YES!!! IM HERE FOR IT!!!! I LOVE IT!!!!!!!!!! (under a cut bc it got way longer than i intended???? im so sorry??? oh my god???)
he finds out that he’s on the ace spectrum like. right when he gets to samwell because shitty basically welcomes his republican ass with a gender/sexuality lesson that’s more threatening than educational, but a few months later when he’s kept himself up at night and swallows his pride and googles “ace spectrum”, and what do you know, things make more sense.
dex thinking he’s completely sex repulsed at first, because he’s had girlfriends, and he liked them, but every time things would go past light making out, he felt super uncomfy and uninterested and just generally kinda Not Good, because he felt like he had to keep going, because what was his excuse not to?
(this poor boy has never had anyone tell him that “i don’t want to” is a good enough excuse before samwell. listen. dex grew up in a not great environment that he left with a WHOLE LOTTA ISSUES and a MESS OF INTERNALIZED HOMOPHOBIA)
him sorting his shit out a bit and being like “FUCK ok so im definitely queer, im ace, and i have a BIG FUCKING CRUSH ON DEREK NURSE” by their sophmore year, because at that point him and nursey are fighting a lot less and spending a lot more time watching movies and accidentally falling asleep on each other and distracting each other from homework by texting each other links to stupid vines and youtube videos even though they’re RIGHT NEXT TO EACH OTHER and honestly they’re just big dumb idiots who are so clearly falling for each other, and dex has a mild freak out when he realizes, but mostly he’s just annoyed.
he emerges from where he was helping clean up the kitchen when he hears the tadpoles arrive, calmly makes his way into the hall, see’s the assembled mass, takes in all the faces, freezes, and walks backwards back in
ransom is like ??? bro what’s wrong
dex’s head turns, slowly, like something from The Ring
‘there’s another one’
Ok, but imagine Dex and Whiskey becoming really good friends???? Whiskey and Dex connect on a level in which they are just so done with everyone around them. Like, Nursey will tell Dex to chill and he’ll be like: fuk off m8, but Whiskey will say something and Dex’ll be like: yeah ok whatever.
Nursey hates it. I mean, Whiskey’s an ok dude, but him and Dex as friends just irks him. (The irony of that is not lost on him). So, whenever they’re all hanging and Dex and Whiskey are together, Nursey gets super tense and wired.
So, it kind of really bothers me when people write Nursey and Dex having real fights and genuine animosity toward one another more than a couple of months after they meet because it’s… not true?
Like, yes, at the beginning of their frog year, they can’t stand each other and fight a lot (and upset poor Chowder), but it doesn’t stay that way for long. Less than six months after Meet the Frogs, we have Shinny and this:
These are not people who dislike each other. These are not people who get into regular shouting matches. Dex is not even fake-annoyed at Nursey being in his space. They are friends.
Dex, my tiny asexual son. Working hard to pay for school, working harder to keep his grades up. Constantly putting up with hyper-sexualized frat culture.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you with anyone. Are you gay or are you straight?”
I mean, I love the idea of a whole gaggle of lanky red heads making Dex crazy and teasing him about his boyfriend (And literally everything)… But!
If he’s a foster kid, his focus and his temper, his skills at fixing everything… It all becomes something about proving himself, about being useful so his family will keep him.
Even after he’s adopted (I can’t stomach the idea that he didn’t) he’s so afraid of losing what he’s got. He’ll fight to keep them, he’ll fight to be so good that they’ll never regret him.
Eventually, he settles in, his parents and siblings reassure him he’s theirs until it sinks in, but, that drive to being doesn’t really go away. Neither does the anxiety.
I like to think finding hockey, finding the SMH in particular, helps. The family of choice atmosphere of acceptance and belonging smoothing out the edges of his first semester anxiety induced hair trigger temper.
His family checks in often, making sure he doesn’t have a chance to feel like they’ve forgotten him. To others, it might feel/seem like smothering, but for Dex it’s a reassurance.
Oh gosh, I could go on and on (especially if you want to get into how many families he went through/How old he was when he gets adopted/How he team reacts/How his family reacts to the team…), but I just have a lot of feelings about this.
Oh god! What if he has a biological little sister, and he refused to be separated from her, and his temper freshman year was because it’s the first time they’ve been separated!
just moving along like everyone else 