Find A Way To See This Straight (by Jen) - comments

[soph1303]

Great oneshot,

Very well written

[Inactive User]

Amazing oneshot, Jen More soon please xx

[~Zoe~]

That is a great one shot Jen, I enjoyed reading this. Well done.

[HighwayUnicorn]

Deleted.

Edited September 5, 2012 by HighwayUnicorn

[JosieTash]

That was soooooooooooooooooooooooooo ACE !!!!! Bonus points of the Gilmores reference !!!!!!! LOOOOOOOVED it, especially …..

 The thing is, Dex knows Ruby must be a mess. She’s lost her mum and that must be the worst thing ever. Dex doesn’t really speak to his mother anymore, but he knows what it’s like to miss her, and if he ever wants to he can call or email her and she’ll reply. If Ruby misses her mum, then what? Charlie has no way of replying, and that must hurt.

 “Ah,” Dallas muses, “The Saving People thing.”

“What ‘Saving People’ thing?”

“Me,” she rolls her eyes in that awesome self-deprecating way, “now Ruby. You have a compulsive need to help people.”

Dex can’t do much; he averts his eyes, toeing his sneaker into the dirt.

“It’s not a bad thing,” Dallas rushes on. “If it wasn’t for you then I wouldn’t be able to do this.” She gestures to the already packed boxes. “And it’s the reason you’re going to be a great nurse. Despite what your dad might say.”

 What he sees is much more than the mess he had built up in his head. Ruby is slumped against her headboard, cradling a bottle of vodka like it’s a small child, eyelids drooping closed. She perks up slightly when she notices Dex, dangling the bottle from sloppy fingers towards him - which Dex notices is under half full, and God, he’s hoping she didn’t drink all of it; maybe it was partially, or mostly all gone when Ruby became attached to the bottle? - but he can smell it on her breath when he unceremoniously yanks her hand and pricks her finger.

Ruby is pouting at him now, clearly not happy with his lack of sympathy.

Sure, he feels sorry for her. Her mum inelegantly getting shot and everything, but this - Ruby pretty much wasted, alone, in her caravan on a Thursday night - this is all self-inflicted, so he doesn’t really worry about being too harsh with her. She probably won’t remember it in the morning anyway.

Dex tucks her into the cramped little caravan bed and gets the hell out of there as fast as he can because right now Ruby is cracking stupid jokes and giggling to herself, but her eyes are suspiciously watery and it looks like she might start crying at any second.

 “Well, I’m not dead,” Ruby replies, deadpan, head still in the fridge. “Thanks for caring.”

 Things only go downhill from there. Ruby pulls bottle after bottle from the small fridge, and Dex is mildly concerned that she has substituted all remnants of food for colourful alcopops.

It’s vaguely like something out of Alice in Wonderland with these magical drinks having various effects on Ruby’s personality. Dex knows it’s not actually possible for the colour of the liquid to be dictating how Ruby acts, but all the same, the drunker she becomes, the messier it is.

 Brax. And Casey. I hate them. This is their fault! None of this wouldn’t be happening if it wasn’t for them! Charlie wouldn’t be dead if it wasn’t for them!”

“Ruby, I’m sure Brax feels just as bad about this -“ Dex begins, but he doesn’t get to finish, because Ruby in all her built up anger, spins around rapidly, knocking a box off the small kitchen counter, sending pictures and small objects crashing to the floor.

“Shut up!” Ruby demands. Her cheeks are wet, eyes wide and wild, and she actually reaches out and slaps him across the arm.

“Ow!”

“Just shut up! I don’t need you!” she yells.

 Ruby doesn’t seem to hear him. She just takes another sip, swallows hard, trying to stop the barrage of tears streaming down her cheeks. Dex can’t just sit back and do nothing. By not walking out when Ruby gave him the chance, Dex basically signed a contract to helping Ruby deal with this. To ride out her waves of grief and loneliness, and not run away when things got awkward or emotional.

At home, when Indi or Sasha get upset they usually lock themselves in their bedrooms so Dex doesn’t have to see them cry. It’s a preservation thing on their part, and a small consideration to remove all embarrassment when it passes and Dex has seen them with snot running down their faces. But Ruby is so far gone that she doesn’t care, and she can’t stop now even if she wanted to.

 Ruby is smiling up at him, all broad faced and young, with Charlie beside her, doing the same. They are both so full of life, and Dex sees the resemblance between them. It’s in their smile, so unlike the Ruby in a crumbled heap beside him right now. She’s pulled up her knees to her chest, head buried into her body and Dex reaches out and tugs her close.

At first she seems to struggle, doesn’t want to be touched, but then she seems to give up, leaning heavily into Dex, her body wracking with sobs as he hugs her and rubs small circles into her back, the way his mum used to when he’d wake up in the middle of the night after having a nightmare about creepy aliens or getting lost at the supermarket and not being able to find his way home.

 “Do you know what happens when you let people in, Dex?” Ruby says slowly, obviously trying to curb the slur that’s becoming evident as her eyelids become heavier. “You let people in and they just trample over everything - they come in - let themselves in, or you let them in, either way - and then they’re in and you can’t make them leave, even if you want to. But then they do, Dex. They leave or they die and you can’t get them back. And it’s not like you can just fix it, you can’t fix it, because there’s this hole, where they were, and where they fit, and you can’t fix it. And it just hurts.”

Ruby’s not crying, she’s sombre and quiet and talking rapidly, tripping over her words and Dex has to concentrate really hard in order to keep up, which is not something he normally needs to be concerned about. But here he is, sitting on Ruby’s bed, her beside him, flat on her back, staring at the ceiling, pouring out her soul to him in some drunken haze of candidness and it’s oddly intimate.

Dex is worried about ruining it. About saying the wrong thing and Ruby clamming up again and shutting people out, and thinking she has to get through this on her own, which she doesn’t. He needs to make sure she understands that.

 She’s got her amber liquid courage in her hand, occasionally bringing it up to her lips to sip at it as she shuts her eyes and twirls around. Her hair bounces and flies around her face, and Dex watches as Ruby’s face begins to relax. The hard, deep worry lines beginning to ease, or at least lessen, as she moves from one foot to the other, spinning on the spot.

 “No, no no no,” Dex protests, trying to yank his hands out of her grasp, except Ruby doesn’t let go and tumbles down, and into Dex’s lap.

It happens so fast that Dex doesn’t even register that he has Ruby, sitting on top of him, actually in his lap, until Ruby is whispering close to his ear, “You want to help me, don’t you?”

Then she’s leaning in and kissing him.

Dex doesn’t know what to do. He literally doesn’t react. Well, he sort of does react, by kissing Ruby back. Feeling her lips pressed to his, moving in time, together, and Ruby is grabbing at the back of Dex’s neck, pushing them closer together, deepening the kiss.

Dex’s mind is spinning; probably more than Ruby’s at this stage, as Ruby skirts her tongue along his bottom lip. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands, which have somehow found their way to Ruby’s hips, sort of stroking at her sides, before Ruby removes her hands from his face and placing them over his.

“It’s okay,” she says, low and hoarse as she pulls back for a moment.

This time Dex kisses Ruby. With his hands firmly on her body he searches her mouth out, kisses her lips and waits for her to open. Sliding in his tongue Dex tastes the alcohol and sweetness of what she’s been drinking. It’s on her breath and in her skin as he sucks in a deep breath through his nose as Ruby shifts in his lap.

Dex lets out an involuntary groan as she presses down into him, and Dex starts to feel himself harden under her.

He’s single, she’s single, this doesn’t need to be an issue. She knows he’s never done more than make out, and that doesn’t seem to be a problem. So why then, is every brain cell in Dex’s head screaming, “Stop! Stop! Stop!”

But at this stage, Dex is thinking less with his head, and more with another part of his anatomy.

 Ruby turns, facing Dex, and she reaches up and starts kissing him again. Her hands are trailing away from just his face and neck and beginning to explore his front as well. Even through his t-shirt it feels amazing, the heat from her fingers rippling through Dex’s chest, playing with the material - bundling it into her hands and pulling on it tight, dragging Dex closer to her, before releasing.

He’s flush against her, the backs of Ruby’s knees hitting the end of the bed while she tugs at the hem of his shirt.

She pulls away for a moment. “Lose the shirt,” she whispers, and Dex startles slightly at the request. Even when he was with April they never really did more than some over the shirt groping. He certainly never got undressed in front of her, because up until the point at which they broke up, their relationship wasn’t about the physical stuff.

Dex knows he doesn’t look like Romeo or Xavier or Casey, the guys who surf and work out all the time and have actual muscles that girls find attractive. His hesitation must be obvious because Ruby says, “It’s okay,” in this reassuring way and she helps him lift the material up to his chest before tugging it over his head, so now he’s standing in front of her in nothing but his jeans and shoes.

Dex sucks in a breath, hopes she can’t tell that he had a fourth helping of pizza last night for dinner, but she just smiles and leans in, pressing a kiss right over where his heart would be. It beats faster, harder - if that were possible - as their mouths meet again, finding an easy rhythm before Ruby is pulling her own top off, her black bra very very visible to Dex.

 And this is it, Dex thinks.

Dex, who was sure he was going to be the re-incarnate of the 40-year-old virgin is actually going to have sex.

In a caravan.

With Ruby.

Who is his friend.

And mourning her dead mother.

And been ingesting alcohol for the better part of the day.

And if that isn’t the definition of ‘boner-killer’ then Dex doesn’t know what it is.

He pulls back, their lips parting with a loud pop! Ruby blinks at him once.

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

“I can’t,” Dex replies.

“Why?”

“You’re a friend, and going through something really horrible, but mostly because you are very, very drunk,” Dex replies emphatically.

He beings to climb off her, sitting on the edge of the bed with at least 30 centimetres between them, because Ruby is still in just a bra and her skirt and Dex isn’t wearing a shirt, and since they are no longer making out this has become really awkward, really fast.

Ruby’s face falls, but her eyes are still dark, glazed over, searching Dex’s for something ... Dex doesn’t know what.

“You don’t want me?” Ruby says in a whisper. “You don’t want me. No one wants me. Charlie left me, Dex. She left me and I can’t bring her back, and now you don’t want me.”

“No, Ruby, it’s not like that,” Dex replies quickly, already trying to repair the damage he’s caused. He shouldn’t have let it get to this point; half-hard and lying on top of her in the dark, because now he has some serious backtracking to do. “I just think this would be a mistake.”

“You think I’m a mistake?” she asks shakily, voice cracking as she slides up the bed to the headboard, tugging the blanket with her.

“No, no no no. I just think -” Dex doesn’t know how he’s going to explain, particularly when Ruby is still very tipsy. “You’re my friend, and sex right now, with you, would be a bad idea. I don’t want to ruin our friendship.”

Ruby rolls her eyes at him and scoffs. “How original. Let’s not ruin our friendship, like I haven’t heard that before.”

“But I mean it, Rubes.” Dex sighs. He’s never had to reveal this much of himself before, let alone to Ruby - he never got to say this to April, but he hopes it was implied, even though for a while she thought he lost his virginity to Dallas. “Maybe it’s naive of me, but shouldn’t sex mean something? Shouldn’t it be between two people who actually love each other and want to be together? Not two friends who don’t have anything else to do. I want to help you in any way I can, Ruby - it’s some sort of weird complex - but not like that. I’m sorry.”

 Finally, Ruby steps back from the sink, spent, and Dex guides her back to bed. He barely notices that neither of them are not fully dressed, but that seems irrelevant right now. He tucks her in and offers her an aspirin he finds in the small cupboard under the sink.

 “I guess Dallas was right about the Saving People Complex,” Dex sighs. Gently, Dex brushes a stray piece of hair away from Ruby’s face and backs away from the bed.

Before he leaves, Dex picks up his shirt, slipping it back over his head and placing the cardboard box back on the kitchen counter so Ruby won’t trip over it in the morning.

Walking home it occurs to Dex that he almost lost his virginity. In all the alcohol-induced craziness, it actually nearly happened, and not at all in the way had he thought it would. He’s glad he didn’t go through with it, because those consequences would have been exponentially more severe than anything Ruby is going to experience when she wakes, but at the same time, he feels the disappointment, there’s a bitter taste in his mouth that only a long Gilmore Girls marathon is going to fix.

[Miranda]

I can see both their points of view here. Ruby just wants comforting. Dex doesn't want to take advantage of her. Fair enough, but a sad and complicated time for them. But that's life! Well written

[elikell]

I absolutely loved this. Your portrayal of Dex is amazing and so well done.

I really enjoyed reading this.

Well done Jen

[Zetti]

Sorry! I read this a few days ago but lost track of time and didnt comment but here I am.. I loved the oneshot, it was interesting to say the least. Your characterisation of Dex is pretty much spot on as usual. Hope you do write more Dexy soon

[Jen]

soph1303 - Thank you.

JarlieFanEver - Thanks. I don't know if this pairing will ever be revisited, but you never know.

Zoe - Thankies.

HighwayUnicorn - Wow. Thank you, seriously. "Of course, Dex again!" - I do realise that everything I post these days is Dex or Dex-related. I can't help it!! But I'm glad you adore him all the same and all the craziness I put him through.

JosieTash - Hehe! Thanks .

Miranda - Whenever Ruby needs comfort she turns to sex; Dex doesn't know how to deal with that. I also wanted to write about them making out .

elikell - I'm glad you enjoyed it.

Zetti - No apologies necessary. Ha! Yes, interesting is one word for it. Thanks for giving it a go.

[Red Ranger 1]

Just caught up on this one.Nice portrayal of Ruby and Dex making out...I'd kind of like it if they carried on with the pairing in the show but it doesn't seem like they're going to go in that direction.