Dex. Nursey never wanted to kiss Dex’s stupid face before he took that damned class, he never wanted to find out how far Dex’s blush went before that dialogue assignment, and he definitely never wanted to hold Dex’s hand and tell him that he was beautiful before he started writing about fire and beauty and explosions.
Nursey blames his creative writing class and gets a little angry about it, so he when he gets the prompt “Write about a secret being uncovered” he decides to lash out a little.
“I love you,” Derek said. He had never said those words before. Well, that wasn’t true; he used to say them, but then stopped, because he never heard “I love you, too” after them. This time, he was hoping for a change. This time was supposed to be different.
Will scrunched up his face, his nose crinkling and hiding the freckles that Derek loved. He doodled those freckles in his notebooks. Like constellations, stars, a map of sorts. Hoping for direction that would never come. “You love me?” Will repeated, seemingly confused.
“Yeah, like the I-wanna-hold-your-hand-and-kiss-you-on-the-mouth kind of thing.” Derek was nervous and he always babbled when he was nervous. He remembered that his mother once said it was “an unbecoming trait”.
“Oh.”
Derek had heard the word “oh” many times. When he told his parents about a school project, excited and bouncing in his seat. When he came out to his first hockey team. And, now, when he said “I love you” for the first time to someone he didn’t shared blood with.
“Oh?” Derek inquired, a pool of dread swirling in the pit of his stomach.
“I don’t know, Derek, what the fuck. You aren’t supposed to be in love with me! We’re teammates, for fuck’s sake.” Will shook his head. “I-I can’t deal with this right now.” Will turned and walked away without looking back, like something suddenly broken and impossible to put back together.
Derek added the image to the gallery in his mind of people walking away from him. He should have been used to it, the leaving, but it was still as painful then as when his parents would leave him for business meetings and vacations and everywhere else that was more important than their son. He should have known that it would end this way. Will hated Derek. It was Derek’s fault for not hating him back.
When Nursey gets it back, he gets a note on his paper from his professor, asking to see him after class, instead of an actual grade. The entire lecture, he wonders what he could have possibly done so wrong as to not get a grade. It incorporated all the aspects of the prompt; there was the buildup of Derek’s attraction being discovered, the awkwardness before the admission of love, and then the painful, probable outcome of the situation. A secret was unveiled; that was the prompt.
After class, Nursey goes up to Professor Jiménez and inquires about his grade. The answer he gets is fairly surprising.
“Oh, yes, Derek and Will. Your characters have become a favorite of mine,” Professor Jiménez says. “I was concerned when you wrote them in such a negative way.” Professor Jiménez seems almost sheepish as he continues. “I have to admit that I was worried for them, and you, when I read your latest assignment.”
Nursey scrunches his face up at his teacher. “So… there was nothing wrong with it?”
Professor Jiménez shakes his head. “No, it was a good piece, a little lacking in details, I thought, but I just wanted to know if you and your characters were okay.” Nursey doesn’t know why Professor Jiménez is so invested in Derek and Will, but he has been looking for someone to vent to, so why not this overly concerned professor who doesn’t know anyone involved?
“Well, uh, obviously I’m Derek and this teammate of mine is Will and, after writing about him and me in this romantic fashion I’ve kind of developed unrequited feelings for him?” Nursey tries not to feel embarrassed at Professor Jiménez’s surprised expression. “I was a little upset about it and, well. I wrote it into my assignment, I guess.”
Professor Jiménez nods, seeming thoughtful. “Well, Derek, that is a predicament. Have you spoken to Will about this?” Nursey shakes his head and Professor Jiménez nods. He continues, “I really don’t want to pry, but may I offer some advice?”
Nursey figures that he’s already gone this far and any advice he can get would be helpful, so he says, “Sure.”
“Talk to Will,” he says. “Communication is the most important thing.”
It sounds simple enough, but Nursey doubts it will be as simple as it sounds.
*~*~*
In the end, Nursey decides to go back to his roots. So he writes Dex a poem.
We started with yelling and hate
And the shared liking to skate
But I took a class
And now like your ass
So could we please go on a date?
Dex crumples it up, throws it at Nursey, and then kisses him on his stupid, laughing mouth.
Though poetry is his favorite, Nursey decides that he could write about Dex in any medium.
*~Bonus~*
Randall Jiménez walks into the Samwell staff breakroom and pours himself a cup of coffee. He walks over to the table where Alice Atley is sitting and grins at her over his cup. She rolls her eyes at him but still asks, with mostly curiosity and very little dread, “What did you do?”
“You know the boys on the hockey team who need to get together like yesterday?” He makes a Significant expression at her and Alice raises one eyebrow, uninterested.
“You mean Eric Bittle and Jack Zimmermann? Because I’ve been trying to get them together for two semesters now.”
Randy shakes his head. “No, the second line defensive men, Nurse and Poindexter.” Alice scrunches up her face for a moment before it smooths out and she nods.
“Oh, yes, Eric talks about their bickering all the time. They might as well be married, I hear.” She takes a sip of her own coffee. “What of them?”
Randy sits up straighter, puffing out his chest. “I just got them together.”
Alice nods her head, an appreciative expression on her face. “Nice.”
“What’s nice?” Katherine Kobi, the head of the biology department, asks as she walks in.
“Randy got the second string defensemen on the hockey team together, Nurse and Poindexter,” Alice says.
“Wow, good job.” Katy takes a seat at their table. “Now if we could only get Oluransi and Birkholtz together the whole hockey team would be set.”
“Don’t forget Duan and Knight,” Sam Tomlin, one of the art professors, pipes up from the next table over.
“Damn,” Randy says, frowning now, “we have a lot of work to do.”
“Tell me about it,” says Coach Murray from a few tables away.