#NURSEYDEX!!! IN 2024!!!!!!!!!!

[montrealmadison]

Congratulations on 400 followers! I’m newish to the fandom and your blog was one of the first I followed!

Pair: Nursey/Dex

Song: 28

Vibes: first date (can include smut if it fits in)

Congratulations again!!!!

thank you so much and welcome to the fandom!! this is only the second time i've written nurseydex and it's an honor to do so for you ❤️ i did not manage to squeeze the smut in but i did provide the lead-up so i hope that's acceptable. please enjoy these banana nut muffins being dorky and awkward on their two first dates

28. nurseydex + first date + I Love You More Than You Think by Rizzie Kicks for @hrtstppr95

I think that we know that we know each other really well I know I wanna know you for the rest of my life Because no matter the length of time that’s gone by When I see you, it’s fine It’s like I just saw you last night 

Dex is thinking about why fancy restaurants invest in stupid shit when Nursey says, “Poindexter, I don’t think this is working.”

Their table is a good one, tucked into a private corner and partially hidden by a big potted plant. The downside to this is that apparently nobody thought to install overhead lighting in this swanky Boston seafood bar, and the candle holder—which, for some reason, is shaped like a miniature lobster wearing a chef’s coat—is doing a terrible job at casting light on the worried expression that Nursey is wearing. Dex looks down at his clenched hands in his lap and can’t help but mirror what he can see of the frown.

read more below or on ao3 | request a fic here

God, he knew he was going to fuck this up. Dex doesn’t do a lot of standing on ceremony, but even he can admit that first dates are a big deal, that they deserve care. When Nursey had come to him with this grand plan for a fancy, candlelit dinner, his treat, he’d known it might be uncomfortable, that he might have to pretend to get it. This kind of thing isn’t him, not at all.

But it is Nursey. He looks right here, casually elegant in a blazer he doesn’t wear to games, half-empty glass in his hand with the ice clinking soft at the bottom. He’s been so excited for this, talking it up all week to anyone who’d listen. Of course it’s Dex who doesn’t fit in. Four years in this weird parallel world to the one he’s used to and he still can’t make himself take the shape of someone who belongs in both.

“No,” he agrees, eyes dropping back to his hands. There’s a long fresh scar along the base of his thumb, the brightest thing in the room. “Sorry.”

“Shit—Dex, no.”

Nursey’s hand appears in his field of view, warm and brown and stark against the tablecloth. Dex looks up, surprised, and finds Nursey’s face much better lit and clearly concerned.

“I just meant, like—you look uncomfy, dude.” He bounces the outstretched hand lightly on the table until Dex reaches up to still it with his own. “Are you having a good time?”

“Oh.” He feels wrongfooted by how much Nursey notices. “Uh, yeah, I guess… not really.” 

The thought’s only out there for half a second before he scrambles after how wrong it sounds in the air between them. “I mean, with you, yeah. But it’s, um, fancy here. Didn’t wanna… ugh, it’s stupid.”

“It’s not.” Nursey considers the watery Coke in the bottom of his glass, then drains it in one. “That’s not on you, ‘kay? I should have thought of that.”

The ensuing silent discussion, born of many years of finely honed skill at arguing silently on the ice, leads to an agreement that they need to get the hell out of here as soon as possible. Nursey flags down the server for the check; Dex lets go of Nursey’s hand on the table and spends the next ten minutes cussing out the stupid lobster, who, thankfully, does not respond.

They don’t speak again until they’re back in Nursey’s (asshole) Jeep. The parking lot is packed; the only space they’d been able to find is out in the farthest row from the restaurant, looking down the hill that faces Route 9. The air is freezing in the way that precedes a blizzard. Every leaf is crackling with frost, and even with the doors closed and the engine shuddering to life, Dex can see his breath.

He can see Nursey’s, too, when he says, “Dude, I’m really sorry.”

“S’okay.” Dex shivers. “Really. Not your fault I can’t hang.”

“Poindexter, come on.” The collar of Nursey’s sweater is folded funny over the top of his coat. Dex’s eyes stick on it. “That’s not it. I should have picked somewhere we would both have fun.”

Asshole Dex says in his head, Oh, you think? 

Civilized Human Dex, perched on his other mental shoulder, says, Hey, you agreed to this. Be an adult. 

Dex the Walking Basket Case tips his head back into the seat and wonders how long the chirps would last if he fessed up to talking to himself like this. Out loud he says, “It’s really okay, Nurse. ‘Sides, night’s young.”

Nursey turns the heat up as high as it’ll go, makes that noise that means okay, I’ll bite. He reaches over and folds Dex's fingers into the warmth of his palm, a conciliatory gesture that Dex can never admit makes him feel all soft in the middle like a homemade Bittle pie. “That’s true,” he says. “Any ideas?”

Dex leans on the cold window, lets it chill his overheated skin. Without really thinking about it, he says, “We could go skate.” 

It’s more to break the silence that’s fallen than anything else. When he turns back around, though, it’s to find Nursey looking at him with interest.

“What, at Faber?”

“Yeah.”

“Isn’t it locked?”

Against all odds, Dex finds himself smirking. “Come on, Nurse, I’m the captain. You think I don’t have keys to our own rink?”

Nursey’s grinning too, now. This is what Dex loves and hates about him, the way it comes so easily. He never wants that to change, no matter how much he used to tell himself otherwise. Despite this failure of a night, he thinks, he’s happy.

“Well,” Nursey drawls. “‘Swawesome.”

He pulls their hands apart and squeezes Dex’s thigh twice. Dex bats him away, smile stretching despite himself, and says, “Just drive.”

---

Faber is cold and quiet, no signs of life but the hum of the heating vents far above. Dex hits the ice first, sketches a long, curving line towards the box and then back toward the bench. He can’t really see Nursey, but hears him follow through the dark just the same.

The air between them is suddenly charged, heavy. They don’t speak. They don’t even really skate together, each carving their own loops at opposite ends of the ice, watching each other out of the corners of their eyes. Dex feels oddly naked. It’s a weird combination of silk tie and suit pants and his grimy skates, marked up by the years.

He stops on the blue line, bracketed by a big white square of moonlight. The windows are gorgeous, especially without the fluorescents to compete, framing the sky and the spreading branches of the linden tree that Shitty always told the story about getting stuck in. In three or four months they’ll play their last game here, a thought that settles leaden and cold in Dex’s stomach. He watches a cloud pass over the moon. If there’s someone out there to hear him, he thinks, then let them hear him wish, desperately, for five more minutes.

Someone does hear, because there’s sudden warmth at his back. Nursey’s chin settles heavy on his shoulder, and his hands curl around Dex’s bare forearms. Dex leans back and lets Nursey hold him for no reason other than that he likes to, and Dex likes it when Nursey likes the things he does.

“Feel better?”

It’s a whisper. Dex’s whole body goes cold, then hot.

“Yes,” he says.

“Good,” says Nursey, nosing into the side of Dex’s neck. “Nice save.”

Dex shrugs and feels Nursey’s head move with him. He has the weirdest sense that the two of them have become the same being, moving in tandem, breathing as one. “I wouldn’t mind doing dinner again,” he says. “Don’t want you to think it wasn’t a good date.”

Nursey frees his thumbs from where they’re tucked under his fingers and runs his hands lightly up and down Dex’s arms. “Well, I’m flattered,” he says. “Still. We’re just two college idiots, man, no need for fine dining just yet. Sorry.”

Annoyance sparks in Dex’s gut. He was starting to enjoy this, feels like he doesn't need to be reminded every five minutes of how sorry they both are about the whole thing. “Will you stop apologizing,” he groans, and goes to turn around, but Nursey’s massive hands clamp down swiftly on his arms, and he freezes in place.

“No,” Nursey says.

Dex’s heart is suddenly slamming against his ribs, just like that. Huh. Mood officially un-killed.

“As a matter of fact,” he continues, “I was thinking about how to make it up to you.”

Oh—oh. 

Dex is not the poetry guy of the two of them, but Nursey makes him feel like that last long look before a kiss. Maybe they don’t make sense together. Maybe they’re only going to belong in each other’s lives for a little while. College relationships can be like that. But here, now, Dex is in the place where he and Nursey became a team twice, and that means something. Dex knows it does.

“Yes,” he says.

Nursey finally releases him and spins him around so they’re facing each other. He quirks an eyebrow, but he’s smiling, and the moon in his eyes is huge and bright.

“You didn’t even hear my proposition, Poindexter. I had this whole—”

Dex cuts him off with a kiss. The two of them together might not be logical or satisfying, but they’re a damn good twist ending, and besides. The night is young, and he knows what he wants.

When he says yes again, Nursey just shakes his head, laughs, and pulls him towards the tunnel to the locker room.

#will poindexter #derek nurse #nurseydex #omgcp #omgcheckplease #my writing #efickegster 2024 #this was such a fun one #i would really like to write the smut this was just getting too long #would def come back to this one #anyway ENJOY

[randomnoteforfuturereference]

I'm so confused though because that panel is definitely from 2021 & she just tweeted it again with the same caption and no acknowledgment that it had been posted before? and everyone in the replies on twitter is talking about new nurseydex content in 2024. if I hadn't been able to find the original tweet again by googling the caption I really would think I was having the most intense and oddly specific deja vu of my life

Honestly yeah, it's strange. Not only was that first panel also in an extra a couple years ago, the second of Dex reading "Poetry 4 Dummies" was also from last year.

To be fair, I think Ngozi prefers to copy content into a new tweet (and add onto it) rather than retweeting the older one of she wants to bring something back. And some folks may miss when she posted it before.

If it refreshes Nurseydex, it's a job well done.

[cricketnationrise]

Cricket's 2023 Writing Wrap Up

I've been tagged in a bunch of end of year stuff so we're doing a mash up of stuff that I like from those posts. Thanks to @welcometololaland @rmd-writes @kiwiana-writes @cha-melodius @three-drink-amy, @indestructibleheart for the various tags and if you want to do your own, here's your sign.

2023 Published Words: 159,958 (highest word count since I started writing!) 2023 Unpublished Words: 16,128 across 6 different wips Total Published Words: 431,521

Total Fics Published: 91 RWRB: 67 fics or 73% Check, Please!: 18 fics or 19% Tortall: 5 fics or 5% Parasol Protectorate: 1 fic or 1%

Ratings: 16 Gen, 41 Teen, 11 Mature, and 23 Explicit

Breakdown of Title Sources: 70 - title of a prompt 12 - inspired by the fic itself 5 - a reference to a book, movie, or TV show (hilariously, the stripper!Henry fic from the mouths of babes is a bible quote XD) 4 - song title or lyric

Top fic by every metric AO3 measures (by a huge fucking margin) except word count:

Going Platinum aka the camboy!Alex AU

Longest Word Count:

Why Do We Even HAVE That Curse? - RWRB Mummy AU

Shortest Word Count:

Email, Sinister, and Paint from the RWRB Weekly 100 Challenge

Most Recent Fic:

NFWMB - RWRB 5+1 Fighting Customer Service for @cha-melodius

Fic with highest kudos/hits ratio:

so, kiss me - written for Deck the Haus 2023, a nurseydex kiss-cam meet cute

Highest percentage of private bookmarks:

Downburst - in the shadow of two gunmen inspired RWRB fic

AND:

A non-exhaustive list of projects for 2024: 1. Camboy!Alex sequel (as you may have seen I've already started writing this and @cha-melodius @celeritas2997 and @everwitch-magiks are getting doc access SO SOON) 2. Part 2 of the Kel POV Tortall Hockey AU 3. Zimbits POV of Defining Expectations 4.-? Whatever strikes my fancy honestly

All in all, it's been an amazing year for me. I made a bunch of new friends and pushed myself further while writing than I ever have before. Looking forward to more next year.

Cheers, y'all, and happy new year! 💜🦗

#cricket writes #cricket chirps #look at them pretty stats #words words words #2023 writing round up

[bitty-smol]

ngozi giving us nurseydex crumbs in 2024?? didn’t know i needed that, but i did

#omgcp #omgcheckplease #nurseydex

[thoughtsofthegirlwiththecurl]

WIP Tag Game

Thank you for the tag @cricketnationrise!

Let's do this instead of trying to work on my data map before my caffeine's kicked in.

Rules: post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet or tell them something about it! and then tag as many people as you have WIPs

Mass Effect - Joker

NurseyDex Go Skiing

RWRB Epistolary Publishing

RWRB Magic Vets

RWRB Theatre

WTF - Post Bitty Seeing Whiskey

We're getting weird in 2024! Also fuck titling!

Tagging @pendwick @appalamutte @vhenadahls @alocalband @thesleepyskipper @ohyoufool

#allison writes words #tag games

[pillowprincessvarric]

ngozi posting nurseydex in 2024

#i wish i was her

[unacaritafeliz]

fic writer review

tagged by (one of my absolute favourite authors) @dameferre!

1. how many works do you have on ao3?

94! I am slowly creeping closer to that 100!

2. what’s your total ao3 word count?

360, 929.

3. how many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

technically nine, but only seven for ao3 - check please, avatar the last airbender, miraculous ladybug, haikyuu, yuri on ice, 2gether the series & cherry magic

(more questions + tags under the cut!)

4. what are your top 5 fics by kudos?

A slap to the face. (viktuuri)

Here in Your Arms (nurseydex)

Re-dib-flip (nurseydex)

It's (not) You (nurseydex)

New York at Christmastime (nurseydex)

anyone else miss the days when the check please fandom was active? i mean... i don't miss the racism i had to see every second of my life, but i do miss writing fic for the boys to combat that racism. and not hating canon!dex. i miss that too.

5. do you respond to comments, why or why not?

listen, why did ao3 make it so that author comments count towards the comment total? I always used to think it was cheating by artificially inflating your own comments now and I can't start now because how will i compare my fic if some of them have double comment counts? i know there are comment threads in statistics but consider - i don't care.

anyway i feel bad because i do feel as if more people would engage with me if i did respond but alas. maths brain won't shut up.

6. what’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

the only fic i've written with a sad ending is Goodbye (nurseydex) where Dex confesses to Nursey and gets rejected (rip). It was a prequel to another fic i was writing where they met 5 years after college and managed to get together but i... never wrote the follow up (which i started writing first)

7. do you write crossovers? if so, what’s the craziest one you’ve written?

i write crossovers in that they are inspired by other media but not that characters from both media are present. I have 2 chapters of Checks, Chirps & Cellys (zukki set in the check please universe) up (and yes I am working on chapter three for the anniversary) and I have a Haikyuu x Cherry Magic crossover (kuroken!) ready to go up as soon as I have a free week to post.

8. have you ever received hate on a fic?

yeah so in New York at Christmastime someone told me that it was "abuse" for Nursey's sister to threaten to leave Dex on the side of the road if he was mean to Nursey when the Nurse siblings offered to take Dex home for Christmas since he didn't wanna go to his own family (even though he had been a dick to nursey previously, as per canon). This person left me this comment on CHRISTMAS DAY which makes it better.

also it's not hate but i get a lot of "wow i love this fic which is weird because bi zuko seems so wrong!" which isn't hate but i do take it as hate <3. bi zuko rights but more than that just leave people alone if they ship something you don't. you don't need to tell them you don't ship their ships or disagree with their headcanons.

also also this wasn't on a fic but do y'all remember when the parse stan told me I was drinking the "cool-aid"? Truly my favourite fandom interaction.

9. do you write smut? if so, what kind?

bitch please can you imagine?

10. have you ever had a fic stolen?

lmao who would steal my rubbish

11. have you ever had a fic translated?

i have! Because I love Adrien too (Alya & Adrien) was translated into Russian! I also have two fics that have been podficced! It's Chow Time!! (Chowder-centric) and Adam J. Birkholtz and the case of the missing clothes (links to translations and podfics at the end of the work)

12. have you ever co-written a fic before?

Anne and I worked together on 2gether 4ever (sarawatine).

13. what’s your all-time fave ship?

y'all are picking favourite ships?

14. what’s a fic you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

okay so the 5+1 fic The long way home (zukki) won't get finished. I don't think I'll ever go back but I loved it so much. It was such a fun concept. It was basically sokka and suki being like "okay can we love you know?" and zuko being like "no! you can't! honour!" and sokka and suki being like "okay! how about now?"

i still want to work on Checks, Chirps & Cellys (zukki) and am trying my best to get chapter three chugging along but i think if we're being realistic... its been eleven months since chapter one and i'm only just starting on chapter three. i don't think we're gonna get to the end on this one gang (unless y'all wanna hang around until 2024)

15. what are your writing strengths?

i don't know what i'm doing i just write a bunch of words and sometimes they're good.

16. what are your writing weaknesses?

i don't know what i'm doing i just write a bunch of words and sometimes they're not good.

17. what are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages on a fic?

i think it can be confusing to understand but i do occasionally throw in some better known words into my fic.

18. what was the first fandom you ever wrote for?

if we're counting unpublished, then pirates of the caribbean self-insert when i was ten. the first fandom i actually count is Miraculous Ladybug.

19. what is your favorite fic ever written?

I can't pick a favourite from my own fics so I'm interpreting this as my favourite fic by someone else and it is without a doubt A Mile Away by @dameferre. I remember reading it, a beacon of light in the messy racism that was the nurseydex fandom and just... everything felt right in the world for once.

tagging: @creativityobsessed, @admiralsushishin, @toriftw, @literalchineseperson, @hoenursey and @ambykinns

#thanks elle this was so fun #asks #(i guess)