naivee

For the last six minutes, she’s been sitting cross-legged on the kitchen floor between a box of wine glasses and another marked PANTRY, staring at the calendar on her phone like she might be able to intimidate it into changing.

The little pink circle remains exactly where it is. Six days ago.

She closes the app. Opens it again. As if the second viewing might reveal that she has accidentally entered the wrong month or skipped over an entire week through some glamorous administrative failure. It doesn’t. The neat row of dates sits there with the smug, bloodless confidence of technology that’s never had to consider what it might feel like to grow a person by accident.

From the living room comes the short mechanical complaint of Garrett’s screwdriver, then his voice, edged with growing hostility. “This hole’s in the wrong place.”

She doesn’t answer.

There’s a pause. Another turn of the screwdriver. “No, seriously. They drilled it wrong.”

She presses the side button on her phone until the screen goes black.

Garrett’s on the rug with the half-built dresser between his knees, grey sweatpants riding low enough to make the waistband of his boxers visible every time he leans forward. 

He’s been at it for almost an hour, wearing an old Briar Hockey shirt and the expression of a man being betrayed by Swedish engineering. His curls are pushed back messily from running his hands through them, and there’s a pencil tucked behind his ear that he keeps forgetting is there and searching for beneath instruction sheets.

Normally, this would be excellent material. Normally she would point out that a captain trusted to coordinate a power play should probably be capable of identifying screw C, or suggest that the dresser can sense his fear, or sit on the unfinished frame until he tells her to get off and then refuse.

Instead, she opens the calendar again. Six days.

Her period has been weird before. Enough that a late cycle shouldn’t have her blood moving cold under her skin. Stress can do it. Moving can do it. Sleeping badly, eating badly, forgetting lunch and then consuming half a garlic bread at eleven-thirty at night because Garrett brought one over can probably do it.

A fertilised egg can also do it.

The thought moves through her with the same sickening drop as missing a stair in the dark. She locks her phone again.

Garrett finally looks up. His gaze finds her on the floor, lingers for half a second, then narrows. He has a wooden panel balanced against his thigh and the tiny metal tool still in one hand. “What’s your problem?”

There are probably kinder ways to ask. Garrett occasionally even knows them. But they’ve never built anything between them that requires gentleness as an opening move, and under normal circumstances she would tell him her problem is that he’s been constructing one drawer for forty-seven minutes.

Her mouth opens. Nothing useful comes out.

Garrett’s expression shifts by a fraction. The irritation eases first, then the amusement. He sets the tool down slowly on the instruction booklet. “Hey.”

She looks at the dead screen of her phone. There’s a pressure sitting behind her ribs now, broad and heavy, making it difficult to pull in a proper breath without feeling every inch of it. “I might be pregnant.”

Garrett half chokes on absolutely nothing. It comes out as one sharp, strangled cough, his head jerking back as if the words have physically struck him in the throat. “What?”

She swallows. The inside of her mouth feels dry enough to catch. “My period’s late.”

He stares at her. His face seems to close, every warm, familiar part of it hardening so quickly she can practically watch the shutters come down. His shoulders pull tight beneath the t-shirt. His jaw sets. 

The hand still resting on the piece of white timber curls slightly against its edge. “How late?”

“Six days.”

Garrett drags his tongue over his bottom lip. His eyes leave her face and flick toward the windows, then the boxes, then nowhere at all. “Okay.”

It isn’t an okay that means okay. It’s clipped and thin and scraped clean of anything that might tell her which part of his brain has caught fire first. She waits.

Garrett’s eyes return to her, darker now. Guarded. “Why’re you telling me?”

For a second, she genuinely doesn’t understand the question. Her brows pull together. “What?”

“Why are you telling me?” he repeats, and something ugly has moved into his voice. It’s there in the deliberate space between each word, in the way he sits too straight behind the pieces of her dresser, like he’s already decided this is something being done to him. “It’s probably not even mine.”

Every word lands with horrible, perfect clarity. It just takes her body a second to understand that Garrett is the one who said them. The apartment blurs faintly at the edges. 

She blinks once, hard, and the sting behind her eyes turns sharper instead of disappearing. “What the fuck?”

Garrett’s jaw shifts, but he doesn’t take it back. “You said that guy from your class wanted to take you out. And the guy from that party. None of that is really a secret.”

She stares at him. The project partner. The stupid project partner she had mentioned in the shower because Garrett got jealous so easily and denied it so badly that winding him up had felt practically charitable.

Her phone digs into her palm. “I’m not sleeping with anyone else, you asshole.”

His face changes. Only slightly. A flicker across the eyes. His shoulders stay rigid, but something in them loses its certainty.

“If I’m pregnant,” she says, and her voice comes out thinner than she wants, the words catching against the pressure in her throat, “it’s yours.”

Garrett blinks. “What?”

“I’m not sleeping with anyone else.”

“But what about–”

“I was fucking with you.” Her breath shudders on the way out, humiliatingly close to a sob, and she looks away before he can properly see what his stupid mouth has done. “There’s no one else.”

The silence afterward is enormous. Somewhere outside, a truck reverses with three distant electronic beeps. The refrigerator hums. A piece of packing paper shifts near the balcony doors in the weak breeze coming through the open window, the sound dry and whispery over the floor.

Garrett’s face has gone slack around the edges. “Oh.”

She wipes beneath one eye with the heel of her hand before anything can actually fall. “Yeah. Oh. Dickhead.”

He drops his gaze. For the first time since she met him, Garrett Graham seems to have no immediate defence available. No grin. No clever little redirection. No way to turn the whole thing sideways until they’re both laughing and the real point has escaped through an open window.

His mouth opens, then closes. He sets the wooden panel down with exaggerated care, like sudden movements might make everything worse. “I’m sorry.”

She laughs once, except there is no humour in it and barely any sound. “Great.”

“No, I–” He scrubs both hands over his face, pressing hard enough to drag the skin beneath his eyes. “Fuck. I’m sorry. That was… I don’t know why I said that.”

“You thought I was sleeping around.”

“I didn’t think.” Garrett looks up at her, and there’s panic showing now beneath the shame, bright and unhidden in a way that almost makes her angrier. “That was the problem. I just heard pregnant and my brain– fuck, I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

She presses her lips together because they’ve started trembling and she refuses to perform that particular humiliation while sitting beside a box of wine glasses in an apartment that doesn’t even have a finished dresser.

Garrett looks at her phone, then back at her. “Do you have a test?”

She shakes her head. “No. I need to go get one.”

He nods immediately, then changes his mind halfway through it. “No. I’ll go.”

She looks at him.

“I’ll go now.” He’s already pushing himself up from the floor, nearly catching his foot beneath one of the dresser panels in his hurry. He stumbles, swears under his breath, then rights himself without looking away from her. “You stay here. I’ll get one.”

She hates that the thought of walking into a pharmacy feels impossible. Hates that Garrett going instead makes the thing in her chest loosen by one tiny degree despite what he said. Hates him a little for having the ability to hurt her and help her in the same five-minute window.

“Okay,” she says. Her voice sounds strange to her own ears. “Yeah. Good. Now is good.”

Garrett grabs his keys off the kitchen counter. He gets as far as the front door before stopping, one hand curled around the handle. For a second, she thinks he might turn around and say something else. Something worse, maybe. Or something soft enough to split her open completely.

Instead he comes back.

He crosses the apartment in four quick steps, hesitates once when he reaches her, then bends and presses his mouth to the top of her head. It’s barely a kiss. Warm, brief, awkward with apology. His hand hovers near her shoulder without quite touching.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, quieter this time.

Then he leaves. The lock clicks behind him. She sits on the kitchen floor for another ten seconds, staring at the unfinished dresser as if it might provide instructions for this too.

Attach side panel B to base using six cam screws. Do not overtighten. Try not to become pregnant by the hockey captain who refuses to call himself your boyfriend.

She lets out a breath that hurts.

The apartment seems different without Garrett in it. Larger, somehow, though half the floor is covered in his tools and the hoodie he abandoned over the back of her new couch. The quiet gets inside every open box. It gathers in the hallway, presses against the high windows, settles around the mug he drank from earlier and left beside the sink.

Her palm finds her stomach before she realises she has moved it.

There’s nothing to feel. Obviously. Six days late doesn’t turn her body into some glowing maternal exhibit. Her stomach is exactly the same as it was yesterday: soft beneath her shirt, slightly bloated, marked near one hip by a fading bruise from walking into the corner of a moving box. Still, her hand stays there.

What the fuck would she do?

She’s not ready to be somebody’s mother. She’s only lived alone for two weeks and yesterday she ate cereal out of a mixing bowl because the actual bowls were still packed. There’s a bag of laundry in her bedroom she keeps stepping over because she hasn’t worked out where the hamper should go. 

She cannot keep basil alive. She’s twice forgotten which day the bins go out and had to sprint downstairs in pyjama shorts when she heard the truck. A baby isn’t a basil plant, which is somehow both obvious and deeply unhelpful.

Her chest tightens again. She pictures telling her parents and immediately stops. Her mother’s silence. Her father putting both hands on his hips and starting every sentence with right, as if an action plan can make anything respectable. 

Money wouldn’t be the problem. That almost makes it worse. Nobody would let her drown, but they would all look at her differently while they pulled her out.

Then there’s Garrett. Garrett, who had looked at her as though she had thrown a live explosive onto the carpet. Probably not even mine. The words crawl back under her ribs.

What if he doesn’t want it? What if he doesn’t want any part of it? They’re not even properly together, not in any way he’ll admit while wearing clothes. He calls her baby with his mouth against her skin and my girl when he forgets to be afraid, but in daylight he still handles the whole thing like naming it might trap him beneath something.

A baby isn’t a name. A baby is appointments and decisions and her body changing and a whole human being at the end of it, loud and hungry and entirely innocent of the fact that neither of its parents knows what the fuck they’re doing.

She gets up too quickly and the room tilts. Her hand catches the edge of the island. “Cool,” she mutters to nobody. “Amazing.”

She paces to the living room, turns around near the half-built coffee table, then walks back. Her phone says Garrett has been gone four minutes. She opens the period app again. Still late.

By the time the lock turns, she’s reorganised the same stack of unopened mail twice and consumed half a glass of water without remembering drinking it.

Garrett steps inside carrying a white plastic pharmacy bag in one hand. His breathing is slightly uneven, like he parked illegally and jogged from the car. He shuts the door behind him, eyes finding her immediately.

Neither of them says hello. He walks over and holds out the bag. She takes it without meeting his eyes. “Thanks.”

“I didn’t know which one.”

She looks inside. There are four boxes. Two digital, one with pink dye, one with blue dye, all promising varying degrees of speed, accuracy, clarity, and emotional devastation. 

Beneath them is a bottle of water, a packet of sour gummy worms, and a chocolate bar she likes but has never told him she likes, which means he’s noticed her buying it somewhere and stored the information without permission.

She looks back up. “Did you buy the whole shelf?”

Garrett rubs the back of his neck. “I panicked.”

“Clearly.”

“The woman working there asked if I needed help.”

Her mouth twitches despite everything. “And?”

“I said no. Then I stood there reading boxes for ten minutes until she came over anyway.”

A laugh threatens, small and inappropriate, and she kills it before Garrett can mistake it for forgiveness. He sees it anyway. His shoulders loosen by barely an inch.

She pulls out one of the digital tests because the box uses the word pregnant rather than making her interpret lines like an ancient prophet. The bathroom feels too bright when she steps into it. There are still toiletries arranged along the counter in temporary, untidy groups and a cardboard box shoved beneath the towel rail. 

Garrett follows as far as the doorway, then stops. “You want me to–”

“No.”

He nods too quickly. “Right.”

She shuts the door. The instructions are printed in six languages and somehow none of them seem written for a person whose hands will not stop shaking. She reads the English section twice, then once more because the phrase replace cap and lay flat has become advanced medical science.

It’s humiliatingly ordinary once she does it. She pees. She caps the test. She washes her hands. The test lies facedown on the edge of the sink like a tiny white threat while her phone begins counting down three minutes.

Three minutes. She has had microwave popcorn take longer than that.

She opens the bathroom door. Garrett’s sitting on the couch with his elbows planted on his knees and his head in his hands. He looks up when she comes out, face drawn tight beneath the messy fall of his hair.

“It’s going,” she says.

He nods. “Okay.”

She stays where she is for a second. The space beside him is technically available. So is the armchair. So is the entire hardwood floor.

Eventually she crosses the room and sits on the opposite end of the couch, leaving a cushion between them with all the diplomatic hostility of a border dispute.

Garrett notices. His eyes drop to the empty cushion, then lift to her face. “You’re still mad.”

She turns her head slowly. “Are you actually surprised?”

“No.” He exhales and rubs both palms over his face again. “No, I deserve that.”

“Good.”

“I said I’m sorry.”

“And I heard you.”

He looks toward the balcony doors. His knee has started bouncing beneath his forearm, fast enough to make the couch tremble faintly. “I don’t think you sleep around.”

“You did about twenty minutes ago.”

“I didn’t.” Garrett presses his lips together, visibly frustrated by the fact that language will not rearrange itself in his favour. “I mean, I said it. Obviously I said it. But it wasn’t because I actually think that about you.”

She folds her arms. “That makes so much sense. Thanks.”

“Can you not?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Is my attitude making your pregnancy scare difficult?”

His face tightens. “That’s not what I meant.”

“No, I know what you meant. You want me to stop being a bitch so you can feel less bad about acting like a dick.”

Garrett looks at her then. Really looks. Whatever answer had risen into his mouth disappears before he says it. His knee stops bouncing.

“You’re scared,” he says.

The gentleness of it makes her want to claw something. “No shit.”

“I’m scared too.”

“Then maybe you should’ve started there.”

“I know.”

Her arms tighten over her chest. The phone timer ticks invisibly on the coffee table between them, silent but present enough that she can feel every second passing through her body.

Garrett leans back, then forward again immediately, unable to settle in either direction. His fingers knit between his knees. “I heard you say it and I just…” He swallows. “I thought you were about to tell me there was a chance it was mine, and then I thought maybe there was a chance it wasn’t, and that felt–”

“What? Better?”

“No.” His answer comes too quickly to be polished. “Worse.”

Garrett stares at his clasped hands. His knuckles are scraped from practice, one faint bruise sitting near the base of his thumb. 

“It felt worse, and then I got pissed off because it felt worse, because I don’t get to be pissed off about that when I’m the one who keeps saying we’re not…” He trails off.

“Dating?”

His jaw works. “Yeah.”

She gives a quiet, brittle laugh. “God forbid.”

“I know.”

“You keep saying that.”

“Because I do know.” He glances up, irritation flaring briefly before it burns itself out beneath something more tired. “I know I’m fucking this up.”

The apartment settles around them with a faint creak from the pipes. She looks at him, at the tightness across his shoulders, the way his hands have locked together like he doesn’t trust them loose.

“Why did you look like that?” she asks.

Garrett’s brows pull together. “Like what?”

“Like I told you I killed someone.”

His gaze drops again. For a second, she thinks he won’t answer. He does that sometimes – goes very still when she gets too near something he’s decided belongs behind a locked door, his whole body pretending calm while his eyes start searching for an exit.

This time, there’s nowhere for him to go that wouldn’t be obvious.

“I don’t think I’d be good at it,” he says finally.

“At what?”

“Being a dad.”

The words are quiet enough that she almost misses them beneath the hum of the refrigerator.

She uncrosses her arms slowly. “Garrett.”

“I wouldn’t know what to do.” He gives a short laugh that sounds wrong in his mouth. “I know hockey. I know how to make a kid skate, I guess. I know what drills work and how much sleep you need before a game and how to tell when someone’s favouring one leg. But that’s not…” His fingers flex once. “That’s not the same thing.”

“No.”

“My dad knew all that stuff too.”

There’s something in the way he says dad that makes the back of her neck go cold. She knows Garrett’s strange about him. Everyone knows, at least in the broad, carefully edited way Garrett allows. 

Phil Graham is famous, demanding, impossible to impress. Garrett doesn’t talk about home unless the conversation can be steered toward statistics or old games, and even then there’s a tightness in him that never quite fits the story he’s telling.

Garrett looks toward the unfinished dresser on the rug. “He had this whole plan for me before I was old enough to know what hockey was. Everything had a reason. Food, training, school, sleep. If I did something wrong, he made sure I knew.”

The words remain clean. Almost clinical. His voice doesn’t. She watches his thumb drag repeatedly over the scrape on his knuckle.

“I used to think that was just what fathers did,” he says. “Push you until you got good enough. Make sure you didn’t get soft. Then I got older and started going to other guys’ houses, and their dads were…” He shrugs, but the movement pulls too tightly across his back. “Normal. Annoying, but normal. They’d yell about the thermostat or tell shitty jokes. Nobody was… watching the room all the time.”

She goes quiet.

Garrett’s mouth twists. “I don’t know what I’d do if I had a son.”

The word son lands heavily between them.

“Why a son?”

“I don’t know.” His eyes stay fixed on the floor. “That’s what I pictured.”

Something pinches beneath her ribs. Garrett drags a hand through his hair.

“What if I got angry?” he asks.

Her breath catches slightly.

He continues before she can answer, the words coming quicker now, scraped raw by momentum. “What if he did something stupid or wasn’t listening or I was tired and I–” His jaw locks. “I don’t know. People act like you automatically know how to do it differently, but what if you don’t? What if all you know is what you saw?”

She looks at his profile. At the muscle jumping in his jaw. At his hands, opened now over his knees, palms empty. At the faint white scar near one knuckle she’s kissed without ever asking where it came from.

The anger she has been holding doesn’t disappear. It shifts. Makes room. “You think you’d hurt him.”

Garrett’s eyes close for half a second. “I think,” he says carefully, “I wouldn’t know for sure that I wouldn’t.”

She moves before deciding to. The cushion stays between them, but her hand crosses it and settles over his wrist. Garrett looks down at her fingers.

“You were a complete asshole before,” she says.

His mouth twitches without humour. “Yeah.”

“I’m not letting you turn this into some tragic little speech where I tell you it’s fine because you had a bad reaction for a reason.”

“I know.”

“But.” Her thumb presses once against his pulse, which is beating much too fast beneath his skin. “Being scared of becoming him isn’t the same as being him.”

Garrett says nothing.

“You apologise,” she continues. “Badly, sometimes. You check if I’m okay even when I’m literally asking you to do something filthy enough to get us banned from the property. You brought me four pregnancy tests and sour worms because your brain melted in aisle six.”

“Aisle four.”

She gives him a look.

“Sorry.”

“You stop when I say stop. You ask for words when I’m being stubborn. You notice when I haven’t eaten. You made Tucker pay me back for mozzarella sticks I didn’t even know he ate.”

“He knew they were yours.”

She sighs. “That’s not the point.”

“It’s part of the point.”

Despite herself, her mouth pulls at one corner. Garrett watches it happen, the tension in his face easing just enough to let him breathe.

She looks back down at his wrist. “You would have to learn. Obviously. So would I. Being afraid you’d fuck it up doesn’t mean you definitely would.”

“What if it’s in me?”

She knows what he means without him saying more. The question is so small compared to him that it does something unpleasant to her chest.

She tightens her fingers around his wrist. “Then you deal with it before it gets to decide things for you.”

Garrett lets out a breath through his nose.

“That’s not me saying we should have a baby,” she adds quickly. “To be extremely fucking clear.”

A startled sound leaves him, almost a laugh. “Yeah. No. I got that.”

“I don’t know what I’m doing. I lost my passport in this apartment yesterday.”

“You found it.”

“It was in the freezer.”

Garrett turns his head. “You never told me that. What was it doing in the freezer?”

“I don’t know. Chilling.”

His laugh gets out properly this time, rough and brief and grateful. She hates how much relief she feels hearing it. Then his face settles again.

“I don’t want you doing this alone,” he says.

Her fingers still against his skin. He looks directly at her now, and there’s no easy shine in him. Only Garrett, frightened enough to finally stop pretending fear makes him indifferent.

“If it’s positive,” he says, “I’m not leaving.”

She searches his face. “You don’t have to say that because you feel guilty.”

“I’m not.”

“You looked like you wanted to run through the wall.”

“I did.” His thumb shifts beneath her hand, catching lightly against her palm. “Doesn’t mean I’d leave you here.”

Her throat tightens. “What would we do?” she asks.

Garrett glances toward the bathroom, where the test is quietly rearranging the rest of their lives or doing absolutely nothing at all. “I don’t know.”

She leans back into the couch, though she keeps hold of his wrist. “I couldn’t have a baby right now.”

“Okay.”

“I mean, I don’t think I could.”

“Okay.”

“But what if I took the test and then…” Her voice catches. She clears it impatiently. “What if I saw it and felt differently?”

“Then we’d talk about that.”

“And if I didn’t?”

His gaze does not leave hers. “We’d talk about that too.”

The steadiness in his answer loosens something painful beneath her sternum.

She looks away. “You’re being suspiciously reasonable.”

“I’m trying to recover from accusing you of carrying another man’s child.”

“Good luck.”

“I know.” His fingers turn beneath hers until their palms meet. “It was a really bad opening.”

“It was possibly your worst.”

“I once called Coach’s wife his mother.”

She looks back at him. “What?”

“Freshman year. From behind.”

A laugh bursts out of her before she can stop it. “Oh my God.”

“They had the same coat.”

“That doesn’t help.”

He grimaces. “She was not happy.”

Her laugh comes thinner this time, catching around all the pressure still sitting in her body, but Garrett smiles faintly anyway. His hand closes around hers. For a few seconds, they sit there with their fingers threaded over the cushion between them.

Then she says, “Did you really picture a son?”

Garrett’s eyes flick to hers. “Yeah.”

“What did he look like?”

His mouth shifts, almost embarrassed. “I don’t know. A kid.”

“Great imagination.”

“He had dark hair.”

“Groundbreaking.”

“And your attitude.”

She recoils. “Then we’d have to give him away.”

Garrett’s thumb moves over her knuckle. “He’d be a nightmare.”

“He’d bite people.”

“You bite people.”

“Only when they deserve it.”

“You bit me because I told you to stop stealing the blankets.”

“You’re very dramatic for somebody who plays an ice sport.”

His smile appears properly, small but real, and for half a second she can see it – the picture he admitted to building while she was in the bathroom. A dark-haired little boy with an impossible mouth. 

Garrett tying tiny skates. Her yelling because he bought some hideous sports-themed crib. The whole thing bright and domestic and completely absurd. The image doesn’t make her want it. Not now.

But it doesn’t make her recoil as quickly as she expects either, and that’s terrifying in an entirely separate direction. Her phone alarm goes off. Both of them jump.

The cheerful little chime cuts through the apartment with obscene brightness. Her hand clamps around Garrett’s. His smile disappears. The air seems to leave the room all at once.

Neither moves. The alarm continues. Garrett reaches out with his free hand and silences it.

“That was three minutes,” he says.

“I know.”

His fingers tighten around hers. “You want me to look?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

“I have to.”

“Okay.”

She stands, then immediately sits back down. Garrett rises beside her. He doesn’t laugh. He holds out his hand again. She takes it.

The walk to the bathroom is approximately twelve steps and lasts several years. The overhead light is still on, too white and revealing, glaring off the mirror and the chrome tap. The pregnancy test lies facedown beside the sink exactly where she left it.

Her stomach rolls. Garrett stays half a step behind her, his hand warm around hers. She can feel the roughness of his palm, the steady pressure of his thumb against the side of her finger.

“Okay,” she whispers.

“You don’t have to rush.”

“It’s already done.”

“I know.”

She reaches for the test. Her fingers miss the first time. She grips it more firmly, lifts it from the counter, and holds it facedown in front of them.

Garrett’s breath moves near her temple. She flips it over. The tiny digital screen reads:

NOT PREGNANT.

For one suspended second, her brain refuses to interpret the words. Then everything inside her drops. “Oh, thank fuck.” The breath tears out of her so hard she folds slightly at the waist, one hand flying to the edge of the sink. “Holy shit. Oh my God. Thank God.”

Garrett’s hand lands at her back.

She laughs, except it comes out wet and shaky and completely unhinged, relief flooding through her limbs so quickly her knees weaken beneath it. “I’m not pregnant.”

“You’re not pregnant,” he echoes.

She turns and grabs him. Her arms go around his middle, face pressing into his chest, and Garrett catches her with a startled grunt before wrapping both arms around her. One hand spreads over the back of her head. The other locks firmly around her waist.

For a little while, they only breathe. His shirt smells like clean laundry and the faint wood dust from the dresser. His heart beats hard beneath her cheek, slower than hers but not by much. Garrett’s mouth presses into her hair once, then again.

“Jesus Christ,” she mutters against him.

“Yeah.”

“I thought my life was over.”

His arms tighten. “I know.”

“I know that’s dramatic.”

“No, it’s not.”

She pulls back enough to look at him. Garrett’s face is pale beneath his warm skin, relief visible in the loosened line of his mouth and the way his shoulders have finally dropped. But there’s something else too. Something quieter sitting behind his eyes as he glances past her toward the test on the counter.

She follows his gaze. “You look weird.”

His eyes return to hers. “I’m relieved.”

“That’s not all.”

Garrett’s mouth opens. He seems to consider lying, then thinks better of it after the evening they have just survived.

“I don’t know,” he says.

“That’s convincing.”

“I am relieved.” His hand remains at her waist, thumb moving once over the fabric of her shirt. “I don’t want a kid right now. Obviously. I’ve got practice tomorrow and you keep your passport with frozen peas.”

“It was beside the ice tray.”

“Much better.”

She tilts her head. “But?”

He glances at the test again. “For a minute,” he says slowly, “when you were in here, I pictured it.”

Her chest goes tight in a completely new way. “A son?”

“Yeah.” His expression twists, faintly embarrassed. “Not even anything major. Just… stupid stuff.”

“Like?”

He huffs a breath through his nose. “You yelling at me because I bought the wrong stroller.”

“I would.”

“I know. And a tiny hockey jersey.”

“Absolutely not.”

“See? Already yelling.”

She pinches his side. Garrett’s mouth twitches, but the look in his eyes stays soft and slightly shaken.

“I pictured him in your apartment,” he says. “Which is insane because there’s nowhere to walk in here now, let alone put a baby.”

“The study.”

“Your dad would be devastated.”

“He’d build another room.”

“Probably.”

Garrett takes a breath. “And then the test was negative, and I was relieved. Really fucking relieved. But I guess…” His hand shifts against her waist. “I didn’t hate the picture.”

Her eyes sting again. This time for an entirely different, equally inconvenient reason. “You’re disappointed?”

“No.” He thinks about it. “Maybe for, like, half a second. Which is stupid.”

“It’s a little stupid.”

“Thanks.”

“But not bad,” she whispers.

Garrett watches her face closely. “You?”

She looks at the test. The word NOT remains clear on the screen.  “No,” she says honestly. “I’m not disappointed.”

He nods.

“But the little jersey would’ve been cute.”

Garrett’s smile breaks across his face before he can stop it, bright and exhausted and so warm around the edges that it hurts to look at directly. “Yeah?”

“One. You’d get one.”

“Home and away,” he counters.

“One, Graham.”

“Fine.”

“And if you ever accuse me of sleeping with someone else again, I’ll use it to strangle you.”

His smile fades into something more careful. “I won’t.”

“You better not.”

“I’m serious.”

She studies him for a second, then nods.

Garrett reaches up and wipes beneath her eye with his thumb. She hadn’t realised anything had escaped. His touch lingers against her cheek, gentle enough to make her want to hide, so she turns her face and bites lightly at the pad of his thumb.

He exhales, half laugh, half surrender. “There she is.”

“Don’t.”

“Kitty.”

She glares.

His hand slides around the back of her neck and pulls her forward until her forehead rests beneath his chin. “I’m sorry.”

She stays there, arms looped loosely around his waist. “I know,” she says after a while. “You were still a dick.”

“I know.”

“You have a lot of furniture left to build before I forgive you.”

Garrett looks past her toward the living room, where the half-constructed dresser waits among screws, cardboard, and the abandoned instruction booklet. “That thing is fucked up.”

“That sounds like an excuse.”

“It’s a safety concern.”

She presses her face into his chest to hide the small laugh that slips out. Garrett feels it anyway. His arms close more securely around her, holding her through the last trembling edge of the adrenaline as it finally begins to leave her body.

They remain in the bathroom longer than necessary, tangled together beneath the unforgiving overhead light with four pregnancy-test boxes sitting in a plastic bag outside and one negative result on the sink beside them. Their relationship is still a thing they keep living inside without properly naming. Her period is still late, and she will probably have to take another test in a few days if it doesn’t come, because one evening of emotional ruin isn’t enough for the human reproductive system.

But Garrett is here. His hand moves slowly up and down her back. His cheek rests against the top of her head. When she shifts closer, he makes room without thinking.

Eventually, she murmurs, “You’re not allowed to name our hypothetical son.”

Garrett’s chest moves beneath her with a quiet laugh. “I wasn’t planning to.”

“You named my vibrator Douglas.”

“We named him Douglas.”

“You suggested it.”

“It suited him,” he shrugs.

“It’s an old-man name.”

“He’s dependable.”

She pulls back enough to stare at him. “You’re jealous of a vibrator and emotionally attached to it.”

“It’s complicated.”

“You’re deeply strange.”

Garrett bends and kisses her forehead, lingering there until the last sharp little ache beneath her ribs eases into something tired and warm. “Yeah,” he murmurs against her skin. “But I’m not going anywhere.”

to be notified when i post new fics, follow @kooksandpearls-library and turn on notifications! i no longer use a taglist.

A laugh slips out of her, dry and disbelieving. “Oh, cool. We’re doing hostage situations now?”

“We’re talking.”

“We were talking. Then you started doing that thing where you use your captain voice like I’m a freshman who forgot to tape a stick.”

His mouth tightens. “You don’t even know how to tape a stick.”

“And yet I still know you’re being a dick.”

Garrett drags a hand through his hair, curls springing up messier after his fingers leave them, and the motion is so familiar it almost makes her angrier. She knows him like this now. Knows the little tells. The hand through the hair when he’s trying not to yell. The jaw twitch when something hits hard. The way he plants his feet like stubbornness is a defensive formation. 

It makes her stomach feel hot and hollow at the same time, like her body is still waiting for him to do the right thing even though her brain has started packing up.

“You left after the game,” he says.

“I went home.”

“You didn’t say anything.”

“You were busy.”

His eyes flash. “Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“That.” He points at her, frustrated. “That fucking thing where you say something normal but you mean something else.”

She smiles, and it feels sharp enough to cut the inside of her mouth. “Sorry. I forgot you only like direct communication when it’s convenient for you.”

Garrett scoffs. “Jesus Christ.”

“No, because this is funny, actually.” She drops one boot by her feet, then the other, because if she holds onto them any tighter she’s going to throw one at his stupid beautiful head. “You don’t get to be mad that I’m acting casual, Garrett. You built the whole fucking cage and then got offended when I stopped wanting to live in it.”

His face changes. 

She steps closer because the hurt is turning bright in her chest now, hot enough to make her reckless. “You wanted me when I was easy to keep in your bed. You wanted me when it was fun. When you could say I wasn’t your girlfriend and still get pissy if someone looked at me too long. You liked all the parts where I made you feel good, but the second you started feeling something you didn’t know what to do with, suddenly I’m frustrating.”

“You are frustrating,” he snaps, immediate and rough. “You’re fucking impossible.”

“Great.” Her throat pulls tight around the word. She hates that. Hates the little pinch behind her nose, hates that her body is trying to betray her into softness while he’s standing there angry and gorgeous and terrified of his own feelings. “Then move.”

“No.”

“Garrett.”

“No, because you do this. You push and push and push until I say the wrong thing, and then you get to leave like I’m the asshole and you’re just some innocent bystander in my room.”

Her breath stops for half a second.

He sees it, because Garrett notices everything when it’s inconvenient and nothing when it matters. His chest rises once, hard. “You think I don’t know what you’re doing?”

She laughs again, but it comes out smaller. “What am I doing?”

“You’re making it my fault.”

That lands wrong. It lands so wrong she actually goes still. Then her chin lifts. “No, Garrett. You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to make me the reason you don’t know how to be honest.”

“I am being honest!”

“No, you’re being loud!”

His mouth shuts.

The silence rings. Her pulse is everywhere – wrists, throat, the backs of her knees. She wants to shove past him. She wants him to grab her. She wants, horribly, stupidly, for him to say one thing that doesn’t come wrapped in defence first.

Garrett looks at her for one long second, and something in his face gives, like a door kicked open from the inside.

“Fine,” he says, low. “You want honest?”

She doesn’t answer.

He laughs once, humourless, staring at the floor before his eyes come back to hers. “I’m in love with you.”

Everything in her goes silent. Downstairs, someone cheers. The sound comes up muffled and stupid and impossibly far away.

Garrett’s throat works. He looks angry about it, almost, like the words have left marks coming out. “There. Happy? I’m in love with you, and I want to be with you, and I hate that you make me feel like I’m losing my mind every time you look at me like you’re already halfway out the door.” His voice cracks at the edge, not enough to break, just enough to make it real. “You’re so fucking frustrating because I don’t know how to want you a normal amount.”

She stares at him.

For once, there’s nothing ready in her mouth. The whole room seems to tilt a fraction, Garrett standing there with his hands half-curled at his sides and his face open in the worst possible way, like he’s given her something sharp and is waiting to see where she puts it.

Her fingers feel numb. “What?” she says.

Garrett’s expression flickers. “Don’t make me say it again.”

She blinks, and her eyes burn so suddenly she has to look away. At the desk. The hoodie. The stupid empty Gatorade bottle near his books. Anything but him.

“I can’t,” she says, and the words come out before she knows what they mean.

Garrett goes still. “Can’t what?”

She grabs her boots. Her hands shake once, quick and humiliating, so she tightens them into fists around the leather. “I can’t do this with you right now.”

“Baby–”

“No.” She looks at him then, because that’s worse and she loves making things worse. “Don’t baby me after that.”

He looks like she hit him. Good, some ugly part of her thinks. Then immediately hates herself for it. Garrett steps back from the door. 

She walks past him without touching. Her shoulder nearly brushes his chest, and every inch of her body screams about the space between them, about his warmth, about the fact that he doesn’t reach for her.

At the doorway, she stops for half a second. She doesn’t turn around.

Behind her, Garrett’s voice comes out rough. “You’re leaving?”

She swallows. The hallway swims a little at the edges.

“Yeah,” she says, barely above a whisper. “That’s what casual does, right?”

Then she goes, barefoot down the stairs with her boots in her hand, while Garrett stays in his room and says nothing at all.

to be notified when i post new fics, follow @kooksandpearls-library and turn on notifications! i no longer use a taglist for garrett fics.

He looks to his left. His mother’s eyes are red-rimmed, her makeup flawlessly intact but her expression completely shattered. Beside her, his father sits with a stoic, grave expression, his jaw tight. They are high-powered attorneys, people who rip apart witnesses for a living and negotiate million-dollar deals without breaking a sweat. But right now, they just look like two devastated parents grieving a boy who practically lived at their house over the summer.

“I’m fine, Mom,” Dean lies, his voice a low, raspy gravel.

“You don’t have to be fine,” his father murmurs, leaning in slightly. “Not today. Not for a long time.”

Dean swallows hard and looks away. He isn’t fine. Beau is in that box. His best friend. His blood brother. Briar University’s star quarterback, the guy with the golden arm and the shit-eating grin.

Dead.

The word still doesn’t make sense in his brain. It’s a typo. A bad joke. Dean knows a lot of things. He knows how to throw a party, how to close down a bar, and how to charm his way out of a parking ticket. He knows how to live. He doesn’t know how to do this. He doesn’t know how to look at a wooden box and accept that his best friend is never going to throw a football at his head again.

“Hey,” a low voice says from the pew behind him.

Dean turns his head. Logan, Garrett, and Tucker are sitting right behind him, all wearing dark suits, looking equally as wrecked.

“You see her yet?” Logan asks, keeping his voice strictly to a whisper.

Dean shakes his head. “No. Have you?”

“Joanna walked in a few minutes ago,” Garrett says, rubbing the back of his neck. “She said they were right behind her. Beau’s dad is in a wheelchair. Neck brace. It’s … it’s bad, man.”

Dean exhales a shaky breath, turning his attention to the front row. The family pews. Empty so far.

His chest tightens at the thought of you.

You and Beau. Beau and you. The Maxwell twins. You were glued to the hip from day one. When Dean met Beau freshman year, he met you by extension. As a cheerleader, you were always around the athletic department, but even without the pompoms, you would have been there. The three of you became inseparable.

Dean closes his eyes, a memory hitting him so hard it physically aches.

***

“Dude, she’s my twin. You can’t look at her like that,” Beau says, tossing a crumpled-up napkin across the booth at Malone’s

“Like what?” Dean deflects, catching the napkin with one hand and smirking. “I’m looking at her like she’s hoarding the last order of chili cheese fries.”

“I am hoarding them,” you say, pulling the greasy basket closer to your chest. “And if you try to take them, Di Laurentis, I’ll stab you with this plastic fork. I’m not playing around.”

“Fierce. I like it,” Dean laughs, leaning across the table.

“Stop flirting with my sister,” Beau groans, dragging a hand down his face. “Seriously, Dean. You have a new girl in your room every night. Leave this one alone.”

“I’m not flirting,” Dean argues, kicking your shin lightly under the table. “I’m just appreciating her aggressive approach to saturated fats.”

“You’re a pig,” you tell him, though you’re trying not to smile. You spear a fry and point it at him. “And for the record, Beau, I can handle Dean. He’s all talk.”

“I am definitely not all talk,” Dean says, winking at you.

“Gross,” Beau deadpans. “Both of you. Gross. Eat your fries, Y/N, before I steal them myself.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” you gasp.

“Try me,” Beau challenges, his eyes lighting up with that familiar, competitive fire.

***

The heavy oak doors at the back of the church open, snapping Dean back to the present. The low murmur of the packed church falls completely silent.

Dean turns.

You are walking down the center aisle.

His breath catches in his throat. You look completely empty. Your spine is rigidly straight, holding you up purely on autopilot. You are wearing a simple black dress, your face pale and completely devoid of makeup. There are dark, bruised-looking circles under your eyes. Beside you is your older sister, Joanna, gripping your arm, and behind you, your mother is pushing your father in a wheelchair.

Dean watches as you walk right past his pew. You don’t look at him. You don’t look at anyone. You are staring straight ahead at the casket, your eyes locked onto the polished wood like it’s the only thing keeping you anchored to the floor.

He wants to reach out. He wants to grab your hand, pull you into his lap, and hide you from the hundreds of pitying eyes staring at you. But he stays frozen in his seat.

You sit down in the front row. Joanna sits beside you, wrapping an arm around your shoulders. You just sit there, perfectly still.

The service begins. The pastor steps up to the podium, his voice echoing through the massive sanctuary. He talks about God, about mysterious ways, about Beau’s bright light. Dean tunes it all out. It’s all bullshit. There is no mysterious reason for a deer to sprint across a dark Wisconsin road. There is no divine plan for black ice. It’s just a stupid, senseless accident.

“And now,” the pastor says softly, stepping back. “Beau’s sister has asked to say a few words.”

Dean’s head snaps up. He watches as Joanna whispers something in your ear. You nod once, a sharp, jerky movement.

You stand up.

A ripple of uneasy tension sweeps through the church. You look fragile, like a stiff breeze could snap your bones in half. You walk up the three small steps to the altar. You don’t look at the casket as you pass it.

You step up to the wooden podium and grip the edges. Your knuckles instantly turn white.

You stand there for a long time. The silence stretches, thick and agonizing. Dean leans forward, his hands braced on his knees, every muscle in his body coiled tight.

“Hi,” you whisper into the microphone. It squeals slightly, and you flinch.

You take a shaky breath, looking out at the crowd. Your eyes sweep over the sea of dark clothing.

“I’m … I’m Beau’s sister,” you start, your voice trembling. “His twin sister.”

You stop, swallowing hard.

“Most of you know Beau as the quarterback,” you say, your voice gaining a tiny fraction of strength. “You know him as the guy who threw the game-winning pass in the championships. You know him as the guy who was always smiling, always laughing. The guy who threw the best parties.”

A few soft, sad chuckles ripple through the Briar football team sitting on the right side of the church.

“But that’s just … that’s just the stuff he let everyone see,” you continue, staring down at the wood of the podium. “Beau was … he was my other half. We shared a womb. We shared our childhood. We shared everything.”

You look up, and for the first time, your eyes meet Dean’s.

Dean feels a sharp, physical pain in his chest. Your eyes are completely shattered.

“He was the most fiercely protective person I’ve ever known,” you say, holding Dean’s gaze. “If I was sad, he wouldn’t just ask what was wrong. He would rip the world apart trying to fix it. He loved his friends. He loved his family. He loved his life.”

You look away, your gaze drifting down to the front row, resting on your dad in his wheelchair.

“We went to Wisconsin for my grandma’s birthday,” you say. The tremble is back in your voice, more pronounced this time.

Dean’s jaw clenches. He knows this part. Beau had texted him right before they left the house. 

“My dad was driving,” you say softly.

Your father bows his head, his shoulders shaking in the wheelchair.

“It was snowing,” you whisper. You let go of the podium with one hand, wrapping your arms tightly around your own waist. “A deer ran out. Dad swerved. He hit black ice. The car spun and hit a tree.”

You stop. You take a breath, but it hitches, turning into a wet, jagged gasp.

“Take your time, sweetheart,” the pastor says gently from behind you.

“No,” you say, shaking your head rapidly. “No. You don’t understand.”

You grip the podium again, leaning into the microphone. Your breathing is speeding up, erratic and panicked.

“I stayed behind,” you say, your voice cracking loudly over the speakers. “My grandma … she asked me to stay a little longer. For another slice of pie. Just a stupid piece of cherry pie.”

“Y/N,” Joanna whispers loudly from the front pew, standing up.

“If I hadn’t stayed,” you say, your voice rising in volume, cracking with a sob. “I would have been in the car. I always sit in the passenger seat. Always. It’s my seat.”

Tears start spilling down your cheeks, fast and heavy.

“Beau took my seat,” you cry out, the sound echoing off the high vaulted ceilings. “He sat in the passenger seat because I wasn’t there.”

Dean is already moving. He doesn’t consciously decide to stand up. He just does.

“Y/N, honey, please,” your dad chokes out from his wheelchair, reaching a hand toward you.

“It should have been me!” You scream, your voice completely breaking. You grip the podium like it’s the only thing keeping you from floating away. “The impact was on the passenger side! It snapped his neck! It should have been my neck!”

“Oh my god,” Dean’s mom whispers behind him, covering her mouth.

“I want to trade!” You sob, looking up at the ceiling, looking at the casket, looking anywhere. “Please, God, let me trade! I’ll take his place! It’s supposed to be me! Put me in the box, please, please let him out!”

You let go of the podium to cover your face, and the moment you do, your legs give out.

You collapse.

You completely fold in on yourself, crumbling to the floor of the altar like a puppet with its strings cut.

“Y/N!” Joanna screams, rushing forward.

But Dean is faster.

He clears the row of pews, shoving past the pastor and dropping to his knees on the hard marble floor right beside you.

“I’ve got her,” Dean barks at Joanna, his voice sharp and authoritative enough to make the older sister freeze. “Give her air. Back up.”

Dean reaches out and gathers you into his arms. You are violently shaking, gasping for air in short, panicked bursts. You are having a full-blown panic attack right in the middle of the altar.

“Y/N,” Dean says, keeping his voice steady despite the absolute terror racing through his veins. He pulls you flush against his chest, wrapping his arms securely around your trembling frame. “Look at me. Hey. Look at me.”

You thrash against him weakly. “No! No, Dean, it’s my fault! It’s my fault!”

“It is not your fault,” he says fiercely, grabbing the sides of your face with both hands. His thumbs brush roughly over your tear-soaked cheeks. “Do you hear me? It was a fucking accident. It is not your fault.”

“I want him back!” You scream against Dean’s chest, burying your face into his expensive suit jacket, your hands fisting in his lapels. “Dean, please, please bring him back. Tell him to get up.”

Dean feels something hot and wet slide down his own cheek. He doesn’t care who sees him crying. He doesn’t care about the hundreds of people staring at them. Right now, there is only you. You are the only piece of Beau he has left, and he will be damned if he lets you fall apart on this floor alone.

“I know, baby,” Dean whispers, his voice cracking as he presses his lips hard against the top of your head. He pulls you tighter, rocking you slightly. “I know. I’m right here. I’ve got you.”

“I can’t breathe,” you gasp, your fingers clutching his shirt tight enough to rip the buttons. “Dean, I can’t breathe. My chest hurts. Make it stop.”

“Follow my breathing,” he commands, forcing his own erratic lungs to slow down. He exaggerates the rise and fall of his chest. “In and out. Come on, Y/N. In and out.”

“I can’t live without him,” you sob, the sound so broken it physically tears at Dean’s heart. “I don’t know how to be a person without him.”

“You don’t have to figure it out today,” Dean murmurs, resting his cheek against your hair. He keeps his arms wrapped like a vice around you, shielding you from the eyes of the crowd. “You just have to breathe right now. That’s all you have to do. Just breathe for me.”

Joanna is hovering nearby, crying into her hands. The pastor is awkwardly standing off to the side. The entire church is dead silent, save for the agonizing sound of your sobs echoing off the walls.

“He would have hated this,” you whisper hysterically, your forehead pressed against Dean’s collarbone. “He would have hated everyone looking at us.”

Dean lets out a wet, genuine laugh, the sound rough with grief. “Yeah. He would’ve called us dramatic.”

“He would’ve thrown a football at your head,” you add, letting out a broken sob that sounds half like a laugh.

“And told me to stop holding his sister,” Dean adds softly.

You grip his jacket tighter, burying your face deeper into his chest. “Don’t let go, Dean. Please don’t let go.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Dean promises. And he means it. He means it more than he’s meant anything in his entire twenty-two years of life. Beau trusted him. Beau loved him. And Beau loved you more than the sun.

“I’m right here,” Dean whispers into your hair, completely ignoring the pastor trying to resume the service. “I’m right here, and I’m not leaving. I swear to god, I’ve got you.”

***

Briar University looks exactly the same, and Dean hates it.

He stands in the middle of the quad, his hockey duffel slung over one shoulder, staring at the brick buildings and the swarms of students rushing to class. The sun is shining. Someone is throwing a frisbee near the library. A group of freshmen are laughing too loudly by the fountain.

It makes him sick to his stomach.

How can they just keep going? How is the bell still ringing? How is the cafeteria still serving terrible eggs? Beau is gone. The loudest, brightest, most invincible guy on this campus is in the ground, and Briar is just … moving on.

Dean adjusts his grip on his bag and forces his legs to move. He has to go to his Development of Sociological Thought elective. He doesn’t want to. He hasn’t wanted to do anything but lock himself in a dark room and drink until his liver gives out, but he can’t. He has to go to class. Because you are supposed to be in that class.

He walks into the lecture hall and immediately zeroes in on the fourth row, middle section.

Empty.

Dean’s jaw clenches. He drops into the seat next to yours, ignoring the sympathetic glances from a few girls in the row ahead. He stares at your empty desk for the entire fifty-minute lecture. You haven’t been to class all week.

“Hey, Dean?”

Dean blinks, snapping out of his daze as the lecture hall empties out. He looks up. Lacey, the co-captain of the cheer squad, is standing awkwardly by his desk. She looks nervous, her manicured fingers twisting the strap of her tote bag.

“What’s up, Lacey?” Dean asks, his voice flatter than he intends.

“It’s about Y/N,” Lacey says quietly, glancing over her shoulder as if she’s sharing state secrets. “Have you talked to her? Seen her?”

“No,” Dean admits, a cold spike of anxiety hitting his chest. “I texted her a few times, but she hasn’t answered. I figured she just wanted space. The funeral was … it was a lot.”

“I know,” Lacey says sympathetically. “But she hasn’t shown up to practice all week. Coach is starting to ask questions. I tried knocking on her door yesterday, but she didn’t answer. I’m just … I’m worried about her, Dean. She shouldn’t be alone right now.”

“She’s not answering her door?” Dean asks, standing up sharply.

“No,” Lacey shakes her head. “And her roommate moved into her boyfriend’s frat house for the week to give Y/N some privacy, so nobody has actually been inside the room since she got back from Wisconsin.”

“Fuck,” Dean mutters, dragging a hand through his hair. “Okay. Thanks, Lacey. I’ll handle it.”

He doesn’t wait for her response. He grabs his bag and takes the stairs two at a time, bursting out the doors of the academic building.

The walk to your dorm takes exactly eight minutes. Dean does it in four.

His heart is hammering against his ribs in a chaotic, uneven rhythm. Space is one thing. Grief is one thing. But radio silence for days, locked in an empty room? That isn’t just taking time to adjust.

He hits the third floor of the dorm building and strides down the hall, dodging a couple of guys tossing a lacrosse ball. He stops in front of Room 314 and knocks. Three sharp raps.

“Y/N? It’s Dean. Open up.”

Silence.

He knocks again, louder this time. “Come on, I know you’re in there. Lacey said your roommate is out for the week. Open the door.”

Nothing. Not a shuffle of feet, not a rustle of blankets. Nothing.

Panic, cold and sharp, slices straight through his veins.

Oh god. He digs frantically into his pocket, his fingers fumbling with his keychain. He, Beau, and you all swapped emergency keys sophomore year. He shoves the brass key into the lock, twists it, and throws the door open.

The room is completely pitch black. The heavy blackout curtains are drawn tight, blocking out every ounce of midday sun. The air is stale, thick, and smells faintly of sweat and something metallic.

“Y/N?” Dean asks, his voice cracking.

He flips the light switch.

You are a small, unmoving lump in the center of your bed.

Dean stops breathing. For one terrifying, heart-stopping second, his brain jumps to the absolute worst conclusion. You are too still. The silence in the room is too heavy. Did you take something? Was it on purpose? Did the grief finally swallow you whole and tell you the only way out was to follow your twin?

“No, no, no,” Dean chokes out, dropping his bag. He practically tackles the bed, his knees hitting the mattress hard. “Y/N! Hey!”

He grabs your shoulder and flips you onto your back.

Your eyes are open.

A massive, shuddering wave of relief crashes over Dean, making his head spin. You are breathing. The shallow rise and fall of your chest is there.

“Jesus Christ,” Dean gasps, pressing his forehead against the mattress beside your arm. He squeezes his eyes shut, trying to stop his hands from shaking. “You scared the absolute shit out of me.”

But you don’t respond.

Dean lifts his head, his relief evaporating instantly. You are staring straight up at the ceiling, but you aren’t looking at anything. Your eyes are completely vacant. Empty. Dead.

Your lips are chapped and peeling, your skin a sickly, translucent pale. There are deep, bruised hollows under your cheekbones, and your hair is tangled in a chaotic, matted mess around your face. You look like a ghost.

“Hey,” Dean whispers, his voice softening into something incredibly tender. He reaches out, gently brushing a strand of hair off your forehead. “I’m right here. I’m right here.”

You don’t blink. You don’t acknowledge him.

Dean’s heart physically aches. He knows exactly what this is. He’s been dancing on the edge of this exact void since the funeral. If it wasn’t for you — if it wasn’t for the desperate need to make sure you were okay — he would be face down on a sticky frat house floor right now, so high or so drunk he wouldn’t know his own name. He would be self-destructing in spectacular fashion.

But he can’t. He has to anchor you, which means he has to anchor himself. You are the only living piece of Beau he has left in this world.

Without hesitating, Dean kicks off his sneakers. He crawls fully onto the bed and lies down beside you. He wraps his arm securely around your waist, pulling your stiff, unresponsive body flush against his side. He tucks your head beneath his chin, wrapping his leg over yours to cage you in.

“I know,” Dean whispers into the crown of your head. He rubs his hand up and down your spine, feeling every single vertebrae through the thin cotton of your t-shirt. You’ve lost weight. In just a week, you’ve withered away. “I know it hurts. I know it feels like you can’t breathe.”

You blink slowly, but you don’t speak.

“I miss him too,” Dean says, his voice thickening. A tear slips down his cheek and lands in your hair. He doesn’t bother wiping it away. “God, I miss him so much I feel like I’m dying. But you’re not dying. I’m not going to let you.”

He lies there with you for a long time. The dorm room is silent except for the harsh sound of his own breathing and the agonizingly slow rhythm of yours. He traces soothing circles on your back, letting the warmth of his body seep into yours.

“Alright,” Dean finally says, his tone shifting. He sits up, gently untangling his limbs from yours. “Party’s over. You can’t rot in this bed forever.”

You don’t protest. You don’t do anything.

Dean grabs your hands and pulls you up into a sitting position. You flop forward like a ragdoll, your head resting against his chest.

“Come on,” he murmurs, wrapping his arms around you to keep you upright. “You need to get dressed. And you need to eat before you pass out and I have to call an ambulance. I don’t think either of us wants to deal with the Briar medical center today.”

He stands up, pulling you to your feet. Your legs buckle instantly.

Dean catches you effortlessly, lifting you slightly so your feet are barely touching the ground. “Whoa, okay. Easy. I got you.”

He guides you toward your closet. You lean heavily against his side, your bare feet dragging on the carpet.

“What do we want to wear?” Dean asks, opening the wardrobe. He talks to keep the silence at bay, forcing a casual lightness into his voice that he absolutely does not feel. “Sweatpants? Yeah, sweatpants feel right. High fashion is overrated anyway.”

He pulls out a pair of grey joggers and turns to look at you. You are staring blankly at the bottom of the closet.

“Okay, here,” Dean says gently. He crouches down. “Step in.”

He physically dresses you. He guides your legs into the sweatpants, pulls them up, and ties the drawstring. It’s intimately tragic. Two weeks ago, you would have slapped his hands away and called him a pervert for even being near your clothes. Today, you just let him maneuver you like a mannequin.

He stands up and reaches into the closet for a shirt, but your hand suddenly shoots out.

Your fingers, cold and trembling, latch onto the sleeve of a piece of clothing hanging in the back corner.

Dean freezes.

It’s a grey hoodie. Briar Football printed on the front. Beau’s hoodie.

Dean feels like someone has taken a baseball bat to his ribs. The sight of the fabric, the memory of Beau wearing it just a few weeks ago at a bonfire, laughing with a beer in his hand, is suffocating.

He wants to put it back. He wants to hide it. But he looks at your face. For the first time since he walked into the room, there is a flicker of emotion in your eyes. It’s raw, bleeding desperation.

“Okay,” Dean whispers, his voice completely wrecked. He reaches past you and unhooks the hoodie from the hanger. “Okay. Raise your arms.”

You lift your arms, and he pulls the heavy fabric over your head. The hoodie is massive on you. It swallows you whole, the sleeves hanging past your fingertips. The moment it’s on, you bring your knees to your chest and bury your nose in the collar, inhaling deeply.

A tiny, broken sob escapes your lips.

Dean swallows down the giant lump in his throat. He grabs a pair of your Ugg boots and slides them onto your feet.

“Let’s go,” he says softly.

He puts his arm around your waist, supporting most of your weight, and walks you out of the dorm.

***

Malone’s is packed. It’s prime lunchtime for the Briar athletic crowd, the air thick with the smell of cheap burgers, fryer grease, and loud conversations.

The moment the bell above the door jingles, announcing their arrival, heads turn.

Dean ignores them. He keeps a tight grip on your waist, steering you through the maze of tables toward a private booth in the far back corner. He slides you onto the vinyl seat, pushing you gently toward the wall so you’re tucked away safely, before sliding in right next to you. He doesn’t sit across the table. He sits beside you, his thigh pressed warmly against yours.

“Hey, Dean,” a waitress says, popping her gum as she approaches the table. Her eyes flick to you, her expression turning immediately sympathetic. Everyone on campus knows. “What can I get you guys?”

“Two waters,” Dean says, not looking at the menu. “And an order of loaded fries. The big basket. And a vanilla milkshake.”

“You got it,” she says softly, walking away.

Dean turns slightly in the booth to look at you. You are staring at the scuffed surface of the table, your hands tucked into the oversized sleeves of Beau’s hoodie.

“You’re going to eat,” Dean states. It’s not a question. “And you’re going to drink the entire milkshake. I’m not leaving until you do.”

You don’t respond.

A loud burst of laughter erupts from a table of frat guys a few booths down. One of them, a guy Dean vaguely recognizes from a business seminar, stands up to stretch and looks directly at your booth. He stares, his eyes lingering on your pale face and the oversized football hoodie. He nudges his buddy, pointing openly.

Dean’s blood turns to absolute ice.

“Hey,” Dean barks, his voice slicing through the diner chatter like a knife.

The frat guy blinks, looking at Dean.

Dean leans forward, his eyes narrowed into a lethal, terrifying glare. “Take a picture. It lasts longer. Or keep staring, and I’ll come over there and break your fucking nose. Your choice.”

The frat guy pales, quickly sitting down and turning his back. The surrounding tables suddenly get very quiet, everyone suddenly fascinated by their own food.

Dean exhales sharply, rolling his shoulders to bleed off the adrenaline. He turns back to you. You haven’t moved. You didn’t even flinch at his shouting.

The waitress quickly drops off the fries and the milkshake, avoiding eye contact with Dean before scurrying away.

“Alright,” Dean says softly, his voice dropping completely from the dangerous growl of a moment ago. He grabs a fry, dipping it in ketchup.

He holds it up to your mouth.

“Open,” he says.

You keep your lips pressed together, your eyes fixed on the table.

“Y/N, look at me,” Dean says, his tone firm but incredibly gentle.

Slowly, agonizingly, you lift your eyes. The emptiness in them is starting to crack, replaced by a deep, hollow exhaustion.

“I know everything tastes like ash right now,” Dean murmurs, holding the fry steady. “I know you don’t care if you starve. But I care. Beau cared. He would beat my ass if I let you waste away. So, open up. For me.”

You stare at him for a long, heavy second. Then, your lips part slightly.

Dean places the fry in your mouth. You chew mechanically, your jaw moving without any enthusiasm. It takes you an eternity to swallow.

“Good girl,” Dean whispers, grabbing the milkshake. He pushes the straw past your lips. “Drink.”

You take a small sip.

They sit there for an hour. Dean doesn’t touch a single fry for himself. He patiently, methodically hand-feeds you piece by piece, sip by sip, ignoring the curious and pitying stares from the rest of the diner. Whenever someone’s gaze lingers a little too long, Dean shoots them a look so murderous they immediately look away.

“I’m tired,” you whisper. It’s the first time you’ve spoken since the funeral. Your voice is raspy, unused, and incredibly fragile.

Dean’s heart stutters. He sets down the milkshake, moving his arm to wrap it around your shoulders. He pulls you against his side, tucking you into the crook of his arm.

“I know,” he says gently, resting his cheek on the top of your head. “I know, baby. I’ve got you.”

“He’s gone,” you say, a tear finally escaping and tracking through the dust on your cheek. “Dean, he’s really gone.”

“Yeah,” Dean says, his own throat burning. “He is.”

“What are we supposed to do?” You ask, turning your face to press into his shoulder. Your fingers grip his shirt, twisting the fabric. “How do we do this?”

“I don’t know,” Dean admits honestly, holding you tighter. He kisses your temple, his lips lingering against your skin. “I have no fucking clue. But we’re going to figure it out. Together. I promise you, Y/N. You are not doing this alone.”

And sitting there in the middle of the crowded diner, smelling like grease and grief, Dean realizes it’s the truest thing he’s ever said. You are his tether to the world now. And he will burn the entire campus down before he lets you slip away.

***

The sharp click of the lock tumbling in the door echoes through the quiet dorm room.

It’s eight in the morning, the sun brutally bright as it forces its way through the crack in your blackout curtains. You squeeze your eyes shut, pulling the heavy comforter up over your head. You don’t want to be awake. Being awake means remembering.

“Rise and shine, sweetheart,” a bright, unapologetically loud voice announces.

The comforter is suddenly ripped away, exposing you to the cold morning air. You shiver, curling into a tighter ball, pulling Beau’s oversized hoodie down over your hands.

“Go away, Dean,” you croak. Your voice sounds like sandpaper.

“Not a chance,” Dean says cheerfully.

The mattress dips as he sits down near your knees. You peek out from under your arms. He’s already fully dressed in dark wash jeans and a Briar Hockey t-shirt, his blond hair perfectly styled, looking infuriatingly awake.

“I brought a peace offering,” he says, holding up a plastic cup with a green siren logo. Condensation drips down the sides.

You blink at it. “What is that?”

“Icy, caffeinated heaven,” Dean replies, shaking the cup slightly so the ice clinks. “Venti iced brown sugar oat milk shaken espresso. Exactly the way you like it. I even bullied the barista into adding the extra cinnamon you always ask for.”

Your stomach gives a hollow twist, but the smell of the espresso wafting toward you does something to cut through the fog in your brain.

“I don’t want it,” you lie, turning your face into the pillow.

“Bullshit,” Dean counters smoothly. “Sit up, Y/N.”

“Dean, please,” you whisper, the exhaustion heavy in your bones. “I just want to sleep.”

“You slept all yesterday afternoon and all night,” Dean says, his tone shifting from playful to firm. “You’re getting up today. We have lecture in forty-five minutes.”

“I’m dropping that class,” you mutter into the pillow.

“No, you’re not.”

Before you can protest, Dean’s hands are on your arms, hauling you upright. You flop against his chest, dead weight. He chuckles softly, his chest vibrating against your cheek, and uses one arm to hold you up while he grabs the coffee with his free hand.

“Drink,” he orders, pressing the green straw to your lips.

You glare at him through half-open eyes, but you part your lips and take a sip. The hit of cold espresso, sweet brown sugar, and sharp cinnamon is incredible. It wakes up a tiny part of your brain that has been completely dormant for a week.

“There we go,” Dean praises, a satisfied smirk pulling at his mouth. He pulls the cup away. “Now, up. Go brush your teeth. Put on pants that don’t have a stain on the knee.”

“These are my depression sweatpants,” you argue weakly, looking down at the grey joggers he forced you into yesterday.

“They’re a tragedy to fashion, is what they are,” Dean deadpans. “Up. Now. Or I’ll literally carry you to the bathroom and brush your teeth for you. Do not test me, because I will do it.”

You look at him. His jaw is set, his green eyes completely serious despite the light tone. He isn’t going to let you rot. He is going to drag you back to the land of the living, kicking and screaming if he has to.

“Fine,” you sigh, pushing yourself off the bed on shaky legs. “You’re a tyrant.”

“I’m a visionary,” Dean corrects, handing you the coffee. “Ten minutes, Y/N. I’m timing you.”

***

The lecture hall is packed, the air thick with the smell of cheap body spray and stale coffee.

Dean steers you toward the middle row, his hand resting securely against the small of your back. You keep your head down, acutely aware of the glances thrown your way. You haven’t been back to class since the accident. You feel raw, like you’re walking around without a layer of skin.

You drop into your seat, pulling Beau’s hoodie tighter around yourself. Dean sits right next to you, his thigh pressing against yours. He slung his arm over the back of your chair the second he sat down, acting as a physical shield between you and the rest of the room.

“Just breathe,” Dean murmurs, leaning in close so only you can hear. “You’re doing great.”

Professor Higgins walks in a moment later, dropping a massive stack of papers onto his podium. He’s a terrifying, tenured man who takes his sociology lectures way too seriously.

“Alright, settle down,” Higgins barks, turning on the projector. “Last week, we discussed the functionalist perspective on societal norms. Who can summarize Durkheim’s concept of anomie?”

Silence descends over the room. Everyone suddenly avoids eye contact with the professor.

Higgins scans the room, his hawkish eyes darting from row to row. And then, horrifyingly, his gaze lands directly on you.

“Miss Maxwell,” Fowler says, his voice booming through the microphone. “Perhaps you can enlighten us. How does anomie relate to sudden structural changes in a person’s life?”

The air is instantly sucked out of your lungs.

Your heart hammers frantically against your ribs. Over two hundred students turn in their seats to look at you. The room feels incredibly small, the walls closing in. You open your mouth, but nothing comes out. Your brain is entirely blank. A sudden structural change. The sudden, violent severing of your other half. The irony of the question is so sharp it physically hurts.

Panic starts to rise in your throat, choking you.

Under the desk, a large, warm hand slips over yours.

Dean intertwines his fingers tightly with yours. He gives your hand a firm, grounding squeeze. His thumb strokes the back of your knuckles, a steady, rhythmic motion.

“You know this,” Dean whispers, his voice barely a breath against your ear. “You explained it to me last month when I almost failed the quiz. Normlessness. Disconnect.”

The sheer, solid weight of Dean sitting beside you, his hand anchoring you to the present, cuts through the rising panic. You swallow hard, forcing air into your lungs.

“Anomie,” you start, your voice trembling slightly before you force it to steady. “It’s … it’s a state of normlessness. Durkheim argued that when society experiences rapid change or disruption, the normal rules and social structures break down. People feel disconnected from their community and their sense of purpose, leading to psychological distress and a breakdown of social order.”

Professor Higgins stares at you for a long moment. Then, he gives a sharp, approving nod.

“Exactly, Miss Maxwell. A textbook definition,” Fowler says, turning back to the whiteboard. “Now, to apply this to modern institutional structures …”

The spotlight is off you. The students turn back around.

You let out a shaky exhale, slumping slightly in your chair.

Dean doesn’t let go of your hand. He keeps his fingers laced with yours for the entire fifty-minute lecture, his thumb lazily tracing circles on your skin. Every time you start to drift into the dark, pulling back into your grief, he gives your hand a gentle squeeze, reeling you back to him.

***

When classes finally end for the day, you walk out to Dean’s car expecting him to drive you back to your dorm.

Instead, he takes a left at the campus gates, heading off campus.

“Where are we going?” You ask, watching the familiar streets of Briar disappear.

“My place,” Dean says smoothly, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel to the rhythm of the radio.

“Dean, I just want to go to bed,” you protest, closing your eyes and leaning your head against the cool glass of the window.

“You’ve been in bed for a week,” Dean counters. “It’s bad for your muscles. Atrophy, Y/N. Science says so. Besides, Tucker is making his famous chicken parm for dinner, and if I don’t bring you, he’ll hold back my portion.”

“I don’t want to see people,” you whisper, the anxiety spiking again.

“They aren’t people, they’re just our idiot friends,” Dean says softly, throwing a quick glance your way. “They know what happened. Nobody’s going to ask you stupid questions or give you the pity eyes. I already threatened Logan with physical violence if he makes things weird.”

You let out a tiny, breathless huff that almost sounds like a laugh.

Ten minutes later, Dean pulls into the driveway of the off-campus house he shares with three of his teammates. The house is a chaotic mess of hockey gear, empty beer boxes, and mismatched furniture.

Dean unlocks the front door and ushers you inside.

“We’re here!” Dean yells, tossing his keys into a bowl by the door.

“In the kitchen!” A deep voice calls back.

Dean guides you down the hall and into the massive, open-concept kitchen. Tucker is standing at the stove, an apron tied over his t-shirt, stirring a pot of marinara sauce that smells absolutely divine. Logan and Garrett are sitting at the kitchen island, arguing over something on Logan’s phone.

They all stop when you walk in.

There’s a split second of heavy silence. You tense, waiting for the awkward condolences, the tilted heads, the sad smiles.

But then Garrett simply raises a hand. “Hey, Y/N.”

“Hey,” you manage to say, your voice quiet.

“Good, you’re here,” Tucker says, gesturing with a wooden spoon. “Tell Logan that a hotdog is legally considered a sandwich. He’s being deliberately ignorant.”

“It’s a piece of meat surrounded by bread,” Garrett argues immediately, pointing at Logan. “By definition, it’s a sandwich.”

“It’s a tube of mystery meat in a bun!” Logan protests, throwing his arms up. “A bun is not two slices of bread! If you ask for a sandwich and someone hands you a hotdog, you’d be pissed!”

“I would be thrilled, actually,” Dean chimes in, grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge and handing it to you. “Hotdogs are elite.”

“You’re all idiots,” you murmur, leaning against the counter beside Dean.

Logan grins, a completely normal, easy expression. “See? Y/N agrees with me. The tie-breaker has spoken.”

The tension you didn’t even realize you were holding completely bleeds out of your shoulders. Dean was right. They aren’t treating you like a piece of fragile glass. They’re just treating you like … you.

Tucker dishes out massive plates of chicken parmesan and pasta, forcing the largest portion directly in front of you. You manage to eat half of it, which is the most you’ve eaten in over a week. Dean sits beside you the entire time, seamlessly intercepting any questions directed your way if you take too long to answer, covering for you without making it obvious.

After dinner, you all migrate to the living room. It’s dominated by a massive, obscenely expensive leather sectional couch that Dean definitely paid for.

“Alright, hand over the remote,” Dean demands, vaulting over the back of the couch to land next to you.

“We were watching the game,” Garrett protests from the recliner.

“We’re watching something else,” Dean says, snatching the remote from the coffee table. He navigates to a streaming service and pulls up The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.

“Dude, really?” Logan groans, falling back onto the other end of the couch. “It’s Tuesday. Can we at least watch a movie?”

“Shut up, Logan,” Dean says comfortably, hitting play. “This is high-stakes drama. You learn a lot about human psychology from these women.”

“You just like watching rich people yell at each other at dinner parties,” Tucker points out, sitting on the floor with his back against the couch.

“Exactly,” Dean says, smirking.

He shifts on the couch, sprawling out and kicking his feet onto the coffee table. He casually drapes his arm along the back of the sofa, right behind your shoulders.

The episode starts, filled with immediate, ridiculous conflict about a stolen dress and a charity gala. It’s loud, colorful, and completely mindless.

“Wait,” Logan says ten minutes in, pointing at the screen. “Why is she mad? Didn’t she invite the other lady to the party?”

“She invited her as a formality,” Dean explains, not looking away from the TV. “She didn’t actually expect her to show up. It’s a power move.”

“That’s so passive-aggressive,” Garrett mutters, shaking his head. “Just drop the gloves and fight it out.”

“You can’t body-check someone at a charity gala, G,” Tucker laughs.

You sit quietly, listening to four massive, intimidating college hockey players aggressively analyze the social dynamics of middle-aged reality stars. The sheer absurdity of it chips away at the cold, dark wall surrounding your heart.

You let out a soft, genuine laugh when Logan vehemently defends one of the housewives for throwing a glass of wine.

Dean immediately looks at you. His eyes are soft, the corners crinkling just slightly. He doesn’t say anything, but his hand drops from the back of the couch, resting his palm warmly against your shoulder.

As the evening wears on, the exhaustion of the day finally catches up with you. The adrenaline of surviving classes and the heavy, carb-loaded dinner hit your system all at once.

The mindless arguing on the screen turns into a soft hum. The warmth of Dean sitting so close to you is intoxicating. Slowly, unconsciously, you tilt sideways. Your head comes to rest heavily against Dean’s shoulder.

Dean freezes for a fraction of a second. Then, he shifts his body entirely, angling himself to give you better access. He wraps his arm securely around your shoulders, pulling you firmly against his side.

You bury your face into his neck, the scent of his cologne — cedarwood and something uniquely, cleanly Dean — filling your senses. It’s so safe. It’s the safest you’ve felt since the phone call that destroyed your world.

Your eyes flutter shut, and for the first time in a week, you fall asleep without crying.

***

Dean wakes up to the quiet roll of the end credits playing on the TV screen.

The living room is empty. Garrett, Logan, and Tucker must have quietly headed upstairs to their rooms at some point, leaving just the soft glow of a lamp in the corner.

He looks down.

You are fast asleep against his chest. Your face is pressed into the crook of his neck, your soft breath puffing steadily against his skin. One of your hands is fisted loosely in his t-shirt. You look incredibly peaceful, the lines of grief completely smoothed out from your forehead.

Dean stares at you for a long time. His heart aches in a way that has nothing to do with Beau, and everything to do with you.

He gently shifts, sliding his arm under your knees and his other arm around your back. He stands up smoothly, lifting you against his chest. You are criminally light.

You stir slightly, mumbling something incoherent, but you don’t wake up. Your head falls against his shoulder, your face turning into his neck.

“I’ve got you,” Dean whispers, turning off the lamp with his elbow.

He carries you up the stairs, navigating the hallway to his bedroom at the end of the hall. He kicks the door open with his foot and steps inside. His room is surprisingly neat, a contrast to the rest of the house, dominated by a massive king-sized bed.

He walks over to the bed and gently lowers you onto the mattress. You immediately curl onto your side, pulling Beau’s hoodie tightly around yourself.

Dean pulls the heavy duvet back and tucks it over your shoulders. He stands by the edge of the bed, watching you sleep. He should go to the guest room. Or he should sleep on the couch downstairs. He knows that’s what a normal, respectful friend would do.

But Dean feels nothing close to normal right now. The thought of leaving you alone in this dark room, waking up in a panic not knowing where you are, makes his skin crawl.

Quietly, Dean strips off his jeans and his t-shirt, leaving just his boxer briefs.

He walks around to the other side of the king-sized bed and slides under the covers.

He keeps a respectful distance, lying on his back and staring up at the ceiling. The room is dead silent, save for the soft, rhythmic sound of your breathing. It’s a soothing, constant reminder that you are here, that you are breathing, that you are alive.

About twenty minutes later, a soft rustle comes from your side of the bed.

Dean turns his head.

You are seeking warmth. Still completely asleep, you roll across the mattress until you hit his side. You throw one leg over his, tangling your limbs together, and press your face flat against his bare chest. Your arm drapes over his stomach.

Dean’s breath hitches. He goes perfectly still, terrified of waking you.

But you just let out a soft sigh, settling deeper into him.

A heavy sense of peace washes over Dean. He slowly lifts his hand, wrapping his arm around you, resting his hand gently on your back. He pulls you just a fraction closer, letting his chin rest on top of your head.

He closes his eyes, matching the rhythm of his breathing to yours. And for the first time since he lost his best friend, Dean finally falls into a deep, dreamless sleep.

***

You wake up to the absolute pitch black of an unfamiliar room.

For a span of three seconds, your brain is blissfully, mercifully blank. You don’t know where you are. You don’t know what day it is. You are just a person waking up in a warm bed, wrapped in heavy, expensive-feeling sheets, with the steady rhythm of someone breathing beside you.

Then, the fourth second hits.

The memories do not trickle in; they crash over you like a tidal wave of ice water. The screech of tires. The polished mahogany casket. The smell of floor wax and white lilies. The suffocating, gaping hole in the center of your chest where your twin brother used to be.

Your breath hitches, a sharp, ragged sound that cuts through the silence of the room.

You open your eyes fully, staring up at the dark ceiling. You are in Dean’s room. You remember the diner. You remember Tucker’s chicken parmesan, and the ridiculous Housewives argument, and falling asleep on the couch.

And now, you are in Dean’s bed.

You turn your head slowly against the pillow. Dean is lying right beside you, on his back, his face turned slightly toward yours. In the faint sliver of moonlight slipping through the gap in the blinds, he looks completely different. The cocky, effortless charm is smoothed away by sleep. His jaw is relaxed, his blond hair completely mussed. One of his arms is draped casually across your waist, his large hand resting warm and heavy against your ribs.

The sheer intimacy of it should be jarring, but it isn’t. It just feels like a lifeline.

You swallow hard, fighting the familiar, toxic burn of tears building in the back of your throat. You don’t want to cry again. You are so tired of crying. Your eyes are swollen, your head is pounding, and every muscle in your body aches from the physical exertion of pure grief.

But the silence of the room is too loud. In the quiet, your brain starts supplying the highlight reel. Beau throwing a football perfectly spiraled directly into your hands. Beau laughing so hard beer came out of his nose at a frat party. Beau putting you in a headlock because you stole the last slice of pizza.

He’s gone. He’s really gone. The thought circles your mind, a relentless, vicious predator. You try to take a deep breath to quell the rising panic, but your chest feels too tight. It feels like someone is sitting on your lungs.

You need to anchor yourself. You need the noise to stop.

“Dean,” you whisper.

The sound is barely louder than a breath, incredibly hesitant. You shouldn’t wake him. He has done so much for you today — he fed you, he clothed you, he protected you from the stares on campus. He deserves to sleep.

You try to pull back, intending to slip out of the bed and go to the bathroom until the panic attack passes, but the moment you shift your weight, the heavy hand on your ribs tightens.

“I’m awake,” Dean says instantly.

His voice is rough and gravelly with sleep, but there is no grogginess in it. He opens his eyes, blinking rapidly for a second before his gaze locks onto yours in the dark. He shifts closer, his brow furrowing.

“What’s wrong?” He asks, his tone immediately dropping into that fierce, protective cadence. “Are you sick? Do you need water? What do you need?”

“No,” you say quickly, your voice trembling. “No, I’m … I’m okay. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

Dean lets out a short, dismissive breath. He rolls onto his side, propping his head up on his hand so he’s looking down at you. His other hand moves from your ribs to gently brush a tangled strand of hair away from your cheek.

“Don’t ever apologize for waking me up,” he says, his voice a low rumble in the quiet room. “Never. If you need me, you wake me. Understand?”

You nod, biting your lower lip hard enough to taste copper.

Dean studies your face in the shadows. He doesn’t press you. He just waits, his thumb gently tracing the line of your jaw, letting you find the words at your own pace.

“I woke up,” you finally whisper, your voice cracking completely, “and for three seconds, I forgot.”

Dean’s hand stills against your cheek.

“I forgot he was dead,” you continue, the tears finally spilling over, hot and fast down your temples and into your hairline. “I thought I was in my dorm. I thought tomorrow I was going to call him and complain about Professor Fowler. And then … and then I remembered.”

“Yeah,” Dean breathes out, the word sounding like it was scraped from the very bottom of his lungs.

“It happens every time,” you sob, bringing your hands up to press against your eyes, trying to physically hold the tears back. “Every time I fall asleep and wake up, I have to lose him all over again. I have to relive it every single morning. I don’t know how many more times I can do it, Dean. I can’t do it.”

“Hey. Look at me,” Dean says, gently but firmly pulling your hands away from your face. “Look at me, Y/N.”

You open your wet eyes.

Dean’s face is entirely stripped of the Briar hockey star persona. There is no smirk, no arrogant confidence. He just looks completely broken. His eyes are shining in the dim light, wet with his own unshed tears.

“It happens to me too,” Dean whispers, his voice thick with emotion. “I wake up, and my first thought is always to text him. Yesterday, I saw a stupid meme about Tom Brady, and I literally pulled up his contact in my phone before my brain caught up with reality. I stared at his name for twenty minutes.”

You let out a jagged, broken sound, your fingers wrapping tightly around Dean’s wrist.

“It’s not fair,” you cry, the anger finally bleeding into the grief. “It’s not fucking fair, Dean.”

“I know,” he says, his voice breaking.

“He was twenty-two!” You say, your voice rising in the quiet room. You don’t care who hears you. You don’t care if you wake up Tucker or Garrett or Logan. You just need to get the poison out of your system. “He was twenty-two years old! He was supposed to get drafted! He was supposed to play in the NFL and buy our parents a stupidly huge house and get married and have annoying, athletic little kids! He was supposed to be here!”

“He was,” Dean agrees, a tear finally tracking down his own cheek. He doesn’t bother wiping it away.

“Why him?” You sob, your chest heaving with the force of your breakdown. “Why did it have to be him? Why couldn’t it have been … I don’t know, anybody else? Why did he have to get in the passenger seat?”

“Stop,” Dean says softly, sliding his arm completely under you and pulling you flush against his chest. “Stop doing that to yourself. You can’t play the what if game. It’ll eat you alive.”

“I want to trade,” you repeat the same desperate plea you screamed at the church, burying your face into his bare chest. “I’d give anything. I’d give my own life right now if it meant he could come back.”

“Don’t say that,” Dean chokes out, his arms wrapping around you like a vice. He buries his face in your hair, his own shoulders starting to shake. “Don’t ever fucking say that, Y/N. I can’t lose you too. I can’t.”

The raw, desperate agony in his voice shatters whatever remaining defenses you have.

You break.

You fully, completely break down. The quiet, polite sobbing of the last week turns into ugly, chest-heaving wails. You fist your hands in the sheets behind Dean’s back, clinging to him like he is the only solid object in a world made of quicksand.

And Dean breaks right along with you.

The guy who always has a joke, the guy who never lets anything touch him, the guy who floats through life on charm and trust funds, finally lets the dam burst. He cries against your neck, harsh, racking sobs that shake his entire massive frame.

You hold him, and he holds you.

You mourn the boy who was supposed to be your forever partner in crime. He mourns the brother he chose.

You cry for the empty seat at graduation. You cry for the Thanksgiving dinners that will never be the same. You cry for the locker room that will be entirely too quiet, and the passenger seat that will always be empty.

You cry until your throat is completely raw and your eyes burn like fire. You cry until there are physically no more tears left in your body, leaving you hollow and incredibly light-headed.

The room is filled only with the sound of your combined, ragged breathing.

Dean slowly pulls back just enough to look at you. His eyes are bloodshot, his cheeks streaked with wetness. He sniffs deeply, wiping his face with the back of his hand before reaching out to gently wipe the tears off your cheeks with his thumbs.

“You’re right,” Dean says, his voice a raspy whisper. “It isn’t fair. It’s the most unfair, fucked up, bullshit thing that has ever happened. And it sucks. It completely, totally sucks.”

You let out a watery, exhausted laugh. “It really does.”

“I’m so angry,” Dean confesses, his jaw tightening. He traces the shell of your ear, his touch grounding. “I’m so fucking angry at the world. I’m angry at the snow. I’m angry at that stupid deer. I’m angry at people walking around campus laughing like the world didn’t just end.”

“Me too,” you whisper, closing your eyes and leaning into his touch. “I hate them all right now.”

“We can hate them together,” Dean says without missing a beat. “We’ll be terrible, bitter people. We’ll throw things at happy couples. We’ll key cars. Whatever you want.”

You laugh again, the sound weak but real. It feels bizarre to laugh. It feels like a betrayal, but at the same time, it feels like the first full breath of air you’ve taken in a week.

Dean’s face hardens, his expression turning completely serious. He shifts closer, pressing his forehead gently against yours.

“Listen to me,” Dean says, his voice dropping an octave, carrying a weight that completely demands your attention. “I know I can’t fix this. I know I can’t bring him back, and I know I can’t make it stop hurting.”

You look into his eyes, inches from your own.

“But you are not doing this alone,” Dean vows, his words fiercely determined. “You hear me? You are stuck with me, Y/N. For as long as it takes. For the rest of our lives, if that’s what you need. I don’t care if it’s three in the morning and you need to scream, or if it’s middle of the day and you need someone to just sit in the dark with you. You call me. I will always answer. You will always have me.”

The sincerity in his eyes is blinding. It’s not a platitude. It’s not empty comfort. It’s a blood oath.

Your heart, bruised and battered, swells painfully in your chest.

“Okay,” you whisper, your voice trembling with a new wave of emotion.

You slide your hands up his chest, wrapping your arms around his neck, and pull yourself closer until there is absolutely no space between you. You bury your face in the crook of his neck, breathing in the scent of him.

“And you have me,” you promise, your words muffled against his skin but entirely resolute. “I know you’re hurting too, Dean. You don’t have to pretend to be strong all the time for my sake. When you need to break down, you come to me. Okay? Promise me.”

Dean lets out a long, shuddering exhale, his arms wrapping tightly around your waist, locking you against him.

“I promise,” he murmurs into your hair.

The heavy, suffocating weight that has been crushing you since the accident doesn’t disappear. You know it won’t. The grief is going to be there tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that. It’s a scar you will carry forever.

But lying there, tangled in the sheets with Dean, the weight shifts. It stops feeling like a boulder crushing your chest, and starts feeling like something you can actually carry. Because you aren’t carrying it alone anymore.

“Go back to sleep, Y/N,” Dean whispers, his hand lazily stroking up and down your spine, a repetitive, soothing motion. “I’ve got you. I’m right here.”

“Don’t let go,” you murmur, your eyes heavy with emotional exhaustion.

“Never,” Dean replies instantly.

You close your eyes, listening to the steady, strong beating of his heart under your ear. The fear of waking up to the nightmare is still there, but the terror is gone.

For the first time since the world ended, you drift off to sleep feeling entirely, completely safe.

***

Grief is not a straight line.

It doesn’t slowly fade out like the ending of a sad movie. It comes in waves. Some days, you wake up and the air feels light, and you can almost convince yourself that things are normal. Other days, the ghost of your brother is so heavy you can barely pull yourself out of bed.

But as the brutal winter bleeds into a messy, slushy spring, the good days slowly start to outnumber the bad ones. And the main reason for that is the six-foot-two hockey player who absolutely refuses to let you sink.

Dean is a constant. He is the first text you read in the morning and the last voice you hear at night.

The buzzer blares through the Briar ice arena, signaling the end of the second period. The crowd erupts into a deafening roar.

You stand up, cheering along with the rest of the student section as the Briar Hawks skate off the ice. Down below, Dean pulls his helmet off. His blond hair is soaked with sweat, his face flushed with adrenaline. He glances up toward the stands, his green eyes scanning the sea of blue and white until they lock onto you.

He shoots you a quick, cocky wink before disappearing into the tunnel.

A warm flutter erupts in your stomach. It’s a new feeling, one that has been slowly building over the last few months, completely distinct from the safe, platonic comfort he offered in the beginning. You actively try to ignore it, terrified of ruining the most important relationship you have left, but Dean makes it incredibly difficult.

“He’s staring again,” Lacey says, nudging your shoulder as you both sit back down on the cold bleachers.

“He’s just making sure I didn’t leave to get nachos without him,” you deflect, pulling your jacket tighter around yourself.

Lacey raises a perfectly manicured eyebrow. “Right. Because guys totally look at their platonic friends like they want to devour them whole on center ice. Sure.”

“Shut up,” you laugh, shoving her arm playfully.

“I’m just saying,” Lacey sing-songs, leaning back. “It’s been four months. You practically live at his house. Everyone sees it, Y/N.”

You look down at your hands, tracing the seam of your jeans. “It’s complicated, Lacey. We’re just … we’re surviving together. We lost Beau.”

“I know,” Lacey’s voice softens instantly. She reaches out and squeezes your knee. “And I’m not minimizing that. But you’re allowed to live, too. You’re allowed to be happy.”

You nod slowly, your eyes drifting down to the empty ice.

Happiness feels like a complicated concept these days. It used to be so simple. It used to be standing on the sidelines of the football turf, shaking pompoms while Beau threw a perfect spiral down the field.

You haven’t touched a pompom since the funeral.

The first time you tried to go back to a cheer practice, they were holding it on the indoor turf. You took one step onto the artificial grass, saw the goalposts, and immediately threw up in a nearby trash can. The panic attack that followed lasted for two hours. The realization was sharp and undeniable: you could not cheer for a football team that didn’t have Beau Maxwell leading it. It felt wrong. It felt like a betrayal.

So, you quit.

It broke your heart a little more, losing another piece of your identity, but Dean was right there to pick up the pieces.

***

“You don’t have to do it,” Dean had said, sitting on the floor of your dorm room while you cried over your folded uniform.

“But I love it,” you hiccuped, wiping your eyes aggressively. “I love tumbling. I love the girls. I just can’t look at that field.”

“So tumble somewhere else,” Dean said simply, taking the uniform from your hands and tossing it onto the desk. “Briar has an Acrobatics and Tumbling team. They do meets in the gym. No turf. No footballs. Just you guys flipping around like ninjas. I saw a flyer by the athletic office today. Tryouts are next week.”

You had looked at him, completely stunned by the casual, practical solution. “You read flyers?”

“Only when they involve girls in spandex,” he smirked, the joke landing perfectly, pulling a wet laugh out of you.

***

He went with you to the tryouts. He sat in the top row of the bleachers, doing homework while you flipped and vaulted across the mat. When you made the team, he bought you a celebratory milkshake and forced Logan, Tucker, and Garrett to listen to him brag about how high you could jump.

The third period of the hockey game ends with a resounding Briar victory.

You wait outside the locker room twenty minutes later, leaning against the cinderblock wall. The door swings open, and a blast of hot water, damp towels, and cheap body wash rolls out.

Dean steps into the hallway, a heavy black duffel bag slung over his shoulder. He’s wearing dark jeans and a tight black t-shirt, his hair still slightly damp from the showers. The moment he sees you, the tired line of his shoulders relaxes.

“Hey,” he says, stepping into your personal space. He reaches out, casually tugging on the zipper of your jacket. “Did you see my assist in the third?”

“I did,” you smile, tilting your head up to look at him. “It was almost as impressive as the way you completely face-planted into the boards in the second.”

Dean scoffs, pressing a hand to his chest in mock offense. “That was a tactical maneuver. I was distracting the goalie.”

“Right. Very stealthy,” you laugh.

“Come on,” Dean says, sliding his hand down your arm to casually interlace his fingers with yours. It’s a natural, effortless movement. He does it all the time now. “Tucker has a celebratory brisket in the crockpot. If we don’t hurry, Logan is going to eat half of it and feed the rest to the stray cat he refuses to admit he’s adopted.”

You let him pull you down the hallway, the warmth of his hand seeping into yours.

The house is already loud when you walk in. Music is playing from a Bluetooth speaker in the kitchen, and the smell of slow-cooked meat fills the air.

“The king has arrived!” Logan shouts from the living room, holding a beer in the air.

“And he brought Y/N, so try to use polysyllabic words tonight, Logan,” Garrett quips from the kitchen counter.

“I know big words,” Logan argues, tossing a throw pillow at Garrett. “Photosynthesis. Boom.”

You laugh, dropping your bag by the door. You walk into the kitchen, immediately moving to the island where Tucker is slicing brisket. Without asking, Tucker plates a massive portion and slides it across the counter to you.

“Thanks, Tuck,” you say, grabbing a fork.

“Eat up,” Tucker says, giving you a warm smile. “You got a meet on Saturday. Need fuel.”

“Wait, the meet is Saturday?” Logan asks, jogging into the kitchen. “What time?”

“Two o’clock,” you answer through a mouthful of food.

“I’m in,” Logan says, grabbing a beer from the fridge. “I love watching you throw people in the air. It’s violent. I respect it.”

“We’re all going,” Garrett adds, stealing a piece of brisket off your plate. “We don’t have a game until next weekend.”

You look around the kitchen at the massive, intimidating hockey players who have somehow adopted you as their own over the last four months. They don’t walk on eggshells around you anymore. They treat you like a little sister, relentlessly teasing you, eating your food, and showing up unconditionally when you need them.

You catch Dean’s eye across the kitchen. He is leaning against the refrigerator, watching you with a soft, affectionate expression. He raises his beer bottle to you in a silent, private toast.

You smile back, the flutter in your stomach returning full force.

Hours later, the house finally quiets down.

Garrett went to his girlfriend’s dorm, and Tucker and Logan retired to their rooms after a highly competitive, aggressively loud game of Mario Kart that you ultimately won.

You and Dean are left alone in the living room.

The TV is playing a muted rerun of a sitcom. You are sitting on the floor, your back pressed against the front of the leather couch, your legs stretched out over the rug. Dean is sitting on the couch right behind you.

“I think Logan actually cried when you hit him with the banana peel,” Dean muses, his voice low and raspy in the quiet room.

“He deserved it,” you say, resting your head back against the cushion. “He bumped my kart into the lava on Bowser’s Castle. I hold grudges.”

Dean chuckles. You feel the vibration of it against the back of your head.

Slowly, his hands come up to rest on your shoulders. He begins to gently massage the tense muscles at the base of your neck. You let out a soft groan, your eyes fluttering shut as his thumbs press into a particularly tight knot.

“You’re tense,” he murmurs, shifting closer so his knees are bracketing your waist.

“Acro practice was brutal yesterday,” you sigh, leaning entirely into his touch. “We’re working on a new pyramid. I got dropped twice.”

Dean’s hands pause. “You got dropped?”

“Onto a mat,” you clarify quickly, opening your eyes and tilting your head back to look at him upside down. “It’s fine, Dean. It’s part of the sport.”

His green eyes are dark, his brow slightly furrowed in that protective way you’ve grown to recognize instantly. “Tell your bases to stop dropping you, or I’m going to show up to practice and have a polite conversation with them.”

“Please don’t,” you laugh softly. “A polite conversation with you usually involves a terrifying glare and a subtle threat of physical harm.”

“It’s highly effective,” Dean points out, his hands resuming their slow, rhythmic massage.

The room lapses into a comfortable, thick silence. The only sound is the low hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen and the quiet dialogue from the muted TV.

You stare up at the ceiling, feeling an overwhelming sense of peace. You miss Beau. The ache is still there, a hollow cavity in your chest that will never fully close. But it doesn’t consume you anymore. It doesn’t stop you from breathing.

“Thank you,” you say quietly into the dimly lit room.

Dean’s hands slow down. “For what?”

“For this,” you say, gesturing vaguely around the room. “For making them go to my meet on Saturday. For checking on me. For … just not letting me drown.”

Dean goes entirely still. Then, he shifts, sliding off the couch to sit on the floor right beside you. He folds his long legs, turning his body so he’s facing you completely.

The playful, relaxed energy that was hovering between you dissipates, replaced by something suddenly heavy and incredibly charged.

“I didn’t do it as a favor, Y/N,” Dean says, his voice losing any trace of humor. He looks at you, his gaze intense and searching. “I did it because I wanted to. Because you’re important to me.”

“I know,” you whisper, suddenly acutely aware of how close he is sitting. You can feel the heat radiating off his body. You can smell the mint of his toothpaste and the faint trace of his cologne.

“Do you?” Dean asks, leaning slightly closer. His eyes drop down to your lips for a fraction of a second before snapping back up to your eyes.

Your breath catches in your throat.

The air in the room suddenly feels entirely too thin. The platonic line you have both been carefully walking on for months is suddenly nowhere to be found. It’s been erased, completely obliterated by the intense, burning look in his eyes.

“Dean,” you breathe out, his name sounding more like a question than a statement.

He reaches out, his large hand gently cupping the side of your face. His thumb traces the line of your cheekbone, his touch feather-light but sending a violent shockwave of electricity straight down your spine.

“I’ve been trying to be good,” Dean whispers, his voice dropping into a rough, strained register. His eyes are locked onto yours, completely vulnerable. “I’ve been trying so damn hard to just be the guy you need. The friend. The shoulder to cry on.”

“You are,” you say quickly, your heart hammering against your ribs.

“But I want more,” Dean confesses, the words tumbling out like he can’t hold them back anymore. He leans in closer, his forehead almost resting against yours. “God, Y/N. I look at you, and it’s all I can think about. I want to hold your hand, and I don’t want to let go. I want to take you on terrible, cliché dates. I want to kiss you so badly I’m losing my mind.”

You stare at him, completely paralyzed.

For months, you convinced yourself that the small touches, the lingering looks, the fierce protectiveness was just trauma. It was just two broken people clinging to each other because they were the only ones who understood the pieces.

But looking at him now, feeling the frantic, desperate pounding of your own heart, you realize it’s not trauma at all. It hasn’t been for a long time.

“Then kiss me,” you whisper.

Dean exhales a sharp, shaking breath. He doesn’t hesitate.

He leans the rest of the way in, his lips brushing against yours. It’s incredibly gentle at first, a soft, hesitant question. You close your eyes and let out a tiny gasp, your hands coming up to grip the front of his henley.

The moment your fingers twist into his shirt, the hesitation vanishes.

Dean groans, a low, guttural sound, and pulls you flush against his chest. His hand slides into your hair, tilting your head back to deepen the kiss. It’s messy and desperate and completely overwhelming. The taste of him is intoxicating. Every ounce of suppressed emotion, every stolen glance over the last four months, pours into the space between you.

You kiss him back just as fiercely, wrapping your arms around his neck, anchoring yourself to him. He tastes like mint and beer and something distinctly, perfectly Dean. His other hand drops to your waist, gripping you tightly, pulling you so close you can feel the heavy thud of his heartbeat against your own chest.

It feels like waking up. It feels like stepping out of a freezing room and into the sun.

When you finally break apart, you are both gasping for air.

Dean rests his forehead against yours, his eyes closed, his chest heaving. His hand remains tangled in your hair, his thumb stroking behind your ear in a repetitive, soothing motion.

“Wow,” you whisper, completely breathless.

Dean lets out a short, rough laugh. He opens his eyes, looking down at you with an expression so open and raw it makes your chest ache.

But then, the smile fades. He pulls back just slightly, creating an inch of space between you. His jaw sets, a serious, almost anxious look crossing his features.

“Y/N, listen to me,” Dean says, his voice completely level. “I need you to know something. And I need you to actually hear me.”

You blink, confused by the sudden shift in tone. “Okay.”

Dean brings both his hands up, framing your face delicately. “I didn’t do this because I’m sad. I didn’t do this because I’m confusing grief with something else, or because you’re Beau’s sister, or because we bonded over a tragedy.”

You swallow hard, holding his intense gaze.

“I did this because I like you,” Dean states firmly, articulating every single word. “I like you. I like how fiercely you argue about reality TV. I like how you refuse to give up when things get hard. I like that you joined a completely different sport just so you wouldn’t have to quit entirely. You are the strongest, most incredible person I’ve ever met.”

Tears, completely unbidden, prick at the corners of your eyes. But this time, they aren’t tears of grief.

“I’m not trying to replace him,” Dean whispers, his thumb brushing a stray tear off your cheek. “I know neither of us ever can. But I want to be here for you. As yours. If you’ll have me.”

The absolute sincerity in his voice strips away any lingering doubts. He isn’t holding onto you to keep a piece of his best friend alive. He’s holding onto you because he wants you.

You reach up, placing your hands over his where they rest on your cheeks.

“I’m not doing this out of grief, either,” you tell him, your voice steady and incredibly sure. “You didn’t just save me, Dean. You made me want to actually live again. I look forward to waking up because I know I’m going to see you.”

A breath shuddering out of Dean’s chest, his shoulders dropping a massive weight.

“I like you,” you confess, a bright, genuine smile finally breaking across your face. “I’ve liked you for a really long time. I was just too terrified to admit it.”

Dean’s trademark, cocky smirk slowly returns, lighting up his entire face. “Well, to be fair, I am incredibly charming. It was only a matter of time.”

You roll your eyes, slapping his chest lightly. “And the arrogance ruins the moment.”

“I haven’t ruined anything,” Dean laughs, leaning in again.

He kisses you softly, lingering on your bottom lip before pulling back just enough to speak against your mouth.

“I’m going to take you on a date,” he murmurs. “A real one. I’m going to open doors and pay for an overpriced dinner and everything.”

“I look forward to it,” you whisper back.

“Good,” Dean says. He wraps his arms completely around you, pulling you into his lap. You go willingly, curling against his chest, tucking your head under his chin.

He holds you tightly, resting his cheek against the top of your head. The TV drones on in the background, the house perfectly quiet around you.

For the first time in months, you don’t think about what you lost. You don’t think about the empty passenger seat or the quiet dorm room.

You just sit there, wrapped in the arms of the boy who held you together until you were strong enough to hold yourself, and realize that out of the absolute worst tragedy of your life, you somehow found your future.

***

“Hold still, sweetheart. Your tassel is completely tangled.”

Your mother’s hands are warm, slightly trembling, as she fusses with the black mortarboard on your head. You stand in the middle of your dorm room suffocating under the heavy, unforgiving polyester of your graduation gown.

“Mom, it’s fine,” you say gently, reaching up to cover her hands with yours. “It’s just going to blow around in the wind anyway.”

Your mother stops. She looks at you, her eyes already shining with unshed tears. She offers a tight, fragile smile and smooths her hands down your shoulders. “I know. I just want it to be perfect. You look so beautiful.”

“She looks like a giant bat,” Joanna announces from the doorway, leaning against the frame with a cup of coffee in her hand. “A very smart, educated bat, but a bat nonetheless.”

“Ignore your sister,” your dad says, walking into the room. He’s been out of the neck brace for over a year now, though his movements are still careful and deliberate. He looks sharp in a navy suit, his eyes crinkling at the corners as he takes you in. “You look perfect, kiddo. I am incredibly proud of you.”

You swallow down the sudden, thick lump in your throat. “Thanks, Dad.”

The front door swings open without a knock, the hinges squeaking loudly.

“Delivery for the graduate!” A bright, booming voice calls out.

Dean strolls into the living room, completely bypassing the concept of personal boundaries, as usual. He is also wearing his graduation gown, though he wears it unzipped over a tailored charcoal suit. He holds a massive bouquet of blush pink peonies.

“Dean, honey!” Your mom gasps, immediately stepping away from you to pull him into a tight hug. “You look so handsome.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Maxwell,” Dean says smoothly, hugging her back with one arm and handing her the flowers with the other. “I clean up alright. Though the hat is doing terrible things to my hair.”

“Your hair is indestructible, Di Laurentis,” Joanna snorts, taking a sip of her coffee.

“Jealousy is an ugly color on you, Jo,” Dean shoots back with a perfectly executed smirk.

He steps past your mother and walks right up to you. The playful arrogance drops from his face the second he meets your eyes. He reaches out, his knuckles brushing lightly against your cheek.

“Hey,” he murmurs, his voice dropping an octave, meant entirely for you.

“Hey,” you whisper back.

“You doing okay?” He asks, his eyes searching yours for any sign of a crack.

Graduation day. The day you and Beau talked about since you were freshmen. The day you were supposed to take thousands of ridiculous pictures together, throwing your caps in the air and spraying cheap champagne on the lawn.

“I’m okay,” you say honestly, giving him a small, reassuring smile. “It’s heavy. But I’m okay.”

Dean leans in and presses a soft, lingering kiss to your forehead. “I’m right beside you today. Every step.”

***

The football stadium is packed. Thousands of parents, grandparents, and siblings fill the bleachers, fanning themselves with commencement programs under the late spring sun.

You sit in the folding chairs on the field, surrounded by a sea of black gowns. Dean is twelve rows ahead of you, seated in the D section, but he turns around every five minutes to catch your eye and flash a ridiculous, exaggerated thumbs-up.

The heat is sweltering, and the speeches drag on. The valedictorian talks about the future, the dean of students talks about perseverance, and the university president talks about the legacy of the graduating class.

You tune most of it out, your fingers twisting the fabric of your gown.

Then, the tone of the ceremony shifts. The university president steps back up to the podium, adjusting his glasses. The low murmur of the crowd immediately quiets down.

“Before we begin conferring the degrees for the graduating class,” the president says, his voice echoing through the massive stadium speakers, “Briar University would like to take a moment to honor a student who is not sitting on the field with us today.”

Your breath hitches. Your heart starts hammering a frantic, heavy rhythm against your ribs.

“Beau Maxwell was a vibrant, exceptional part of our campus community,” the president continues. “He was a leader on the field, a dedicated student in the classroom, and a beloved friend to many. Though his time with us was tragically cut short, his impact on this university remains profound.”

A heavy, solemn silence blankets the stadium.

“Today, we are honored to award Beau Maxwell a posthumous honorary degree,” the president announces. “Accepting on his behalf is his sister.”

The crowd erupts into applause.

It isn’t polite, golf-clap applause. It is thunderous. Down in the front rows, the entire Briar football team stands up, their cheers echoing across the turf.

You stand up, your legs trembling so violently you aren’t sure they will hold you.

“You’ve got this,” Lacey whispers from the seat next to you, giving your hand a tight squeeze.

You step out into the aisle. The walk to the stage feels like walking underwater. The applause roars in your ears, a beautiful, devastating sound. You keep your eyes locked on the wooden stairs leading up to the platform.

You walk up the steps, the heat of the sun beating down on your black cap. The university president meets you halfway across the stage, holding a leather-bound diploma cover.

He hands it to you with a gentle, sympathetic smile. “Congratulations, Miss Maxwell. He would be very proud.”

“Thank you,” you whisper, clutching the leather tightly against your chest.

You turn to face the crowd. You look down at the front row of the bleachers. Your dad is crying, unabashedly wiping tears from his cheeks while your mom holds onto his shoulder, openly sobbing. Joanna has her hand over her mouth.

Then, you look down at the graduates on the field.

Dean is standing up. He is the only one in his section on his feet, clapping entirely entirely too hard, staring at you with an expression of such raw, overwhelming pride it completely knocks the breath out of your lungs.

A single tear slips down your cheek. You grip Beau’s diploma, close your eyes for a fraction of a second, and send a silent, desperately aching thought up into the sky. We did it, B.

You walk down the opposite set of stairs.

You don’t even make it back to the aisle before Dean is there. He slipped out of his row, ignoring the ushers, and meets you at the bottom of the steps.

He doesn’t say a word. He just pulls you into his chest, wrapping his arms securely around your shoulders. You bury your face into his neck, letting out a single, shaky breath against his collarbone.

“I’ve got you,” Dean murmurs, kissing the top of your head. “I’m right here.”

***

The rest of the ceremony moves smoothly.

You sit back in your seat, holding Beau’s diploma in your lap, watching the Ds get called.

“Dean Di Laurentis,” the announcer booms.

Dean struts across the stage like he completely owns the space, flashing a blinding, camera-ready smile as he shakes the president’s hand. From somewhere near the back, Logan, Garrett, and Tucker let out a series of deafening, aggressive whoops.

“That’s our boy!” Logan screams at the top of his lungs.

Dean laughs, grabbing his diploma and pointing directly at the hockey section before his eyes scan the field, finding you. He winks.

Thirty minutes later, they hit the Ms.

You walk across the stage for the second time today. This time, the weight on your chest is lighter. You accept your own diploma, smiling genuinely for the photographer. As you walk down the stairs, you hear Dean’s voice cutting through the crowd.

“Yeah, baby! That’s my girl!”

You shake your head, laughing under your breath as you walk back to your seat.

***

Dinner that night is a spectacular, chaotic collision of your two worlds.

Dean’s parents booked a massive private dining room at a high-end Italian restaurant downtown. The mahogany table easily fits both your family, the Di Laurentises, and somehow, Logan, Garrett, and Tucker, who simply invited themselves and refused to take no for an answer.

“I’m just saying,” Logan argues loudly, waving a breadstick at Dean’s father, “if you’re a corporate lawyer, you basically argue for a living, right?”

Peter Di Laurentis throws his head back and laughs loudly. “That is a severe oversimplification, Logan, but yes. Essentially.”

“See? I’m practically a lawyer,” Logan declares, biting into the breadstick.

“You failed Business Ethics twice, Logan,” Garrett points out dryly, taking a sip of wine.

“Ethics are subjective,” Logan dismisses immediately.

You sit between Dean and your dad, watching the beautiful chaos unfold. Your mother is deep in conversation with Dean’s mother, discussing the horrors of trying to find good tailoring, completely bonded over their shared fussiness. Joanna is mercilessly roasting Tucker for his terrible taste in country music, and Tucker looks completely thrilled by the attention.

Dean slides his hand under the table, resting his palm warmly against your bare thigh. He traces soothing, absent circles with his thumb, completely relaxed as he leans back in his chair.

“This is nice,” you murmur, leaning closer to him.

Dean turns his head, his green eyes soft in the dim lighting of the restaurant. “Yeah? Not too overwhelming?”

“No,” you say truthfully, looking around the table. “It’s exactly what I needed. It feels … full.”

Dean’s gaze drops to your mouth for a second before he looks back into your eyes. He squeezes your thigh affectionately. “Good.”

“Dean, pass the burrata, will you?” Your dad asks from your other side.

“Absolutely, sir,” Dean says, leaning forward to hand the plate over.

“And drop the sir, kid,” your dad adds, smiling warmly. “I think we’re past that.”

Dean smiles, a genuine, uncocky expression. “You got it, Mr. Maxwell.”

Your dad chuckles, accepting the plate.

The dinner lasts for hours, filled with multiple toasts, entirely too much wine, and endless storytelling. They toast to your graduation, to Dean’s, to the future. And halfway through the night, your dad raises his glass, his hand perfectly steady.

“To Beau,” your dad says, his voice thick but strong. “He’s the brightest star in the sky tonight.”

“To Beau,” the entire table echoes, raising their glasses.

You clink your water glass against Dean’s wine glass. You don’t cry. The ache is there, a phantom limb that you will always carry, but surrounded by the people who love him, the love you feel for your brother completely overshadows the grief.

***

By eleven o’clock, the families have gone back to their respective hotels, and the hockey boys have gone out to terrorize a local bar.

You are sitting in the passenger seat of Dean’s car, completely exhausted but utterly content. The streetlights wash over the interior of the car in rhythmic, yellow flashes.

Dean pulls up to a red light and shifts the car into park. He turns to look at you.

“You look tired,” he observes softly, reaching over to run his knuckles down your cheek.

“I am,” you admit, leaning into his touch. “It was a long day. A good day, but long.”

“Do you want to go home?” He asks, his thumb brushing over your bottom lip. “I can take you back to your dorm. Or my place.”

You think about the quiet of your dorm, or the massive emptiness of his house without the roommates there. Neither sounds right.

“Actually,” you say, a slow smile spreading across your face. “I’m kind of hungry.”

Dean raises an eyebrow. “You just ate half a pound of handmade pasta.”

“I stress-ate pasta,” you correct him. “Now I’m actually hungry. For garbage.”

Dean barks out a laugh, shaking his head as the light turns green. He shifts back into drive. “Garbage, huh? Your wish is my command.”

Ten minutes later, Dean pulls into the familiar, pothole-riddled parking lot of Malone’s.

The neon sign is buzzing loudly in the cool night air. The diner is practically empty at this hour, save for a couple of truckers in the booths by the window and a tired-looking waitress wiping down the counter.

You walk inside, the bell jingling above the door. Dean doesn’t even hesitate. He walks straight to the back corner, sliding into the exact same vinyl booth you sat in all those months ago. You slide in right next to him, pressing your hip against his.

It feels like a lifetime has passed since that day.

The waitress walks over, pulling a notepad from her apron. She does a double-take, looking at Dean in his tailored suit and you in your nice dress, a contrast to the hollowed-out versions of yourselves she saw in the winter.

“Well, don’t you two look fancy,” she says, popping her gum and smiling genuinely. “Graduation?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Dean smiles back, flashing his trademark charm.

“Congratulations,” she says. “What can I get you? The usual?”

Dean looks at you, his eyes dancing with amusement. “What do you think, baby? The usual?”

“Two waters,” you say, perfectly deadpan, reciting the order from memory. “And an order of loaded fries. The big basket. And a vanilla milkshake.”

Dean bursts out laughing, throwing his head back. The waitress chuckles, writing it down quickly. “You got it. Be right back.”

As she walks away, Dean wraps his arm entirely around your shoulders, pulling you firmly against his side. He presses a kiss to your temple, lingering there.

“You’re a brat,” he murmurs against your skin.

“You literally forced me to drink a milkshake against my will,” you remind him, resting your head on his shoulder. “I think I’m allowed to tease you about it.”

“I was keeping you alive,” Dean argues playfully, resting his chin on your head. “I was a hero.”

“You were very bossy.”

“And you loved it.”

You smile, tilting your face up to look at him. “I did. I really did.”

The playful banter fades, replaced by that heavy, magnetic pull that always seems to exist between the two of you. Dean’s eyes darken, dropping to your mouth.

The waitress suddenly appears, dropping the basket of fries and the milkshake onto the table before quickly retreating to give you privacy.

Dean looks at the fries, then looks back at you. A slow, wicked smirk completely takes over his face.

He reaches out, plucking a single fry from the basket. He dips it entirely too aggressively into the ketchup.

He holds it up to your mouth.

“Open,” he says, his voice a perfect, gravelly mimic of that terrible day.

You laugh, swatting at his hand. “Dean, stop. I can feed myself.”

“I don’t know,” he teases, pulling the fry back an inch. “You look pretty helpless right now. I think you need me to hand-feed you.”

“I will bite your finger,” you threaten, though you’re smiling so hard your cheeks hurt.

“Promises, promises,” Dean fires back, holding the fry steady. “Come on. For old times’ sake. Open up.”

You roll your eyes, but you lean forward and bite the fry off his fingers. You chew deliberately, maintaining direct eye contact.

“Good girl,” Dean whispers, his voice suddenly losing every ounce of humor. The teasing drops away, leaving only raw, burning affection.

Your breath hitches.

Dean drops his hand, grabbing the milkshake. But instead of offering you the straw, he sets it aside entirely. He reaches out, cupping your jaw with both hands, and pulls you flush against him.

He kisses you. It isn’t tentative or gentle. It is a deep, consuming kiss that tastes like salt and ketchup and everything you’ve ever wanted. You melt against him instantly, your hands coming up to grip the lapels of his expensive suit jacket, kissing him back with everything you have.

When you finally break apart, you are both breathing heavily, your foreheads resting against each other.

“I love you,” Dean whispers, the words slipping out into the quiet diner like they’ve been waiting there all along.

You freeze.

Your heart stops completely, then restarts at double the speed. He has never said it before. You have danced around it, you have shown it in a thousand different ways, but the actual words have remained unspoken.

Dean pulls back just enough to look you directly in the eyes. There is no hesitation in his gaze. There is no fear. There is just absolute, unflinching certainty.

“I love you,” Dean repeats, his voice incredibly steady. “I loved you when you were completely broken, I loved you when you started putting yourself back together, and I love you right now. I am entirely, completely in love with you.”

The air completely leaves your lungs.

You look at the beautiful, complicated, endlessly loyal boy sitting beside you. The boy who dragged you out of the dark. The boy who held your brother’s memory in one hand and your heart in the other.

“I love you too,” you whisper, the truth of it swelling in your chest until it feels like it might burst. “I love you so much, Dean.”

Dean’s entire face lights up. The breathtaking smile that breaks across his features is the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen. He lets out a ragged exhale, burying his face in your neck, wrapping his arms around you tightly enough to bruise.

You hold him back just as fiercely, closing your eyes and breathing him in.

You survived the absolute worst day of your life. You walked through the fire, and you didn’t burn to ash. You are still here.

And as you sit in the corner booth of Malone’s, surrounded by the smell of cheap fryer grease and holding onto the boy you love, you realize something profound.

The world didn’t stop turning when Beau died. It kept going. And finally, for the first time in a very long time, you are incredibly grateful that you get to keep going with it.

***

The smell of burning toast is what finally wakes you up.

You groan, burying your face deeper into the mountain of pillows you’ve constructed around yourself. At twenty weeks pregnant, sleep has become less of a biological necessity and more of a strategic, highly negotiated truce with your own body.

“Damn it,” a voice mutters from the kitchen, followed by the loud clatter of a pan hitting the stove. “Okay. Pivot. We’re pivoting to pancakes.”

You crack one eye open. The morning light is streaming through the massive windows of the master bedroom you share with Dean.

It’s been five years since graduation. Five years of navigating adulthood, careers, and the beautiful, messy reality of building a life together. You’re married now, but the core of it all is exactly the same. It’s just you and Dean, fiercely guarding the peace you fought so hard to find.

You push the heavy duvet off your legs and slowly maneuver yourself out of bed. Your hand instinctively rests on the undeniable, rounded swell of your stomach.

You pad barefoot down the hallway of your shared house, the hardwood floors cool against your feet. You stop in the doorway of the kitchen, leaning against the frame.

Dean is standing at the island, wearing grey sweatpants and a backwards cap, looking extremely focused as he whisks a bowl of batter. There is flour on his cheek.

“You’re making a mess, Di Laurentis,” you point out, your voice still thick with sleep.

Dean’s head snaps up. The moment he sees you, the intense concentration completely vanishes, replaced by that soft, devastatingly bright smile he reserves exclusively for you.

“Hey,” he says, abandoning the whisk. He crosses the kitchen in three long strides, wrapping his arms around your waist. He pulls you in, careful of your stomach, and kisses you deeply. “Good morning, Mrs. Di Laurentis.”

“Good morning,” you smile against his lips. “I smell casualties.”

“The toast didn’t make it,” Dean admits, completely unbothered. He drops to his knees, his face suddenly level with your stomach. He presses a gentle kiss to the center of your t-shirt. “Good morning to you, too, little menace. Please let your mother eat these pancakes without kicking her in the bladder.”

You laugh, running your fingers through the hair sticking out from the back of his cap. “The baby doesn’t take orders, Dean. Much like its father.”

“The baby is going to be perfectly behaved,” Dean argues, standing back up. “Sit. Eat. We have a big day today. The anatomy scan is at eleven.”

Your heart immediately does a familiar, anxious flutter.

The pregnancy wasn’t exactly planned, but the moment you saw the two pink lines on the plastic stick, your entire world shifted. Dean had completely short-circuited. He had stared at the test for five straight minutes, asked you if you were absolutely sure, and then picked you up and spun you around the bathroom until you both fell over laughing.

He has been a hovering, overprotective nightmare ever since. He reads every baby book. He vetoes anything that even vaguely resembles a soft cheese. He treats you like you’re made of spun glass.

“I know,” you say softly, tracing the rim of the empty coffee mug he sets in front of you. “I’m nervous.”

Dean stops pouring the batter. He sets the bowl down and walks around the island, stepping into the space between your knees. He takes both of your hands in his.

“Hey,” he murmurs, his green eyes locking onto yours. “There’s nothing to be nervous about. The doctor said everything was perfectly on track last month. Heartbeat is strong. You’re healthy.”

“I know,” you sigh, leaning your forehead against his chest. “It’s just … it makes it all very real. Today we find out if it’s a boy or a girl. It’s an actual person, Dean.”

“Yeah,” Dean says, his voice thick with a sudden rush of emotion. He wraps his arms around your shoulders, holding you tight. “It’s our person. Half you, half me. We’re going to be okay, Y/N. I promise you.”

***

The ultrasound room is dark and freezing cold.

You lie on the crinkly paper of the exam table, your shirt pulled up to expose your stomach. Dean is sitting in the plastic chair right beside you, completely ignoring the lack of space. His chair is pulled so close his knees are practically touching the table, and he hasn’t let go of your hand since you walked into the clinic.

“Alright, let’s take a look at this little one,” the ultrasound technician, a kind woman named Dana, says cheerfully.

She squirts a massive dollop of freezing blue gel onto your stomach. You flinch.

“Cold, sorry!” Dana laughs, pressing the wand against your skin.

You turn your head to look at the monitor. At first, it’s just a blurry, static-filled screen of greys and blacks. But then, Dana moves the wand, and suddenly, there it is.

A perfectly formed, tiny spine. A little head. Two small arms waving sluggishly in the amniotic fluid.

Your breath completely catches in your throat.

“Oh my god,” Dean whispers loudly, his grip on your hand tightening to the point of pain. He leans forward, his eyes absolutely glued to the screen. “Y/N. Look.”

“I see it,” you breathe out, tears instantly pricking the corners of your eyes.

“There’s the heartbeat,” Dana says, clicking a button on the keyboard.

The room is suddenly filled with the rapid, rhythmic thump-thump-thump of your baby’s heart. It’s the most beautiful, incredible sound you have ever heard in your entire life. It sounds like a galloping horse. It sounds like a miracle.

Dean lets out a wet, choked sound. You look over at him.

He is crying. He doesn’t even try to hide it. The arrogant, charming, impenetrable Dean Di Laurentis is sitting in a dark clinic, openly weeping at the sight of a grainy black-and-white monitor. He brings your knuckles up to his lips, pressing a desperate, reverent kiss against your skin.

“It’s perfect,” he whispers, his voice shaking. “You’re perfect.”

“You guys are doing great,” Dana smiles, clicking a few more buttons to take measurements. “Baby is measuring exactly at twenty weeks and three days. Everything looks incredibly healthy. Ten fingers, ten toes.”

A massive wave of relief crashes over you, washing away the anxiety that has been building all morning.

“Now,” Dana says, pausing the wand and looking between the two of you with a knowing smirk. “Did you two want to know the gender today?”

You look at Dean. He looks back at you, his eyes still shining.

“We want to know,” you say, nodding. “But … can you write it down? We want to open it at home. Just the two of us.”

“Absolutely,” Dana says. She turns the screen away slightly so you can’t see, clicking a few buttons before pulling out a small, white envelope. She writes something on a card, slips it inside, and seals it tight.

She hands the envelope to Dean.

Dean takes it like he’s being handed a live explosive. He stares at the white paper, his jaw tight.

“Thank you,” you say, grabbing a paper towel to wipe the gel off your stomach.

“Congratulations, you guys,” Dana says warmly. “I’ll see you in four weeks.”

***

The car ride back to the house is agonizingly tense.

The small white envelope is sitting completely undisturbed in the center console. It is the loudest object in the vehicle.

Dean is gripping the steering wheel with both hands, driving five miles under the speed limit, his eyes darting between the road and the envelope every thirty seconds.

“Stop staring at it,” you laugh, resting your head back against the leather seat.

“I’m not staring at it,” Dean lies immediately. “I’m focusing on the road. Because I have precious cargo in the car.”

“You’ve looked at it twelve times since we left the clinic,” you point out.

“It’s mocking me,” Dean mutters, tapping his thumbs against the steering wheel. “It knows that I have zero patience. It’s a test of my willpower.”

“Do you have a preference?” You ask softly, turning your head to look at his profile.

Dean is quiet for a long moment. He signals, turning into your neighborhood.

“No,” he says honestly. “I really don’t. If it’s a girl, I’m going to spoil her so completely that she’ll be an absolute terror to society. I’m going to buy her a pony. I don’t care where we put it. And if it’s a boy, I’m going to teach him how to throw a football before he can walk, and I’m going to teach him how to treat women like absolute royalty.”

You smile, your heart swelling painfully in your chest. “You’re going to be an incredible dad.”

“We’re going to be incredible parents,” Dean corrects you, pulling into the driveway and shifting the car into park.

He kills the engine. He turns in his seat, looking down at the center console. He takes a deep breath, reaches out, and picks up the envelope.

He hands it to you.

“Let’s go inside,” he says, his voice low and raspy.

You walk into the house together. It’s quiet, the afternoon sun spilling across the living room rug. You walk over to the massive, obscenely expensive leather sectional couch and sit down.

Dean sits right next to you, completely invading your personal space. He drapes his arm over your shoulders, pulling you firmly against his side.

You look down at the envelope in your lap.

“Okay,” you whisper. Your hands are actually shaking.

“We do it together,” Dean murmurs, resting his cheek against your hair. He reaches down, his large hand covering yours, his fingers resting over the flap of the envelope.

“On three,” you say.

“One,” Dean counts.

“Two,” you whisper.

“Three.”

Together, you slide your fingers under the seal and rip the envelope open. You pull out the small, stiff piece of cardstock.

There are only three words written on the card in Dana’s neat, cursive handwriting.

It’s a boy!

The world completely stops spinning.

You stare at the words. The letters blur together as a fresh, overwhelming wave of tears immediately fills your eyes. A boy. You are having a boy.

Beside you, Dean goes perfectly, rigidly still.

“A boy,” Dean breathes out, the sound barely more than a whisper.

“It’s a boy,” you repeat, a wet, hysterical laugh escaping your lips.

Dean suddenly moves. He takes the card out of your hand and tosses it onto the coffee table. He wraps both of his arms around you, burying his face into your neck. He holds you so incredibly tight you can feel the frantic, heavy pounding of his heart against your ribs.

“A little boy,” Dean says against your skin, his voice cracking completely. “God, Y/N. We’re having a son.”

You wrap your arms around his shoulders, holding him back just as fiercely. You are crying freely now, happy, completely unburdened tears. You survived the absolute worst thing the universe could throw at you, and now, you are sitting in your living room, holding the man you love, creating a brand new life.

When Dean finally pulls back, his face is a mess of tears and the biggest, most breathtaking smile you have ever seen.

He drops one of his hands down to rest flat against your stomach.

“We need to talk about names,” Dean says, his thumb gently stroking back and forth over your t-shirt.

You look at him.

For months, you have avoided the topic of baby names entirely. It felt like bad luck to talk about it before the anatomy scan, before you knew for sure that everything was okay. You haven’t bought a single book. You haven’t made a single list.

But looking into Dean’s eyes right now, you realize you don’t need a list.

There is no discussion. There is no debate. There is no what if.

“We don’t need to talk about names,” you say softly, placing your hand over his where it rests on your bump.

Dean searches your eyes, his breath hitching slightly. “Are you sure?”

“I’ve never been more sure of anything in my entire life,” you promise him, your voice completely steady.

Dean swallows hard, his jaw clenching as he fights back a new wave of emotion. He looks down at your stomach, his hand trembling slightly under yours.

“Beau,” Dean whispers.

Hearing the name out loud — speaking it not in grief, not in mourning, but in absolute, pure joy — sends a shockwave of electricity straight down your spine.

“Beau,” you agree, the name feeling perfectly, incredibly right on your tongue.

Dean lets out a long, shuddering exhale. He leans forward, pressing his forehead gently against yours.

“He would be so arrogant about this,” Dean laughs, a wet, choked sound. “He would absolutely never let us live this down.”

“He would tell everyone we named him after the greatest quarterback Briar University ever saw,” you laugh through your tears, the memory of your brother suddenly incredibly vivid, bright, and completely devoid of pain.

“He would demand to be the godfather,” Dean adds, closing his eyes. “Even though he’s a terrible influence. He would have bought the kid a tiny, obnoxious football jersey before he was even born.”

“He would have loved him so much,” you whisper, the truth of it swelling in your chest.

“He still does,” Dean says fiercely, opening his eyes to look at you. “He’s up there right now, watching us, and he is completely insufferable about it. I guarantee it.”

You let out a watery laugh, leaning forward to press your lips against Dean’s. It’s a slow, deep kiss, completely anchored in the reality of the life you have built together.

When you break apart, Dean shifts back. He moves down again, dropping to his knees on the rug right in front of the couch.

He rests his chin on your thighs, looking directly at your stomach.

“Hey, little Beau,” Dean says, his voice incredibly soft, dropping into a tone of pure, unconditional reverence. “It’s your dad.”

You cover your mouth with your hand, completely undone by the sight of him.

“You’re making your mom cry again, so we’re going to have to work on that,” Dean tells your stomach, a small, teasing smirk pulling at the corner of his mouth. “But I need to tell you a few things before you get here.”

Dean reaches up, resting both of his large hands on either side of your bump.

“First of all, you are so incredibly loved,” Dean promises, his voice completely serious now. “You have no idea. You hit the absolute jackpot with your mom. She is the strongest, most amazing person in the world, and you are going to listen to everything she says.”

He pauses, taking a deep breath.

“And secondly,” Dean murmurs, his thumb tracing a slow circle over your skin. “You’ve got a big name to live up to, buddy. You are named after my best friend. The best guy I ever knew. Your uncle Beau.”

A single tear slips down Dean’s cheek, but he is smiling. It is a genuine, peaceful smile.

“He was fearless,” Dean tells your son, his voice thick with a love that has never faded, only evolved. “He loved to laugh, he loved his family more than anything, and he always, always took care of the people he cared about. And that’s what we want for you. We just want you to be happy. And brave.”

Dean leans forward and presses a long, lingering kiss to the center of your stomach.

“I’ve got you, Beau,” Dean whispers against your skin, repeating the exact same promise he made to you on the floor of the church all those years ago. “I swear to god, I’ve always got you.”

He rests his forehead against your stomach, closing his eyes.

You sit there on the couch, your hands gently resting in Dean’s hair. The afternoon sun washes over the two of you in a warm, golden glow.

The grief is still a part of you. It always will be. It is woven into the very fabric of your history, a scar that proves you loved someone entirely too much to let them go without a fight.

But as you look down at the man kneeling before you, and feel the tiny, miraculous flutter of your son moving inside of you, you realize that the story didn’t end with the crash. It didn’t end in the dark dorm room, or at the altar of the church.

It continued.

It grew into late-night dinner runs, and stolen kisses in the kitchen, and a love so fierce and protective it physically takes your breath away. It grew into the life you are living right now.

You survived the end of the world, and you found something completely beautiful in the ashes.

“I love you,” you whisper down to Dean, your heart completely, entirely full.

Dean turns his head, resting his cheek against your stomach, and looks up at you with eyes full of a bright, unbreakable future.

He’s not talking much now. Which is really for the best, because when Garrett Graham gets too smug, she starts wanting to bite him. And when she bites him, he gets this ruined little hitch in his breathing that makes her feel extremely normal and mentally well about the whole thing.

Her legs are wrapped around his waist, ankles locked low at his back, pulling him in harder every time he starts to get too careful. He keeps trying to kiss her like it will quiet her down, which is stupid for several reasons, mainly because she’s never once in her life been inspired toward silence by Garrett’s mouth. 

If anything, it makes her worse. Messier. Hotter under the skin. More likely to drag her nails down his back until he hisses through his teeth and his hips snap forward hard enough to make the headboard complain behind them.

“Fuck,” Garrett grits out, breaking the kiss just enough to breathe against her mouth. “Baby, your nails.”

She smiles, but it comes out shaky because he rolls into her at the same time, deep and slow and mean, and the sound that leaves her is nothing like the clever thing she had planned. 

It spills out raw and open, caught in the back of her throat before it turns into his name. Her fingers flex against his shoulders anyway, nails finding the hot, damp skin there. “You love my nails.”

“I love my skin attached to my body.”

“Liar.”

His laugh breaks halfway through when she drags her nails down again, lighter this time but still enough to make his whole back tighten under her hands. He drops his forehead to hers, breath shaking, mouth brushing hers without properly kissing. “You’re evil.”

“You’re inside me and still complaining.”

“That’s multitasking.”

“That’s annoying.”

“That’s rich coming from the girl who bit my jaw ten minutes ago because I said please.”

She turns her head just enough to see the mark under his jaw, dark and pretty and entirely her fault. Heat licks through her again, stupid and proud. “You sounded cute.”

Garrett’s eyes narrow, but whatever comeback he has dies when she clenches around him on purpose. His mouth falls open against hers. The hand under her thigh tightens, fingers digging in, and his next thrust comes rougher, less polished, all the practiced control slipping for one hot second. 

She loves when it happens. Loves the little cracks in him. Loves how Garrett can be cocky all night downstairs with half the campus orbiting him like he hung the moon in Briar blue, but in here, with her ankles locked behind his back and her nails in his skin, he gets messy. He gets honest in ways he doesn’t always know how to say.

“There,” she breathes, laughing softly even as her eyes start to flutter. “That shut you up.”

His mouth curves against hers, smug even ruined, which is frankly inspirational in the worst way. “You’re so fucking mouthy for someone who’s been moaning for ten minutes.”

She gasps, offended, except it gets dragged sideways into a moan when he shifts his angle and hits something low and bright that makes her hips jerk. “Garrett.”

“Yeah?” He kisses the corner of her mouth, then her cheek, then the place under her jaw where her pulse is going stupid. “What, baby?”

Her nails scrape up into his hair, tugging hard enough that his head lifts. His eyes are dark, half-lidded, heat blown wide through them, and he looks so good above her that it annoys her. It always annoys her. 

He has no right looking like that in a room this messy, with a scratch blooming red over one shoulder and his mouth swollen from hers, like some rich athletic nightmare built specifically to make her standards embarrassing.

She pulls him down until his mouth is almost on hers again. “Spit in my mouth.”

Garrett stills for half a second. A tiny pause, one blink, his eyes searching hers with the last scrap of sense either of them has brought into this room. “Yeah?”

She nods, breath already catching because he hasn’t moved again and her body is throwing a private, furious little tantrum about it. “Yeah.”

Something shifts in his face. His thumb presses into the soft skin beneath her thigh, his mouth hovering over hers, his voice dropping into that low, careful place that still sounds filthy because it’s Garrett and he’s looking at her like he wants to ruin his own life with both hands. “Open, baby.”

Her stomach flips so hard it almost feels like falling. She opens her mouth, and of course he chooses that exact second to thrust again, slow and deep enough that a moan pushes right out of her, helpless and wet and humiliatingly perfect. 

Garrett’s eyes drag over her face like he’s memorising it for later, like he’s going to be insufferable about this for the rest of time if she gives him even an inch. Then he leans closer, lips parted, and spits into her mouth.

The sound she makes is obscene.

Garrett’s breath catches. His jaw flexes as he watches her swallow, and for one second all his stupid golden-boy polish goes clean out the window. He looks wrecked. Actually wrecked. Mouth open, eyes gone dark and stunned, hips pressing into her like he forgot what rhythm was supposed to be because her tongue just flicked over her bottom lip and that was the final thing his brain could survive.

“Fuck,” he says, low and rough, almost to himself. “You’re gonna kill me.”

She smiles up at him, dazed and pleased and hot all over. “Don’t be dramatic.”

He laughs once, without humour, and kisses her so hard the back of her head presses into the pillow. It’s sloppy after that. His tongue pushes into her mouth and she lets him, opens for him, pulls him closer with her legs until he groans into the kiss and his hips start moving again, faster now, the bed shifting beneath them with every thrust. 

She can feel him everywhere. In her hips, her thighs, the bruising grip of his hand, the sweat-slick slide of his chest against hers, the dizzy little ache where he fits so deep it makes the entire room blur at the edges.

She gets loud because there’s no point pretending she won’t. Garrett knows it. The house knows it. The drywall has probably developed trauma. His mouth keeps catching hers between sounds like he’s trying to swallow them, like he wants them and also knows Tucker is on the other side of the wall silently considering a transfer.

“Baby,” Garrett mutters, but it sounds more like a plea than a warning.

“What?” she breathes, all fake innocence and no air. “Too loud?”

His hand slips from her thigh to her waist, then lower, dragging her harder into the next thrust. “No.”

She laughs, but it breaks apart when he does it again. “You’re so bad at pretending to be responsible.”

“I’m extremely responsible.”

“You’re fucking me through your mattress.”

“That’s private captain business.”

She makes a sound halfway between a laugh and a moan, and Garrett kisses it off her mouth, smiling like an idiot against her lips. It’s too warm suddenly, too close to something sweet, so she scratches lightly down his back again to ruin it. He hisses and pulls back, eyes flashing.

“Roll over,” he says.

Her breath leaves her in a rush. There’s a beat where she just looks at him, because she likes him like this. Bossy but not cold. Rough around the edges but still watching her face, still making sure she’s with him, still Garrett under all that heat. 

She lifts one brow because surrendering immediately would be bad for her brand. “Say please.”

His mouth parts, incredulous. “You want manners now?”

“I’m classy.”

“You just asked me to spit in your mouth.”

“And you did.” She smiles sweetly. “So maybe don’t act above the table manners portion of the evening.”

Garrett stares at her for a second, then laughs under his breath, shaking his head like she has personally ruined every plan he had for being a normal man. “Please roll over before I lose my fucking mind.”

“See?” she says, already moving because her body has no interest in maintaining a bit when his voice sounds like that. “That wasn’t hard.”

“No, but I am.”

She chokes on a laugh as he pulls out, and then he’s got his hands on her hips, helping her turn, warm palms sliding over her waist and stomach and thigh in little unnecessary touches that make it very clear he’s not, actually, as impatient as he’s pretending to be. 

The mattress dips. The sheet twists under her knees. She gets one elbow beneath herself, then pushes her hips back because she knows what she’s doing and because the groan Garrett makes behind her is worth any amount of lost dignity.

“Jesus,” he mutters.

She looks back over her shoulder, hair falling into her face, mouth swollen, breathing still ruined. “What?”

His hands settle on her ass, thumbs pressing in, and his eyes move over her like he’s having a serious private conversation with every bad decision he’s ever made. “Nothing.”

“You look pained.”

“I’m admiring.”

“You’re staring.”

“Same shit.”

She laughs and starts to say something else, but Garrett bends before she can, pressing his mouth to her ass in a hot, open kiss that steals the thought clean out of her head. Her fingers grip the sheet. He does it again, slower, then bites just lightly enough to make her jolt.

“Garrett.”

“Mm?”

“Are you making out with my ass?”

His laugh brushes warm over her skin. “You sound mad.”

“I’m impatient.”

“Yeah?” His mouth moves up, kisses dragging over her lower back, then higher, slow and warm and unbearable. “Poor baby.”

“Don’t poor baby me when your dick is literally begging to be inside me.”

He breaks. Actually laughs against her back, low and helpless, and the sound sends something soft and molten through her before she can stop it. Then his hand slides up her spine, palm smoothing over the place her body has gone tense with need, and his mouth follows: her back, her shoulder blade, the slope of her shoulder, the side of her neck. 

By the time he’s over her again, chest pressed to her back, one arm braced beside her and the other guiding her hips, she’s trembling in a way she would deny under oath. His mouth brushes her ear. “You good?”

The question is quiet. Almost swallowed by the heat of the room, the house noise underneath them, her own heartbeat. She turns her face into the pillow and nods. “Mhm.”

“Words.”

She huffs, but it comes out soft. “I’m good, Garrett.”

His mouth presses to her shoulder, a kiss that lingers half a second too long. “Good.”

Then he pushes back in, and she forgets every single language she has ever used to be difficult.

The moan that leaves her is loud enough that Garrett’s hand flexes at her hip and his forehead drops briefly to her shoulder like he’s either praying or laughing at his own funeral. 

She falls forward into the pillow, fingers twisting in the sheets, ass still tipped up because pride may be dead but instinct is thriving. He starts slow for approximately three seconds, which is very noble and completely unsustainable. Then she pushes back against him, and whatever thread of control he’s holding snaps with a sound low in his throat.

“There she is,” he murmurs, voice rough. “Fuck, baby.”

She says his name into the pillow, muffled and useless, and Garrett’s hand slides around the front of her throat, holding her there while his mouth presses beneath her ear. It makes her eyes roll shut. It makes every sound worse. The angle is deeper like this, sharper, each thrust sending heat licking up through her stomach and down the backs of her thighs until her whole body feels loose and overlit and almost too full of him to stay attached to itself.

The first bang on the wall is so hard the lamp flickers. They both freeze for one startled, ridiculous second.

Then Tucker’s voice comes through the drywall, flat and furious and deeply traumatised. “KEEP IT DOWN.”

Garrett goes completely still behind her.

She turns her face out of the pillow, eyes wide. For one silent second, the room holds. Then Garrett’s breath hits her shoulder in a shaky laugh, and she loses it too, a breathless little giggle that immediately makes her hide her face again because there’s nothing dignified about being naked on all fours while Tucker yells through the wall like the world’s saddest RA.

“Oh my God,” she whispers.

Garrett’s shoulders shake against her back. “We’re gonna get evicted.”

“You own nothing.”

“I live here.”

“Not for long if Tucker kills you.”

Another bang hits the wall. “I CAN HEAR YOU LAUGHING TOO.”

She lifts her head, trying to sound sincere and absolutely failing because Garrett chooses that moment to shift inside her, just barely, and her voice wobbles. “SORRY–”

Garrett thrusts again. The apology breaks apart instantly, turning into a moan she has no chance of catching. Her head drops back into the pillow, fingers gripping the sheet as Garrett buries his laugh against her shoulder and then, because he’s a bastard and a deeply unserious man, does it again.

Tucker groans through the wall. “I HATE THIS HOUSE.”

Garrett kisses her shoulder, still laughing, but his hips keep moving now, slow and deliberate and mean in a way that makes the humour dissolve back into heat far too quickly. “You apologised so nicely,” he murmurs against her skin.

“Shut up.”

“You want to try again?”

“I hate you.”

“No, you don’t.” His hand tightens at her waist, pulling her back to meet him, and her whole body answers before she can decide not to. “You’re clenching.”

“Garrett.”

“Yeah, Kitty?”

“Don’t call me that when I’m trying not to scream.”

His mouth curves against her neck. “That sounds like a you problem.”

She reaches back blindly and smacks at his thigh. He catches her wrist, pins it gently against the mattress beside her head, and the movement does something awful to her stomach. 

His chest is hot over her back, his breath ragged at her ear, his body moving harder now, less careful with every little sound she fails to swallow. She can’t bring herself to care about anyone else in the house. Not when Garrett’s other hand slides around her hip and down, fingers finding her with the kind of precision that makes her bite into the pillow.

“Oh,” she gasps, muffled. “Fuck.”

Garrett groans. “Yeah. There?”

She nods because words are a scam. His fingers keep moving, slick and firm, and his rhythm falters for the first time. That gets her. The fact that he’s not as controlled as he sounds. The way his hand tightens around her wrist. The way his mouth presses to her shoulder and stays there while his breathing falls apart in little pieces against her skin.

“Baby,” he says, and it’s not smug now. It’s rough and low and almost gone. “You’re so fucking good.”

Her eyes squeeze shut. The praise lands too deep, curling hot behind her ribs, and she tries to arch away from it, from the feeling, from how quickly it pulls her apart. Garrett follows, hips pressing in deep, fingers steady, mouth at her ear.

“Don’t hide,” he murmurs. “Let me hear you.”

“Tucker will kill us.”

“Tucker’s already dead inside.”

She laughs, or tries to, but it turns into another moan when he changes the angle again, and Garrett makes a sound like that one got under his skin. “There,” he says. “That’s it. Fuck, that’s the one.”

Her body goes tight all at once, heat winding so hard through her stomach that she stops caring about the wall, the house, the fact that she is absolutely going to have to walk downstairs later and look Tucker in the eye. 

Garrett’s fingers keep moving. His hips keep dragging her under. His mouth is on her neck, then her cheek, then the corner of her jaw, messy little kisses that don’t match how filthy everything else is, which is honestly rude.

“Garrett,” she gasps.

“I know.” His voice breaks around it. “I know, baby. Come on. I’ve got you.”

“I’m gonna–”

“Yeah.” His hand releases her wrist so he can wrap his arm around her middle, pulling her tighter against him, holding her through the sudden, helpless shake of her body. “There you go.”

She comes hard enough that the room blanks at the edges. Her face presses into the pillow, one hand flying back to grip his hip, nails digging in wherever she can reach. Garrett swears against her neck, deep and ruined, hips stuttering as she tightens around him.

He fucks her through it with no finesse left, just heat and breath and his hand locked over her stomach like he’s keeping her from coming apart completely.

By the time she comes back to herself, he’s still moving, slower now, his forehead pressed between her shoulder blades, breath ragged and damp over her skin. She turns her face out of the pillow, cheeks hot, mouth swollen, eyes bright with leftover heat and laughter. Garrett looks down at her, curls wrecked, shoulders scratched, face flushed and soft in all the places he keeps pretending he isn’t. She smiles before she can stop herself.

“Poor Tucker,” she whispers.

Garrett’s mouth curves, and his hand slides possessive and warm over her hip. “Poor Tucker should buy earplugs.”

She bites the pillow to hide another laugh.

He leans down, mouth brushing her ear, voice dropping back into heat like it never left. “Now be nice and keep your apology quiet this time.”

She turns her head just enough for her mouth to graze his jaw. “Make me.”

to be notified when i post new fics, follow @kooksandpearls-library and turn on notifications! i no longer use a taglist.

She stood near the back of the living room in a tiny leopard print skirt and a black top that did absolutely nothing generous for his attention span, one hip tipped against the wall, boots planted like she’d picked the spot and expected the room to adjust. 

Her nails were long, glossy, sharp-looking things wrapped around a red cup, and when she laughed at something the girl beside her said, Garrett’s eyes dropped to her mouth before he could pretend they hadn’t.

He made it about three minutes before he crossed the room. “Hey,” he said, leaning one shoulder into the wall beside her. “Madison, right?”

Her laugh stopped. Slowly, like she was letting the stupidity settle properly before she decided what to do with it.

She turned her head, eyes moving over him from his messy curls to the Briar Hockey sweatshirt stretched across his shoulders, then back up to his face. “Uh,” she said. “Are you talking to me, hockey boy?”

Garrett blinked. Then he laughed, because it surprised him, and because her face didn’t move when he did. “Hockey boy?”

“You’re wearing your own merch.”

“You’re in my house.”

“And you have no idea who I am.” She tilted her cup toward him, eyebrows lifting. “You don’t even know my name.”

Garrett opened his mouth. Shut it again. “Well, I–”

“You can ask.”

His smile pulled wider despite himself. She was pretty in a way that felt vaguely dangerous up close, all shiny eyes and bare legs and that unimpressed mouth that made him want to say something worse just to see what she’d do with it. “Usually I don’t have to.”

“No,” she said, and this time she laughed properly, soft and mean and delighted. “God, I bet you don’t.”

His eyebrows rose. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you have manwhore energy.”

Garrett stared at her for a beat, then laughed again, louder this time. “Manwhore?”

She looked him over again, slower and much less accidental, and something hot slipped under his ribs. “I’m assuming you’ve heard worse.”

“Not usually from girls who want me to buy them a drink.”

“I didn’t say I wanted that.”

“But you do.”

Her eyes narrowed, amused now. “Do I?”

Garrett leaned a little closer, just enough that her perfume cut through the beer-sweat heat of the room, something sweet and warm that made his focus go briefly, embarrassingly clean. “Can I get you a drink?”

Her mouth curved. “You really won’t ask my name?”

“You really won’t just tell me?”

“Nope.” She pushed off the wall, the edge of her shoulder brushing his arm as she passed, and Garrett had the incredibly stupid urge to catch her wrist. He didn’t. Barely. She glanced back once, smile sharp enough to leave a mark. “Good luck, hockey boy.”

It took him forty-seven minutes and three separate conversations to find out her name.

When he found her again, she was in the kitchen, reaching past some sophomore for a bottle of vodka with the confidence of someone who had never once considered asking a man to move. Garrett came up behind her, close enough that his mouth was near her ear when he said her name.

She went still for half a second. Then she turned, and the look on her face made the whole stupid search worth it. “Hi.”

Garrett grinned. “Hi.”

“You asked around about me?”

“Maybe.”

“That’s embarrassing for you.”

“Little bit,” he admitted. “You’ve got a reputation.”

Her eyes flicked down to his mouth. Back up. “So do you.”

“Yeah?” He shifted closer, and this time she didn’t move away. “Hope mine’s good.”

Her smile went slow. “Depends who you ask.”

to be notified when i post new fics, follow @kooksandpearls-library and turn on notifications! i no longer use a taglist.

He has one hand locked around her waist and the other flattened low on her back, guiding her down against him, not that she needs much guidance. She’s doing it on purpose now. Slow, mean little grinds that drag the seam of her panties over him through his sweats and make him lose a bit more of his mind every time. 

He’s hard enough that it’s almost painful, hot and trapped and pressed right up against her. Her mouth curves against his when he groans, like she’s won something.

“You’re so loud,” she murmurs, nipping at his bottom lip.

Garrett’s fingers dig into her hip. “You’re sitting on my dick.”

“Barely.”

“You want me to apologise?”

“I want you to do something useful.”

He huffs a laugh, except it comes out rougher than he means it to because she grinds down again at the same time, and his head knocks back against the wall behind his bed. “Jesus Christ.”

She leans forward and kisses the sound out of him, messy and open-mouthed, teeth catching, tongue sliding over his like she’s trying to shut him up and make him worse at the same time. 

It’s very effective. Annoyingly effective. Everything with her is like that. A fight. A dare. A little bit of blood under the nail. She kisses him like she’s still pissed about something he said three hours ago and intends to take payment directly out of his spine.

Her mouth leaves his and drags down his jaw. Garrett feels her smile against his skin right before her teeth sink into the side of his throat.

“Hey.” His hand tightens at her waist. “Don’t.”

She hums, entirely unbothered, and sucks harder.

“Seriously?” he says, voice strained because it’s difficult to sound authoritative when her hips are still moving and her mouth is hot on his neck. “You’re gonna make me look like I got attacked.”

She pulls back just enough to look at the mark blooming under his jaw, pleased with herself in a way that makes his stomach go tight. “You did.”

“By a girl who keeps saying she’s not my girlfriend.”

Her eyes flick to his. “You keep saying that.”

Garrett’s mouth opens, then closes, because he hates when she does that. He hates it even more because she doesn’t look hurt. She looks smug and hot and a little too bright around the eyes, like she’s waiting to see if he’ll flinch first.

So he does what he always does when she gets too close to the thing under the thing. He smirks.

“Yeah, well,” he says, sliding both hands under her skirt now, palms spreading over the backs of her thighs. “You keep leaving claw marks on my back, Kitty.”

Her whole face changes.

Garrett feels the satisfaction of it before she even speaks, because she goes still over him for one sharp second, mouth parting in outrage, eyes narrowing. “Don’t call me that.”

He grins. “What? Thought Dean said it was cute.”

She punishes him immediately by grinding down harder. His fingers flex, dragging her closer, and her expression tips from smug to hungry so fast it almost makes him dizzy.

“Yeah,” she whispers, mouth brushing his. “That shut you up.”

“You’re such a brat.”

“You love it.”

Garrett wants to deny it. It’s sitting right there, easy and obvious, the kind of thing he could toss back without thinking. Except her nails scrape lightly down the back of his neck, enough to remind him she could, and the truth moves through him in a warm, humiliating rush. 

He does. He loves the mouth on her. Loves the attitude. Loves that she’ll glare at him from across a room like she wants to throw something at his head and then end up in his bed twenty minutes later making that soft, ruined little sound into his mouth.

He settles for kissing her again, because that feels safer than saying any of it. She melts for about half a second before biting his lip.

“Fuck,” he mutters, laughing into the kiss. “You’re impossible.”

“You’re slow.”

“I’m trying to be nice.”

“Don’t.”

His hand slides between them then, and that finally steals the next smart thing out of her mouth. Her breath catches against his cheek as his fingers find the damp heat of her through her panties, and Garrett goes a little quiet. 

For all his cocky bullshit, for all the easy flirting and the grin that gets him out of most trouble he doesn’t deserve to escape, there’s a second when he touches her like this where the performance drops clean off his face. Like the fact that she wants him still catches somewhere under his ribs.

Her hips twitch into his hand.

“Oh,” he says, low, smugness returning because he’s Garrett and therefore deeply committed to being unbearable. “That’s why you’re being mean.”

She grabs his jaw. “I’m always mean.”

“Not like this.”

“Garrett.”

“Yeah?”

Her voice thins at the edges, but her glare stays intact, which is honestly impressive. “If you tease me right now, I’ll kill you.”

His thumb presses in a slow circle that makes her lashes flutter. “You say that a lot for someone currently trying to fuck me.”

“Trying,” she repeats, breathless and furious. “Exactly. And yet here we are. Discussing.”

Garrett’s mouth twitches. “Fair.”

He hooks his fingers into the edge of her panties and tugs them aside, and the room seems to shrink down to the tiny space between their bodies. Her hands slip from his jaw to his shoulders. 

Her mouth opens but nothing comes out. He can feel how wet she is, how hot, how close she already is to losing patience completely, and it does something stupid to him. Something possessive and bright and not casual at all.

She lifts on her knees when he guides her up, one hand braced against the wall beside his head, the other still on his shoulder, nails biting. He shifts beneath her, pushing his sweats down just enough, breath already jagged.

“C’mon,” he murmurs. “There you go.”

Her chin drops, her forehead nearly touching his. “Garrett.”

“I’ve got you.”

Her mouth twists like she wants to say something bitchy and can’t quite find it. That gets him more than anything. Her quiet. Her body trembling over his. The scrape of her nails at his shoulder, the hickey pulsing warm under his jaw, her skirt bunched around her hips, his name barely holding itself together in her mouth.

He lines himself up, one hand gripping her thigh, the other holding her panties aside, and she starts to sink down.

The fire alarm screams.

For one whole second, they both freeze in absolute, biblical disbelief.

Then Garrett flinches so hard his head smacks the wall. She jerks over him with a gasp, grabbing his face like she can hold the moment in place with both hands and sheer fucking will.

“No,” she says.

Garrett blinks at her through the shriek of the alarm. “What?”

“No.” Her grip tightens on his jaw, eyes wide and glassy and furious, her whole body still hovering right above him. “No, Garrett. Please. Please, ignore it.”

He stares at her. “Ignore the fire alarm?”

She nods eagerly. “Yes.”

Downstairs, Tucker yells, “OH, FUCK!”

Garrett’s eyes close.

She immediately shakes his face. “No. Look at me. Tucker says that when he finds expired hummus.”

“Baby.”

She whines softly. “Don’t baby me. We’re busy.”

“Someone might be on fire.”

From below them comes Logan’s voice, ragged with panic and laughter. “WHY IS THERE A PLATE IN THE OVEN?”

Then Tucker again, louder and more horrified. “WHO PUT A PLASTIC PLATE IN THE OVEN?”

Garrett exhales through his nose like he’s trying to summon a version of himself with morals. Unfortunately, the version of himself under her right now is hard, half-undressed, and seriously considering whether smoke inhalation is that bad.

She makes a wounded sound and drops her forehead to his shoulder. “I hate this house.”

“I know.”

“I hate your friends.”

“I know.”

Downstairs, Dean screams, “IT’S NOT MY PLATE!”

That finally does it. Garrett groans, deeply and from the soul, and helps her off his lap before one or both of them dies in the least sexy way possible.

She climbs off him with all the grace of a furious cat, yanking her skirt down, hair wrecked, mouth swollen, and Garrett nearly walks into his dresser trying to pull his sweats up over an erection that has every right to file a formal complaint.

She points at him with one trembling finger. “If this is Logan’s fault, I’m putting his head in the oven.”

“Maybe don’t threaten murder while the fire alarm’s going off.”

“I’ll be quick.”

They make it to the hallway half-dressed and murderous. Smoke curls faintly up the stairs. Dean’s halfway up already, looking delighted until he sees her crooked skirt, Garrett’s flushed face, the hickey darkening under Garrett’s jaw, and the general aura of interrupted sex radiating off both of them like a gas leak.

Dean’s mouth opens. Garrett points at him. “Don’t.”

Dean looks at the hickey. Then at her nails. Then at Garrett’s sweats. His whole face lights with reverent horror. “Oh my God.”

She points at him. “I will push you down these fucking stairs.”

Dean steps aside immediately. “Understood.”

The second time, Garrett locks the bathroom door with such focus that she almost feels bad for him.

Almost.

He twists the little button on the knob, tests it once, then tests it again, jaw set like he’s securing a submarine hatch instead of the upstairs bathroom in a house where the towel rack’s been broken since October. 

She stands near the sink in one of his Briar shirts and nothing else, watching him with her arms crossed and her mouth doing the thing it does when she’s trying not to laugh at him and failing beautifully.

“Wow,” she says. “You’ve grown so much.”

Garrett turns. “I’m being proactive.”

“You’re being traumatised.”

“By your inability to finish a sentence without insulting me?”

“By your idiot roommates.”

He points at her. “You like them.”

“I like Tucker. Logan’s useful for entertainment. Dean’s a cautionary tale with hair product.”

Garrett tries not to laugh and loses. “That’s mean.”

The bathroom is full of steam, the mirror fogged at the edges, the bathwater high and hot and carrying the faint clean smell of whatever body wash she stole from him because, according to her, his was annoyingly good and therefore community property. 

Garrett’s gone a little overboard, which she will absolutely make fun of him for later if she survives the night with any dignity left. Candles on the sink. Towels stacked near the tub. His phone facedown on the counter like he doesn’t trust it not to ruin his life.

It is, despite everything, kind of sweet.

Which is dangerous. Sweetness always is with him. It sneaks up under the banter and the hooking up and the stupid public insistence that they’re not dating, and then suddenly he’s making a bath, checking the lock twice, putting her water bottle on the sink, and setting Douglas on the folded towel beside the tub like that’s not the most damning piece of evidence in the entire room.

Garrett’s busy pretending to adjust the temperature of the water, one hand under the tap, jaw set in that deeply masculine way men get when they’re doing something domestic and hoping no one points it out. 

So she leans her hip against the sink, arms crossed, and says, “This is a lot of effort for a girl you’re not dating.”

Garrett stills. Barely. The tiniest pause of his hand under the water, the flicker of his eyes toward Douglas on the towel, then to her, then away again like that tiny purple traitor has exposed him.

“That’s not effort,” he says, turning the tap off. “That’s preparation.”

She raises an eyebrow. “For the girl you’re not dating.”

“For the girl who keeps complaining that my house is ruining her life.”

“It is ruining my life.”

“You’re welcome to leave.”

She lifts her brows.

Garrett looks at her, at the shirt falling high on her thighs, at her bare legs, at the mouth he’s already kissed swollen twice tonight, and immediately seems to regret giving her any kind of exit option. His jaw shifts. “Just… not right now.”

A smile pulls at her mouth. “Use your brain next time.”

“Bossy.”

“Proactive.”

His mouth curves despite himself as he steps into her space, hands finding her hips under the shirt like they belong there, like they’ve mapped the exact place his thumbs should sit and neither of them is going to talk about what that means. “You gonna keep running your mouth, or are you getting in?”

“You made a whole setup. I’m appreciating the ambience.”

He tilts his head. “You’re mocking me.”

“I’m moved.”

“You’re a liar.”

She grins, and he kisses it off her before it can get any worse, mouth warm and open against hers, one hand sliding up the side of her waist. For a second the room narrows to steam and skin and the soft press of his thumbs beneath her ribs. Then her nails drift down his back, slow and deliberate, catching over the raised scratches she left there last time. Garrett’s whole body gives one sharp, quiet reaction against hers.

“Careful,” he says, voice lower.

She smiles into his mouth. “Does it hurt?”

“A little.”

“Good.”

“Jesus.” He pulls back just enough to look at her, incredulous and turned on and visibly annoyed about both. “You’re insane.”

“You keep inviting me over.”

“Yeah, well.” His eyes drop to her mouth. “I’m stupid.”

“Finally, common ground.”

He mutters something under his breath that she doesn’t catch before he kisses her again, rougher this time, like he’s punishing her for being right. His hands slip under the hem of the shirt and drag it up her body, and the second it’s over her head, Garrett forgets how to finish whatever insult he’d clearly been building toward. 

It happens so plainly she almost laughs. His eyes drop, throat working once, hands settling at her waist like he needs somewhere safe to put them before they get him into trouble.

She tilts her head. “You okay?”

His eyes flick up. “Fine.”

“You look pained.”

“Because you’re naked and still talking.”

“That usually upsets you?”

“It does when the talking is happening instead of the bath.”

She glances toward the tub, then to Douglas, still waiting innocently on the towel. “You brought him out and everything.”

Garrett’s face tightens in immediate betrayal. “Don’t make it weird.”

“Weird?” She looks offended. “That’s Douglas.”

“I know his name.”

She grins. “You should. You helped name him.”

“I said it as a joke.”

“And then it stuck. That’s how naming works.”

“I didn’t think I’d be standing in my bathroom months later listening to you talk about him like he’s a close personal friend.”

“He’s been very supportive.”

Garrett gives her a flat look. “He has a charging cable.”

“He has stamina.”

“I have stamina.”

She lets her eyes drag over him, slow and deeply unfair, until his expression shifts by a fraction. “Do you?”

Garrett’s hands tighten on her waist. “Get in the bath.”

She laughs, and he guides her in with both hands like he knows full well she might climb right back out just to spite him. The water closes around her hot enough to pull a sigh out of her, and a second later Garrett is sliding in behind her, knees bracketing her hips, chest warm against her back. 

For a second, she lets herself settle. Lets her head tip back onto his shoulder. Lets his hands move over her stomach under the water, slow and broad, like he’s smoothing out every sharp edge she keeps trying to put between them.

Then he reaches past her for Douglas. She opens one eye. “Be respectful.”

Garrett’s mouth brushes the side of her neck. “I’m always respectful to Douglas.”

“You called him a tiny homewrecker last time.”

“He knows what he did.”

“You were jealous.”

He scoffs. “I was not jealous of a vibrator.”

“You sulked.”

“I was catching my breath.”

“You glared at him.”

“He was smug.”

She laughs, and Garrett bites gently at her shoulder, enough to make the laugh catch. The vibrator hums to life in his hand, a low, familiar buzz that has heat pulling through her before he even touches her with it. She knows he feels the shift in her body, because his arm slips across her waist and his mouth settles at her ear.

“Still talking?” he murmurs.

She swallows, already hating how much rougher her voice sounds. “Still waiting.”

His smile presses into the side of her throat. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Poor baby.”

She turns her head just enough to glare at him. “Don’t start.”

Garrett drags Douglas slowly up the inside of her thigh, nowhere near where she wants him, the absolute bastard. “Thought you wanted me to use my brain.”

“I want you to use your hand.”

“That’s demanding.”

“That’s proactive.”

His laugh is low against her ear, and then his mouth drops to her shoulder, open and warm, as he finally guides the vibrator higher.

“Fine,” he murmurs, voice gone rough in that way that makes her thighs want to part before she’s decided to let them. “But if you’re gonna keep defending him, I’m making him earn his place in this relationship.”

She goes still against him. Garrett goes still too, just for a second. The word hangs there in the steam, soft and stupid and too close to something neither of them has agreed to say out loud.

Then she clears her throat, eyes fixed very hard on the fogged mirror. “That what we’re calling it?”

His mouth brushes her shoulder again, slower this time. “Don’t get cocky.”

“I think Douglas should know where he stands.”

Garrett exhales a laugh against her skin, and when he speaks again, his voice is lower, threaded through with heat. “Right now? Between your legs, if you stop arguing with me.”

The words skim hot along her wet skin, and the laugh she tries for comes out smaller than planned, caught somewhere between her throat and his mouth on her shoulder.

His arm slides across her middle, dragging her back more firmly against him, the hard line of his chest pressed to her spine, his thighs bracketing hers under the water while Douglas traces a slow, maddening path up the inside of her leg.

He’s being awful about it, of course. Deliberate. Patient in a way that feels less like restraint and more like cruelty, brushing close and then away, letting the vibration skim over places that make her stomach tighten before he eases off again.

His mouth keeps moving along her neck, open and lazy, kissing beneath her ear, then the hinge of her jaw, then the spot just below it he knows makes her lose half a thought if he gets his teeth there.

She tries very hard not to squirm, because letting Garrett Graham know he’s getting to her is basically handing a loaded weapon to a man who already thinks he’s hot shit with a sniper rifle.

Unfortunately, her body has no loyalty. Her thighs shift under the water. Her fingers curl against his forearm where it’s locked across her stomach. Garrett feels both. His mouth curves against her neck.

“Garrett.”

“Mm?”

“Stop playing.”

“I thought you liked playing.”

“I like finishing.”

His breath catches against her ear in a laugh, low and rough enough to make her toes curl beneath the water. “Yeah,” he murmurs. “I’ve heard.”

She reaches back to smack his thigh, but he moves Douglas exactly where she needs it and her hand clenches instead, nails scraping into his skin beneath the water.

The sound that leaves her is immediate and humiliatingly soft, and Garrett goes still for half a second behind her, like he wants to feel it all the way through. Like he wants to press pause on the exact moment she stops being difficult and starts melting.

“There,” he says, lips brushing her ear. “That what you wanted?”

She refuses to answer, mostly because she can’t.

Garrett’s free hand drifts up her stomach, slow and wet and broad, palm sliding over her ribs like he has all the time in the world.

She feels the shape of his fingers before he reaches her chest, the heat of his hand closing over her, and her head tips back against his shoulder before she can stop it. His thumb brushes once, almost lazy, and her whole body answers so sharply that water laps over the edge of the tub.

“Oh,” he murmurs, much too pleased. “There too?”

“Shut up.”

His mouth presses to her temple, soft enough to be insulting under the circumstances. “You’re so easy to annoy.”

“You’re so easy to hate.”

“Yeah?” His hand tightens over her breast, enough to make her breath hitch. “This feel like hate?”

She would love to say something devastating. She has, in theory, a whole personality built around saying something devastating. But Douglas is buzzing steadily between her thighs, Garrett’s hand is warm and sure on her chest, and his mouth is at her ear, and the only thing her body manages is a thin little sound that makes him groan like it’s done something to him too.

He turns the setting up one notch. Her hips jerk. Water spills over the side again, hitting the tile in a soft slap. Garrett’s arm tightens across her waist, holding her there against him, not forcing, just grounding, making it impossible for her to arch away from the pressure even when it starts to burn low and bright through her stomach.

His fingers knead at her chest, thumb dragging in a rhythm that has her eyes rolling back before she can even pretend she’s above it.

“That’s it,” Garrett murmurs, voice gone thick. “Good girl.”

Her eyes squeeze shut.

He notices immediately, because he notices everything when it comes to getting under her skin. “Oh, you liked that.”

“Don’t.”

“You did.” His mouth brushes the shell of her ear, smug and breathless at once. “Fuck, baby, you really liked that.”

“I hate you.”

“No, you don’t.” He shifts Douglas slightly, pressing it in tighter, and her whole body jolts against him. His hand slides from her breast to her throat for half a second, just holding her there, tipping her face back enough that his mouth can drag over her jaw. “You’re dripping all over my hand.”

The sound she makes would be embarrassing if she had enough air left to care. The steam has gone thick around them, clinging to her skin, turning the mirror to a blur.

Her body feels loose and tight at the same time, everything warm and wet and pulled so sharply toward the ache between her thighs that she can barely keep track of where she ends and Garrett starts. 

His chest is hard behind her. His breath is hot against her ear. His hand returns to her chest, greedy now, less patient, fingers squeezing and stroking like he’s finally losing the thread of his own control.

“Garrett,” she whimpers, and hates him a little for the way his breath catches when she does.

“Yeah, baby.” His voice drops even lower, rough enough to scrape. “I know. I’ve got you.”

“No, you don’t.”

A laugh breaks out of him, bitten off and dark. “You’re arguing with me right now?”

“You’re being smug.”

“I’m being useful.”

She tries to glare at him over her shoulder, but he presses Douglas just right and her face crumples before she can get the look properly arranged. Garrett’s mouth catches at her cheek, then the corner of her mouth, kissing whatever broken little sounds spill out of her as her thighs start to tremble under the water.

“There we go,” he murmurs. “That’s it. Let me have it.”

Her fingers claw at his thigh. His breath hitches hard.

“Careful,” he grits out, and she can feel exactly how much he means it by the way his hips shift behind her, the hard press of him against her lower back, his control fraying in quiet, satisfying little pieces.

She would absolutely mock him for that if her body didn’t choose that exact moment to climb right to the edge. Everything narrows. The bath, the steam, his mouth, his hands, the buzz pressed exactly where she needs it. 

Heat coils so tight in her stomach it almost hurts, her back arching against him, chest pushing into his palm as her head falls to his shoulder. She hears herself moan, high and helpless, and Garrett makes this ruined sound against her neck like it’s taken something out of him.

“Oh, baby,” she gasps, the words slipping out before pride can catch them.

Garrett’s hand tightens on her breast. “Fuck. Say that again.”

“No.”

“Brat.”

“Garrett–”

“I know.” He kisses beneath her ear, voice low and filthy-soft, all smugness burned down to want. “I know. You’re right there, aren’t you?”

She nods because words have become unreasonable.

“Good girl,” he murmurs, pressing Douglas in that tiny, perfect angle that makes her whole body go taut. “There you go. Come on. I’ve got you. Just like that.”

Her nails dig into his thigh hard enough that he swears under his breath, but he doesn’t stop. If anything, he holds her closer, mouth at her ear, hand on her chest, the other steady between her thighs, dragging her right up to the edge with a patience that feels like punishment and devotion at the same time.

“Garrett,” she gasps.

“I know. I know. There you go–”

A knock hits the door once, and the handle turns, and then Dean walks in.

The scream she lets out isn’t human.

Garrett shouts at the same time, jerking so hard the vibrator slips from his hand and disappears into the bath with a traitorous buzzing splash.

She lunges upright, foot sliding, hair going completely under for half a second before Garrett grabs her around the waist and hauls her back against him. 

Water sloshes everywhere. The candles flicker. Dean stands in the doorway with one hand over his eyes, which would be more useful if he had done it before seeing both of them naked and morally compromised.

“OH FUCK– I’M SORRY, DUDE– AH– FUCK!”

“DEAN!” Garrett roars.

She spits bathwater out of her mouth and whips around with her hair plastered over one eye. “WHY WOULD YOU WALK IN?”

“I KNOCKED!”

“YOU OPENED WHILE KNOCKING!”

“I THOUGHT IT WAS EMPTY!”

“THE DOOR WAS LOCKED,” Garrett yells, voice cracking with the kind of rage that only comes from a man interrupted twice in one night.

Dean’s hand remains over his eyes. His entire body is angled away from them in a panic. “IT WASN’T!”

Garrett looks at the lock. The little button has popped out. For a second, the three of them stare at it.

Dean backs up, shoulder hitting the doorframe. “I didn’t see anything.”

“You screamed ah fuck,” she snaps.

“I saw movement!”

“You saw tits, Dean.”

“I saw–” Dean stops himself, visibly choosing life. “I saw nothing. I’m blind. I have never had eyes.”

“GET OUT,” Garrett and she yell together.

Dean slams the door behind him.

The bathroom goes silent except for the steady drip of water onto the tile and Douglas buzzing somewhere under the surface like the last surviving member of a shipwreck.

She sits upright between Garrett’s legs, soaked, furious, hair in her face, chest heaving. Her skin is hot from the bath and hotter from embarrassment, every inch of her buzzing with a need that has nowhere to go now except rage. 

Garrett’s arm is still locked around her waist. His other hand is braced on the tub like he’s trying not to lose his mind. Then she feels his shoulders shake. Slowly, she turns her head.

Garrett presses his lips together.

“Don’t,” she hisses.

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

“I’m not laughing.”

“You’re laughing with your whole stupid body!”

That does it. One laugh gets out of him, low and helpless, and she stares at him with the flat, dead-eyed fury of a woman who has been edged and then waterboarded by bathwater in front of Dean Di Laurentis.

Garrett tries to kiss her shoulder. “Baby–”

“No.”

He attempts another kiss. “I’m sorry.”

“No.”

“I’ll kill him.”

She glares at him. “That doesn’t help me now.”

His mouth twitches again.

She points toward the door, hair dripping onto his arm. “I hate this fucking house.”

The third time, they try the porch because both of them have started confusing desperation with creativity.

The house is quiet behind them for once, and that should be the first warning. Nothing good ever comes out of the hockey house being quiet. It means someone is dead, asleep, or about to emerge at the exact wrong time with cereal. 

But the back porch has the fire pit going, the night air is cool, and she’s tucked sideways against Garrett on the outdoor couch wearing his sweatshirt and a little skirt because she decided to wear it specifically to make his life worse.

Now the firelight is moving over her bare thighs, over the cuffs of his sweatshirt swallowed around her hands, over the dark mark on his jaw that he’s already checked twice in his phone camera and complained about three times. 

Complained is maybe generous. He keeps touching it like he’s annoyed, then glancing at her like he wants her to do it again.

So she does. She leans in while he’s mid-sentence about practice and puts her mouth under his jaw. Garrett stops talking immediately.

Her lips curve. “What were you saying?”

“Nothing.”

“No, keep going. I’m listening.”

“You’re not listening.”

“I’m multitasking.”

He tilts his head back despite himself when she kisses lower, teeth grazing his throat. His hand slides from the back of the couch to her thigh, warm palm settling under the hem of the sweatshirt where it’s ridden up. “Don’t leave another one.”

She sucks at the skin just beside the first mark.

“Jesus.” His fingers dig into her thigh. “You’re doing it on purpose.”

“Obviously.”

“Why?”

She pulls back, eyes flicking over the fresh bloom of colour. Possessive satisfaction warms under her ribs, sharp and embarrassing, so she hides it behind a shrug. “You’re pretty when you’re marked up.”

Garrett stares at her. “That might be the most concerning compliment I’ve ever gotten.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I have a game this week.”

“Wear a turtleneck.”

“I’m a hockey player.”

She laughs and kisses him properly, swallowing whatever else he was going to say. His mouth opens under hers instantly, because for all his complaining, Garrett kisses her back like an addict with a grudge. 

One hand hooks around her waist and pulls her closer until she’s half in his lap, her thigh over his, her body angled toward him in the warm orange spill of the fire.

It had started innocent. They were supposed to be sitting outside because she’d dramatically announced she needed air that didn’t contain Dean. 

Garrett had brought her his sweatshirt without saying anything, which was annoying because it made her chest feel soft in a way she didn’t want to examine. They’d been fine for maybe ten minutes. Fifteen, if she was generous.

Then he’d stretched his arm behind her, all broad shoulders and lazy mouth and stupid sweatpants, and she’d remembered she had hands. Now one of those hands is slipping down his stomach.

Garrett catches her wrist before she reaches the waistband. “Here?”

She blinks at him. “You shy?”

“No.”

“Private?”

He gives her a look.

“Right.” Her mouth twitches. “Stupid question.”

His eyes narrow. “You’re enjoying this.”

“I’m coping.”

“You’re coping by jerking me off on the porch?”

“I’m resilient.”

Garrett’s laugh breaks when she twists her wrist out of his grip and palms him through his sweats. His head falls back against the couch, jaw going tight, and the sight of him like that – exposed throat marked up by her mouth, hair messy, lips parted around a breath he clearly doesn’t want to give her – makes her feel a little vicious. A little drunk, even though she isn’t.

“There he is,” she murmurs, kissing the corner of his mouth.

“Don’t get smug.”

“Too late.”

“You’re such a brat.”

“You keep saying that like it’s going to hurt my feelings.”

“It’s not supposed to hurt your feelings.” His voice drops as her hand slips under his waistband. “It’s supposed to make you behave.”

She wraps her hand around him properly, and Garrett’s hips lift a fraction into her palm before he can stop himself. She smiles. “How’s that going?”

“Fuck.”

“Not well?”

“Shut up.”

She kisses his neck again, softer this time, then ruins the softness by dragging her teeth over the mark she made. Garrett’s hand flies to her hip, gripping hard enough to pull a pleased little sound out of her. He hears it. His eyes open, dark and focused.

“Come here,” he says.

“I am here.”

“No.” His hand slides to the back of her thigh. “Here.”

She lets him drag her into his lap because she’s generous and because her patience has been burned down to ash by this house. Her knees bracket his hips, skirt riding up, the fire hot at her back and Garrett hotter under her. 

His hands shove beneath the sweatshirt, finding bare skin, and his mouth catches hers with none of the carefulness he sometimes tries to pretend he has.

They kiss hard and messy, the kind of kiss that tastes like irritation and wanting and the leftover sweetness of the soda she stole from him earlier. She strokes him slow just to hear the way his breath catches, and Garrett bites gently at her bottom lip in retaliation.

“Inside,” he mutters against her mouth.

“No.”

His brows pull together. “No?”

“We go inside, someone walks in.”

“We stay outside, someone walks out.”

“Then be quick.”

Garrett makes a sound like that suggestion has physically hurt him. “You’re killing me.”

“You’ll live.”

“Barely.”

“Good.”

He laughs, rough and gone, and his hand slides higher under her skirt. She shivers so hard he feels it. The cocky look on his face softens for half a second, not into anything sweet exactly, but something lower, warmer, more dangerous to her than smugness.

Then the sliding door opens.

“Ugh,” Tucker says from behind them. “Are you kidding?”

They freeze. Tucker is standing in the doorway in sweatpants and a hoodie, holding a bowl of cereal like a man who’s walked into war with Cheerios as his only weapon. His face isn’t shocked, it’s tired. Deeply, spiritually tired.

Garrett’s eyes shut. Her hand is still down his pants. Tucker looks at it.

She removes it very slowly, with as much dignity as a person can have while straddling a not-boyfriend on patio furniture.

“Tuck,” Garrett says, voice strangled.

Tucker points his spoon at them. “No.”

“Go away,” she says.

“This is a communal space.”

“It’s currently occupied.”

Tucker gestures with his spoon. “It’s the porch.”

“Then close your eyes on your way through.”

“I live here.”

“So do I,” Garrett snaps.

Tucker looks at Garrett’s lap, then at her skirt, then at Garrett’s neck, where the hickeys are now definitely visible in the firelight. His expression goes flatter. She reaches for the nearest cushion and throws it at him. Tucker dodges it with annoying ease.

“I’m just trying to eat cereal,” Tucker says.

“And I’m trying to get laid,” she fires back. “We all have dreams.”

Garrett makes a choked sound that might be a laugh and might be him giving up on life.

Tucker blinks at her. Then, because he’s Tucker, he actually considers this with more empathy than the situation deserves. “Yeah, okay. But maybe not where we keep the grill.”

“It’s off.”

“That is not the point.”

Garrett drags a hand over his face. “Can you just go inside?”

“I came outside because Logan fell asleep on the couch with a plate of nachos on his chest and Dean is trying to convince him it’s a weighted blanket.”

She stares. “I’m moving out of this house and I don’t even live here.”

Tucker nods once, like this is fair. “Valid.”

Garrett looks murderous. “Tuck.”

“I’m going.” Tucker lifts the cereal bowl in surrender. “I’m going. I’m just saying, there are other locations.”

“We tried the bathroom,” she says sweetly.

Tucker winces. “Right.”

“And the bedroom.”

“Also right.”

“And now, apparently, the porch is under federal protection.”

Tucker pauses at the doorway, thinking. Then he says, “Car?”

Garrett goes still. She turns her head toward him.

Tucker shrugs. “What? I’m problem-solving.”

The fourth time, Garrett parks at the back of the west lot behind the rink, under a dead light near the far fence where nobody has any reason to be unless they’re committing a crime, hiding a body, or making the sort of sexual decision that can only come after being interrupted three times by men with no respect for romance.

Garrett cuts the engine. The car settles into darkness. For a second, neither of them moves.

Then she starts laughing. It comes out half-hysterical, half-furious, her head tipping back against the passenger seat while Garrett sits behind the wheel with one hand still on the keys and the other over his mouth like he’s trying not to join her. 

The rink’s dark behind them, the lot mostly empty, rain shining faintly on the blacktop. It smells like cold air and leather and the faint mint of the gum Garrett had been chewing before she leaned across the console at a red light and ruined it for him.

“This is insane,” she says.

Garrett looks at her. “We can go back.”

She stops laughing immediately. “Don’t be stupid.”

His mouth curves. “There she is.”

“I swear to God, Garrett, if you call me Kitty right now, I’ll leave.”

“No, you won’t.”

She glares at him.

He grins wider, because he’s very brave for a man one wrong word away from dying in his own car. “You’re too horny to leave.”

Her mouth drops open. “I’m too horny?”

“Yeah.”

“You dragged me to a parking lot like a criminal.”

“At Tucker’s suggestion.”

She gestures vaguely. “Which makes this worse.”

“You got in the car.”

“You said please.”

“I said please once.”

“You said it twice.”

His expression shifts, smile sharpening. “You counting?”

She unbuckles her seatbelt. “I’m about to start counting how many times you don’t make me come tonight.”

Garrett’s face changes so fast it’s almost worth the entire miserable evening. The grin drops. His eyes go darker, mouth parting around a breath he doesn’t quite take, and then his hand’s on her thigh, tugging. “Come here.”

She makes him wait three seconds purely because she can.

His jaw ticks. “Baby.”

“Oh, now you’re polite?”

“Now I’m desperate.”

That does something terrible to her stomach. She climbs over the console and knees him in the thigh, because his car isn’t designed for dignity and neither of them has any left anyway. 

Garrett catches her with both hands around her waist, laughing into her mouth until she bites his lip and he groans, the sound low and immediate and so satisfying she almost forgets to be mad.

“Back seat,” he says.

“If you make me climb again–”

“I’ll do the work.”

“You better. Captain.”

His eyes flash at that, because she knows exactly what she’s doing, and he does too. He gets them into the back with slightly more athleticism than the situation deserves and significantly less grace. His shoulder hits the door. Her boot catches on the seatbelt. She laughs breathlessly and calls his car a hostile environment. He tells her she’s the hostile environment. She tells him he loves it. He doesn’t answer quickly enough.

That silence is loud. She looks at him in the dim.

Garrett looks back, his face close, one hand braced beside her head and the other on her waist, thumb slipped under the hem of her shirt. His hickey-dark throat moves when he swallows. There are faint red marks at the side of his neck where her nails had caught earlier, and the sight of them makes something low in her go hot and possessive.

“Don’t look so proud,” he mutters.

“I made those.”

“Yeah, no shit.”

She bites her lip. “They look good.”

“I look like I fought a raccoon.”

“A hot raccoon.”

Garrett stares at her. “That’s what you’re going with?”

“I’m under pressure.”

He laughs, and she kisses him before it can turn into another thing, because if they start bantering too long, something will explode. Possibly her. Possibly him. Possibly the car. 

His mouth opens under hers, and suddenly all of it comes rushing back: his bedroom, the fire alarm, the bath, Dean’s scream, the porch, Tucker’s spoon, every almost, every ruined edge, every time she had been right there and yanked back by this stupid house and its stupid men and their stupid timing.

She pulls at his shirt. Garrett helps, yanking it over his head and tossing it somewhere near the front seat. Her hands are on him immediately, palms over his shoulders, down his chest, nails scraping just enough to make his breath catch.

“Careful,” he says, but it comes out weak.

She kisses beneath his jaw. “You keep saying that.”

“You keep not listening.”

“You keep liking it.”

His hand tightens on her thigh. “You’re gonna be impossible after this.”

“After what?”

He drops his forehead to hers, breathing hard. “After I finally fuck the attitude out of you.”

For once, she has no immediate comeback.

Garrett notices. His mouth curves, slow and devastating. “Oh?”

“Don’t look smug.”

“You got quiet.”

“I’m thinking.”

“No, you’re not.”

She kisses him hard enough to knock his head back against the seat. It turns rougher after that, hotter, both of them finally too impatient to make a performance out of pretending they’re not. Clothes get pushed aside instead of properly removed. Her hand slips between them, his fingers dig into her hips, the windows fogging at the edges while the cold presses black and distant outside. 

Garrett keeps kissing her like the world might interrupt again if he lets go for even a second. She keeps marking whatever skin she can reach – his jaw, his throat, the hinge of his shoulder – because some ugly, honest part of her wants evidence. Wants him walking into that locker room tomorrow with her mouth on him whether he calls her his girl or not.

He hisses when her nails drag down his back. “Fuck, baby.”

She stills, looking at him through the dark. “Too much?”

His hands pause on her waist. It’s the first real pause of the night, the first careful thing either of them has done since he locked the bathroom door. His breathing is uneven, eyes searching her face.

“No,” he says, quieter. “Just– fuck.”

Her mouth softens before she can stop it. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” His thumb strokes once along her hip, almost absent. “You’re good.”

The tenderness of it is so rude she has to kiss him again. Garrett pulls her closer, and this time, when he shifts beneath her, when he guides her hips and she sinks down onto him at last, the sound that leaves both of them is wrecked enough to fog the whole car.

For a second, neither of them moves. She stays braced over him, forehead pressed to his, mouth open around a breath she can’t seem to finish. Garrett’s completely still underneath her, every muscle locked, hands gripping her like he’s afraid the universe is going to reach through the roof and drag her away.

“Oh,” she whispers, and then hates herself for how small it sounds.

Garrett’s eyes shut. “Yeah.”

“Garrett,” she whimpers.

“I know.” His voice is rough, almost unrecognisable. “I know, baby. Fuck, I know.”

She starts to move and his head tips back against the seat, throat exposed, all those marks dark against his skin. It makes her dizzy. Or maybe that’s him. The heat of him. The fullness. The way his hands guide her down into the rhythm like he’s been thinking about it all night because he has, because they both have, because every interrupted moment is suddenly living under her skin at once.

“Finally,” she breathes, half laugh, half moan. “Holy fuck.”

Garrett laughs too, but it breaks when she rolls her hips. “Yeah. Finally.”

“You feel–” She cuts herself off, nails digging into his shoulders.

He lifts his head, eyes dark and focused. “Say it.”

“No.”

“Brat.”

“Don’t call me–”

“Wasn’t gonna.” His mouth brushes hers. “Not this time.”

That lands somewhere stupid and soft in her chest, which is inconvenient, so she moves harder. Garrett groans, low and filthy, hands sliding down to grip her ass and pull her into him. The car rocks faintly.

Her palm slaps against the fogged window for balance, leaving a streak through the condensation. He kisses her neck, then her jaw, then her mouth, swallowing the sounds she doesn’t bother holding back anymore.

“God, I missed you,” he says, like it slips out before he can check it.

Her hips falter for half a beat. He looks up at her, breathing hard, hair messed by her hands, mouth swollen, hickeys blooming along his throat like a confession neither of them has to make out loud.

She swallows. “You saw me two hours ago.”

“Not like this.”

The answer moves through her like heat. She kisses him because she doesn’t know what else to do with it, and Garrett kisses her back with both hands pulling her down, his body meeting hers in this desperate, perfect rhythm that makes the whole night narrow to his mouth and his hands and the slick slide of them finally, finally getting what they want.

“Come on,” he murmurs against her lips, voice ragged. “That’s it. Take it.”

Her fingers twist in his hair. “Don’t tell me what to do.”

His laugh turns into a groan when she clenches around him. “You sure?”

“Garrett.”

“Yeah, baby.” His hand slides up her back, holding her close. “I’ve got you.”

She’s so close it’s almost mean. Her body tightens around it, breath breaking, forehead falling to his shoulder. Garrett’s hand presses at the base of her spine. His mouth is at her ear, saying things too low and filthy and soft to survive outside the car, and her nails rake down his back hard enough that he swears.

“Fuck,” he gasps. “There’s my girl.”

The words hang there between them, fogging up the windows, pressed into the leather, warm and reckless and absolutely not casual. Then she lifts her head, eyes narrowed even though her mouth is swollen and her breathing is ruined. “Your girl?”

Garrett stares at her.

She can feel him still inside her. Can feel the tremor in his hands where they hold her. Can see him deciding, right in front of her, whether to deflect or deny or be brave for once in his stupid life. His jaw shifts.

Then someone knocks on the window, three sharp taps. Everything in the car dies. Her whole body locks on top of him. Garrett’s eyes close like he’s been abandoned by God.

Through the fogged glass, a flashlight cuts white across the back seat. Another knock.

A muffled voice says, “Campus police.”

She drops her forehead onto his shoulder. Garrett’s hands are still on her hips. His breathing is still rough. The car is still hot and fogged and full of every terrible, unfinished thing between them.

For one long, awful second, there’s only the sound of rain dripping off the roof and the distant electrical buzz of the dead parking lot light.

Then she lifts her head just enough to look at him, hair falling around her face, cheeks flushed, mouth swollen, eyes wide with disbelief and the last remaining thread of her patience snapping clean in half.

Garrett swallows.

She whispers, very softly, “Oh, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

to be notified when i post new fics, follow @kooksandpearls-library and turn on notifications! i no longer use a taglist for garrett fics.

He was on the couch in the far corner, one long leg stretched out, the other bent, beer bottle loose in one hand, shoulders relaxed beneath a faded Briar Hockey hoodie because he had a game tomorrow and one beer was the tragic little line between responsible captain and washed-up campus cautionary tale. 

His hair was still damp from whatever shower he’d taken after practice, curls drying messy over his forehead, and he had that clean, warm, unfair look on his face that made girls drift toward him like someone had put out a bowl of candy.

One of them had drifted. She was perched on the arm of the couch beside him, angled in with her knees turned toward him, laughing at something Garrett said like he’d invented humour personally for her benefit. 

She had glossy hair and a tiny top and the kind of pretty, easy confidence that came from never having to wonder if people wanted you in a room. Her hand landed on Garrett’s arm once, light and quick. Then again, longer this time, fingers curling around his bicep like she was testing the merchandise.

The red cup crinkled slightly in her hand.

Garrett laughed. A low huff through his nose, mouth tilting, eyes dropping briefly before coming back up. It was the kind of laugh that looked private from across the room even if it wasn’t. The kind of laugh that made something hot and awful crawl up the back of her neck and settle behind her ears.

She took one sip from her cup and tasted nothing but melted ice and bad decisions.

“Careful, Kitty,” Dean said beside her. “Clench your jaw any harder and you’ll crack a tooth.”

She didn’t look at him. “Don’t call me that.”

Dean hummed into the rim of his beer. He’d appeared at her side sometime in the last five minutes, because rich boys had stealth settings when there was drama nearby. 

He wore a white t-shirt that probably cost more than her whole outfit and looked entirely too comfortable watching her quietly consider homicide. “It’s a cute nickname.”

“It’s not my name.”

“Yeah, but nicknames usually aren’t.”

She finally turned her head just enough to glare at him. Dean looked delighted, which made her want to shove him and also, unfortunately, made her feel a little less insane. 

He had that big, bright, nosy expression on his face, the one that said he had absolutely no intention of helping and every intention of narrating the crash if she drove herself into a wall.

“Mm,” she said flatly. “Whatever.”

Dean followed her gaze back to the couch. The girl was laughing again, leaning so far into Garrett’s space that her hair brushed his shoulder.

Garrett didn’t move away. He didn’t lean in either, which was probably supposed to mean something mature and rational, except her body was not currently accepting evidence from the defence. 

Her stomach had gone tight. Her tongue sat sharp behind her teeth. Every inch of her skin felt stupidly aware of how many times Garrett’s hands had been on her that week alone.

His fingers on the back of her neck while he kissed her in the kitchen. His mouth against her ear upstairs. His hoodie shoved into her arms when she’d complained about being cold, like he hadn’t cared, like he hadn’t watched her pull it on and then gone a little quiet around the eyes.

Casual. That was the word he liked so much.

Casual, apparently, meant making space for her at the counter without being asked. It meant texting her u up? and then getting pissy when she said no because she had an early class. 

It meant his hand sliding under the back of her shirt while they watched a movie with the guys and him acting like that was somehow normal. It meant his mouth on her throat and his stupid voice saying baby like he’d been born knowing it would make her softer, then turning around two days later and saying, very calmly, very publicly, that they weren’t dating.

Which was true. Technically.

Unfortunately, technically did not stop her from wanting to throw her drink at the girl’s stupid shiny little head.

Dean’s shoulder bumped hers, barely. “You could go over there.”

“And do what?”

“I don’t know. Bite her?”

She gave him a look.

“What?” Dean said, lifting both hands. “I’m workshopping.”

“I’m not jealous.”

Dean blinked at her. Then he looked back at Garrett, then at her again, slow and theatrical. “Oh, okay.”

“I’m not.”

“Right.”

“I just think it’s tacky.”

“Her?”

“Both of them.”

Dean nodded, deeply solemn. “Of course. This is an etiquette issue.”

“It is.”

“Very Miss Manners of you.”

She made a soft, mean little sound and looked away, because if she kept watching him smile at that girl, something was going to snap clean through her. The party kept moving around her like nobody else could feel the pressure building in the walls. 

Logan was somewhere near the dining room yelling, “No, no, house rules, you drink on a bounce,” like he was presiding over the Supreme Court. 

Tucker walked past with a plate of burnt pizza rolls and paused just long enough to assess her face, then Dean’s face, then Garrett’s corner of the couch.

“Oh,” Tucker said.

Dean nodded. “Yeah.”

Tucker looked back at her, kind but not soft enough to be annoying. “You good?”

“I’m amazing,” she said.

Tucker’s mouth twitched. “That sounded convincing.”

“I’m having the best night of my life,” she snapped. 

“Cool.” Tucker took one pizza roll off the plate, bit into it, immediately regretted it, and still swallowed because he was committed to dignity. “Just checking.”

She watched him go, jaw working.

Dean leaned closer, lowering his voice. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think he’s doing anything.”

That made something in her chest pull tight, because Dean wasn’t joking now, and that was worse. She could handle him being an idiot. She had built up a tolerance to Dean’s particular strain of idiocy. But concern made the whole thing embarrassing in a way she could feel under her skin.

She kept her eyes on the opposite wall. “He can do whatever he wants.”

“Sure.”

“He’s single.”

He shrugged, lips turning down. “Technically.”

She turned on him. “Don’t do that.”

Dean’s brows lifted. “Do what?”

“That little voice.”

“My voice is beautiful.”

“The thing where you all act like I’m his girlfriend when he’s the one walking around with a public service announcement that I’m not.”

Dean’s face shifted, amusement easing out at the corners. He looked over at Garrett again, and she hated how much she wanted him to tell her she was wrong. 

How much she wanted anyone to say Garrett was just being stupid, that everybody could see it, that she wasn’t standing there making herself sick over a guy who would go upstairs with someone else while she was still in the room.

Dean took a slow drink. “Yeah,” he said finally. “He’s an idiot.”

“That wasn’t helpful.”

“Wasn’t trying to be helpful. Just accurate.”

Across the room, Garrett stood, and the girl stood too.

For one second the party muffled itself around her, all the music and laughter and clattering cups dulling under the sudden hard rush of blood in her ears. 

Garrett said something to the girl, head tipped down so she could hear him over the noise. The girl smiled up at him, bright and satisfied, then touched his arm again. A small stroke of her thumb over the sleeve of his hoodie.

Her stomach dropped so sharply it almost felt physical, like missing a step in the dark.

Garrett started toward the stairs and the girl followed.

“Oh,” Dean said under his breath, and there was no humour in it this time.

She didn’t move at first. Her hand was still wrapped around the cup. Her mouth felt dry. The room had tilted a little, or maybe she had. She could see Garrett clearly as he cut through the living room, tall and easy and completely unaware that she was standing there with something vicious crawling around inside her ribs. 

Or maybe he did know. Maybe that was worse. Maybe he knew exactly where she was and had still decided to walk past her with another girl trailing after him toward the stairs that led to his room.

Casual. Cool. Fine.

She lifted her cup to her mouth and realised it was empty.

Garrett noticed her when he was close enough that it was too late to pretend she hadn’t seen. His gaze flicked from her face to Dean, then back again, and something changed in his expression. Confusion first. A little crease between his brows, mouth settling, shoulders still loose but no longer careless.

The girl came up beside him, close enough that her arm brushed his. Garrett looked at her, nodded toward the stairs, and said, “I’ll meet you up there.”

She nodded, smiling, then slipped around him and went upstairs.

Dean made a noise into his beer that sounded like a man trying very hard not to choke on stupidity.

Garrett watched the girl disappear, then turned back. “What’s wrong?”

Dean coughed. “Brother.”

Garrett’s eyes cut to him. “What?”

Dean shook his head and took one step back. “Nothing. I just love when you’re dumb.”

Garrett ignored him, attention coming back to her. “What’s wrong?”

She looked up at him. He was close now. Close enough that she could see the little damp curls around his hairline, the faint bruise yellowing near his jaw from last weekend’s game, the stupid dark sweep of his lashes when he blinked down at her like she was the one being difficult. 

Like he hadn’t just sent another girl upstairs to wait in his room. Like her body wasn’t reacting to the whole thing with an ugly, nauseous twist that made her want to either laugh in his face or claw her way out of her own skin.

“What’s wrong?” she repeated.

Garrett’s brows drew tighter. “Yeah.”

She smiled. It didn’t feel nice on her face. “Don’t be stupid.”

His jaw shifted. “Okay. What’s that supposed to mean?”

Dean took another tiny step away, then immediately stopped because his survival instinct was at war with his need to witness the entire thing.

She set her empty cup on the nearest bookshelf with such careful precision that Garrett’s eyes followed the movement. Then she looked back at him and kept her voice light. Sweet, almost. “If you fuck her, you’re never touching me again.”

Garrett blinked. Dean inhaled so sharply he almost whistled. 

For a second, no one said anything. Someone screamed with laughter in the kitchen. A bass-heavy song rattled through the floorboards. 

Garrett’s mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. “What?”

She tipped her head, widening her eyes in a cruel little imitation of him. “What?”

His face hardened by degrees. That familiar Garrett switch where something got too close to an exposed nerve and he decided arrogance was quicker than honesty. “We’re not dating.”

Dean made a strangled sound. “Oh, man.”

Garrett pointed at him without looking away from her. “Stay out of it.”

“No, I’m sorry,” Dean said, not sounding sorry at all. “I’m incapable. You don’t fuck someone else in front of her, dude.”

Garrett glared at him. “I said stay out of it.”

She laughed once, sharp enough to make Garrett’s eyes snap back to hers. “No, no. Let him talk. He’s making sense for once.”

Dean pressed a hand to his chest. “That felt backhanded, but I’ll take it.”

Garrett’s nostrils flared slightly. “I wasn’t–” He cut himself off, dragging a hand over his mouth, then looked down at her again. “You don’t get to make rules for me.”

That landed worse than she wanted it to, because every part of this was built on nothing solid enough to hold. No title. No promise. No soft, stupid conversation in daylight where either of them admitted what they were doing. 

She kept smiling anyway.

“I’m not making any rules.” Her voice was calm enough that even Dean looked at her twice. “You can do whatever you want, Garrett. I’m not your girlfriend. You’ve made that incredibly fucking clear. So go upstairs. Have fun. I’m not going to tackle her in the hallway.”

His face flickered. Just once.

She stepped in a fraction closer, because if she stopped now, she might actually start shaking, and she would rather die in the hallway with Dean watching than give Garrett that. 

She tipped her chin up, all teeth around the edges of her smile. “But it’s simple, baby. Stick your dick in her, and you never get to stick it in me ever again. Okay?”

Dean stared at the ceiling like he had just seen God. Garrett went very still.

His eyes dropped to her mouth, then came back up. His hand tightened around the neck of his beer bottle. For all his cocky, golden-boy bullshit, for all the easy girls and easy smiles and campus-wide Garrett Graham mythos, he looked briefly like she’d shoved him hard enough to make him feel where the edge was.

“Okay,” he said. It came out low.

She blinked. “Okay?”

His jaw worked once. “Yeah. Okay.”

Dean’s head whipped toward him. “Wow. Love personal growth.”

Garrett shot him a look that should have melted paint off the wall. “Dean.”

“I’m going, I’m going.” Dean lifted both hands and backed up another step, but not before looking at her with open admiration. “For the record, Kitty, that was terrifying.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Yeah, no, for sure.” He nodded, still backing away. “Very scary. Loved it.”

He disappeared toward the kitchen, probably to tell Logan and Tucker immediately.

Garrett looked at her for another second, then glanced toward the stairs. Something in her body tightened again, bracing. Waiting for him to go up anyway. Waiting for him to prove the whole thing meant less to him than it did to her.

Instead, he turned and shoved his beer onto the bookshelf beside her cup. “Stay here.”

Her laugh came out before she could stop it. “Excuse me?”

“Just–” Garrett stopped, visibly swallowed the first version of whatever he wanted to say, and tried again. “Don’t leave.”

It was a little rough around the edges, a little too quick, like the thought of her walking out had gotten under his skin before he could pretend otherwise.

She crossed her arms. “Why?”

Garrett looked at her like she was exhausting, which might have been more effective if he hadn’t just made a girl wait in his room and then told the girl he wasn’t dating not to leave. “Because I’m going upstairs to tell her to go.”

She hated how much that loosened something in her chest. She crossed her arms tighter, because if she didn’t, she might do something embarrassing, like believe him too quickly. “Fine.”

Garrett’s eyes stayed on hers. “Fine?”

“Go.”

He nodded once, then hesitated, hand flexing at his side like he wanted to touch her and knew better. “She’s leaving,” he said.

“She better.”

His mouth twitched despite everything. “Yeah, Kitty.”

“Don’t call me that.”

But this time, she didn’t sound nearly mean enough.

❄︎ ❄︎ ❄︎

taglist ⋆⁺₊ ₄₄❅. @xlinxdax0704  |  @snowtargaryen  |  @goodbyetuesday  |  @staystrongsoa  |  @dadshirrt  |  @miya-111  |  @softburrow  |  @darlinglux  |  @waitingforsmartpeople  |  @seon9yeonie  |  @laceyvt3  |  @sunny747  |  @cosmoh0lic  |  @blackgurlieee  |  @matchieee  |  @loomiz  |  @corvusmorte  |  @erin-alice  |  @cloudsxcherriesx  |  @lolskunk  |  @elizabeth123456767  |  @purplerainx1  |  @pinkgiraffebeach  |  @lucyysthings  |  @outpostsworld  |  @s0ftdr1nks  |  @maybankslover  |  @instantplaiddream  |  @droppedyourhnd  |  @bsenpai  |  @urfavadi  |  @em1ly57  |  @parker-barnes-af  |  @violyn20  |  @bootyliciousbutterfly  |  @bloomingflower13  |  @rexit-mo  |  @tpwkmera  |  @cherryrry581  |  @stevesxwhore  |  @solapeachtea  |  @giuliaasstuff  |  @pamacs-macs  |  @loonylosworld  |  @alice07ea  |  @hitting-euphoria4  |  @tessf13  |  @canupourme14theroad  |  @jayda12  |  @kmc1989  |  click here to be added to the taglist!

He was busy. Hockey, classes, captain shit, the usual revolving door of women who used to come and go before she’d started appearing in the kitchen in his sweatshirts and stealing the last banana off the counter with the lazy comfort of someone who knew exactly which drawer the forks were in.

Garrett denied all of it. Continually. Aggressively, even. Like if he said the words she’s not my girlfriend often enough, the universe would stop presenting evidence to the contrary.

Unfortunately for him, the universe was a petty bitch, and so were his friends. Dean had been killed by Tucker for the third time in under two minutes and was halfway through an appeal to basic human decency when the first noise came from upstairs.

Not a bed thump. Not laughter. Not the usual muffled, morally concerning sounds that made Tucker reach for the remote and Logan yell, “Bro, volume,” without looking away from the screen.

This was a voice, her voice. And it was furious. “ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME, GARRETT?”

Every thumb in the living room stopped moving at once. Onscreen, Dean’s character was immediately shot in the head.

Nobody cared.

There was a half-second where the whole downstairs seemed to hold its breath around the TV static and the low hum of the fridge from the kitchen. Logan lifted his head first, slow and delighted. Tucker’s brows went up. Dean turned, beer paused halfway to his mouth, eyes brightening with the reverent attention of a man who had just heard the opening note of live theatre.

Upstairs, something moved hard enough to creak through the ceiling. A footstep. Maybe two. Then Garrett’s voice came down, rough and defensive and very much not using his captain voice. “What? Jesus Christ, I looked at my phone.”

“You were snapping a puck bunny right before you fucked me!”

Dean’s mouth fell open. Logan’s eyes went huge. Tucker closed his eyes once, like a man hearing a disaster he could have warned someone about if anyone in this house respected wisdom.

“Oh, rookie error,” Logan said solemnly, pointing one finger toward the ceiling without taking his eyes off the stairs. “That’s a rookie error.”

Dean nodded, gravely, as if Garrett had failed a sacred code. “Yeah, no. You can’t do that.”

Tucker set his controller down on his knee. “You absolutely cannot do that.”

From upstairs, Garrett snapped, “I wasn’t snapping a puck bunny.”

“Oh, fuck you, Garrett!”

“Oh, fuck me?” Garrett shot back, voice rising now, indignant in that very particular Garrett Graham way where he sounded personally offended that reality had chosen to disagree with him. “Fuck me? Are you shitting me? I go on my phone for, like, two seconds and you freak out?”

“I was straddling you, you asshole!”

Dean made a strangled sound and pressed his fist to his mouth, eyes shining. “God, she’s good.”

Logan leaned forward, elbows on his knees, fully abandoning the game now. His abandoned character stood motionless on screen while someone named xXSlayerBoiXx unloaded an entire magazine into his chest. “Yeah, no, I’m with her on that. That’s insane. You don’t check messages mid-straddle.”

“It’s about respect,” Dean said, sudden and earnest, like the spirit of an Italian grandmother had entered his body. “You gotta keep that shit separate, man. Girls know when you’re mentally in the room. They can feel it.”

Tucker looked at him.

Dean looked back. “What?”

“No, I agree,” Tucker said after a beat, which somehow made it funnier. “I just didn’t expect you to be the one bringing emotional literacy into this house tonight.”

Dean lifted his beer in salute.

Upstairs, her voice came again, closer this time like she’d moved toward the door or maybe toward Garrett, which somehow made the whole thing worse and better. “You literally smiled at your phone.”

“I smile at shit!”

“You smiled like a slut!”

Logan lost it. He folded forward, laughter punching out of him so hard he had to slap one hand over his mouth. Tucker’s mouth twitched. Dean pointed up at the ceiling with the beer bottle, triumphant.

“That,” Dean said, “is a woman with language.”

Garrett barked something they couldn’t quite catch, then louder, “It was a team thing.”

“Oh my God, don’t lie to me with hockey. That’s so insulting.”

“I’m not lying with hockey!”

“You’re always lying with hockey. It’s your little emotional support sport.”

Dean wheezed. “Oh, she’s killing him.”

“She’s not wrong,” Tucker said, and picked up his controller again only to realise no one else was playing. He set it down with the soft resignation of a man accepting that the night had changed shape. “He does use hockey as a legal defence.”

Logan wiped under one eye with his thumb. “Your Honor, I couldn’t text back because we had a power play.”

“Exactly,” Dean said. “And the jury’s like, damn, compelling.”

The argument upstairs hit a sharper pitch then, the words overlapping enough that downstairs only fragments came through: Garrett saying her name in that strained, warning way; her cutting over him with something about half the campus knowing exactly what your stupid little smirk means; Garrett snapping back that she didn’t get to act like he’d done something when he hadn’t done anything; her laugh, sharp and humourless enough to slice through the floorboards.

The thing was, from downstairs, it was hilarious. It was the kind of fight you listened to with one hand over your mouth and the other hovering near your beer because you didn’t want to miss a word.

But even through the ceiling, even with Dean’s face lit up like Christmas, there was something hot and real in it. Garrett could say casual until his voice gave out. The guys had seen him check every time the front door opened on a Friday night in case it was her. They had seen him turn down girls without making a production of it and then act like he didn’t know he’d done it. They had seen him stand in the kitchen at nine in the morning holding two mugs of coffee, one black and one with the stupid oat milk she liked, and still somehow insist he was not, under any circumstances, doing relationship shit.

Upstairs, something thudded, like someone had shoved a door or dropped a shoe or Garrett had knocked into his own dresser while gesturing too aggressively for a man who claimed to be calm.

“Don’t walk away from me,” Garrett said, clearer now.

“Oh, now you care where I am?”

“Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“That– that thing where you make it sound like I don’t give a shit.”

There was a pause after that. Barely a pause. Downstairs, all three of them went quieter without meaning to.

Then she said, voice still furious but lower now, scraped around the edges, “You were smiling at another girl with my thighs around your waist, Garrett.”

Logan’s face changed first. The grin softened out of it by a fraction. Tucker looked down at his beer. Dean, for all his many sins, at least had the sense to stop laughing for a second.

Garrett didn’t answer right away. When he did, his voice had lost some of the heat. “It wasn’t like that.”

“Then what was it like?”

“Baby–”

“Oh, do not baby me right now.”

Dean inhaled through his teeth. “Tough room.”

“Deserved,” Tucker murmured.

Garrett said something too low for them to make out, then louder when she clearly answered over him, “I’m not trying to make you look stupid!”

“You don’t have to try, you’re doing great.”

Logan made a tiny, appreciative noise. “Goddamn.”

Dean leaned back against the couch, eyes narrowed in thought now, as if evaluating odds at a racetrack. “I got ten bucks on Kitty.”

Tucker turned his head slowly. “Kitty?”

“Yeah.” Dean said it like this was obvious, like the naming of women based on their probable combat style was an established household tradition. “Kitty.”

Logan frowned. “Why Kitty?”

Dean looked offended by the lack of memory. “Because she scratches the shit out of him. You didn’t see his back last week?”

“Oh shit,” Logan said immediately, pointing at Dean. “That’s right. In the locker room. I thought he got attacked by a raccoon.”

“Exactly.” Dean spread one hand, pleased with his own case. “Kitty.”

Tucker’s brows drew together. “Nah. She’s hotter than a housecat.”

Dean tipped his head, considering. “I didn’t say housecat.”

“You said kitty. That implies housecat.”

“She’s not a housecat,” Dean said seriously.

Logan leaned back, very invested. “Cheetah?”

“No,” Tucker said. “Cheetahs are too sleek. She’s got more… attitude.”

“Mountain lion,” Dean said, snapping his fingers.

The room went quiet in collective consideration.

Logan nodded first. “Mountain lion works.”

Tucker lifted his beer. “Yeah. Respectfully.”

Dean tipped his bottle toward the ceiling. “Ten bucks on Mountain Lion.”

Upstairs, Garrett’s voice rose again, but not in the same way now. “You think I’m sitting there trying to get with somebody else while you’re literally in my room?”

“I don’t know what you’re doing, Garrett, because you keep telling me this is nothing.”

That hit the downstairs like somebody had turned down the TV and let the actual room in. Logan’s mouth went a little flat. Dean’s eyes flicked toward Tucker, then away. Tucker exhaled through his nose and leaned back in the chair.

Garrett said nothing. She laughed again, quieter this time, and it was worse than the yelling. “Right. Yeah. Exactly.”

A door creaked upstairs. A floorboard shifted.

Garrett’s voice came out rough. “That’s not fair.”

“No, what’s not fair is you acting like I’m insane for being embarrassed when you keep making sure I know I’m not allowed to be anything else.”

“Jesus. That’s not–” Garrett stopped, frustrated enough that they could almost see him dragging a hand through his hair. “That’s not what I meant.”

“What did you mean?”

Another silence. Dean, who had somehow turned from smug spectator into anxious civilian in under thirty seconds, whispered, “Say something good, dumbass.”

Tucker shot him a look. “You whispering isn’t helping him.”

“I know, but, like, he can sense my spirit.”

Garrett finally spoke, lower. They couldn’t catch the first part. Only the end. “…don’t want you thinking I’m messing around with other girls.”

“But you are.”

“I’m not.”

“You were.”

“I wasn’t.”

“You were smiling at your phone like–”

“I was smiling because Logan sent me a video of Dean eating shit in the driveway.”

Tucker stared at both of Dean and Logan, disgusted. “This house is an ecosystem of idiots.”

Upstairs, there was a beat of silence. Then her voice, much flatter now. “What?”

Garrett said, louder, with the rushed relief of a man finally locating evidence in his own defence, “It was Dean. It was the video of Dean slipping on the ice by the cars. I was laughing at that.”

Dean pointed to himself, touched. “I saved his situationship.”

Logan leaned over and slapped his shoulder. “Your pain had purpose.”

“I told you I’m important to this team.”

The floorboards creaked again. Upstairs, she said something too low for them to catch. Garrett answered, also too low, his voice doing that thing it did when he was trying not to sound soft and failing just enough for people who knew him to notice.

Then she snapped, suddenly audible again, “That still doesn’t fix the fact that you’re weird about me.”

Garrett’s answer came immediate and defensive. “I’m not weird about you.”

All three guys downstairs went still. Then, as one, they looked at each other. Dean’s face went blank with disbelief. Logan’s mouth opened. Tucker’s eyebrows lifted toward his hairline.

“He’s so weird about her,” Logan whispered.

“Incredibly,” Dean agreed.

“He once made me Venmo her for mozzarella sticks because I ate the ones she left in the fridge,” Tucker said.

Logan turned to him. “He made you Venmo her?”

“She didn’t even ask. She was asleep.”

Dean nodded solemnly. “That’s husband behaviour.”

Upstairs, she said, “You got mad at Tucker for eating my leftovers.”

Tucker lifted both hands as if personally vindicated by God.

Garrett shouted, “Because he knew they weren’t his!”

“They were in a communal fridge!”

Dean clutched his chest. “Oh my God.”

Logan dropped his head back against the couch. “He’s cooked.”

“Burnt,” Tucker said.

Upstairs, the argument blurred again into movement, voices crossing, Garrett’s frustration and her hurt colliding in the messy, intimate rhythm of two people who knew each other well enough to know exactly where to press and not enough to stop themselves from pressing there anyway. 

There was another thud, softer this time. Something fabric-heavy hitting the floor. Maybe the edge of a comforter. Maybe one of Garrett’s hoodies being launched with intent.

Then she said, sharp but trembling around it, “I’m not asking you to marry me, Garrett. I’m asking you not to make me feel stupid for liking you!”

The living room went dead silent. Even Dean didn’t joke.

For a second, there was only the muted TV, the distant rush of heat through the vents, the soft electrical buzz of the lamp beside the couch. Tucker looked away first, because there were some things a man wasn’t supposed to witness even through drywall. Logan rubbed a hand over his mouth. Dean’s face did something strange, caught between sympathy and the reflexive horror of sincerity arriving without warning.

Garrett’s voice came low enough that they had to strain for it. “I don’t think you’re stupid.”

She answered, quieter too. “You act like I am.”

“I don’t mean to.”

“Yeah, well.” Her voice wavered, barely. “You’re really good at it anyway.”

There was another pause, longer this time. Then Garrett said her name, and it sounded so unlike the way he said it when he was teasing her downstairs, so stripped of performance, that even Logan stopped breathing loudly.

“I’m busy,” Garrett said, and immediately Dean made a face like he wanted to climb through the ceiling and tackle him. But then Garrett kept going, rougher, faster, like if he didn’t get it out in one rush he’d lose the nerve. “And I’m not– I don’t do this shit. I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“I want you to stop hiding behind that.”

“I’m not hiding.”

“Garrett.”

Silence. Then, quieter, from him: “Maybe a little.”

Dean’s eyes widened.

Logan whispered, “Progress.”

Tucker nodded once. “Huge.”

Whatever she said next didn’t reach them. It was softer, swallowed by the ceiling and the old pipes and the house settling around all of them. Garrett answered in the same register. For a minute, the boys could hear only the shape of it: his voice low and trying; hers still hurt but no longer slicing; a murmur, a footstep, another smaller sound that might have been a laugh or might have been her telling him he was an idiot in a tone that had lost most of its blade.

Dean leaned slowly toward the ceiling, listening so hard his beer tilted dangerously in his hand.

“Are they making up?” Logan whispered.

Tucker held up one finger. “Wait.”

The upstairs went very, very quiet. A bedframe creaked once. All three of them froze.

Then, clear enough to cut through the entire house, came a high, breathless little squeal that immediately dissolved into a muffled laugh and Garrett saying something low that none of them could make out but absolutely did not sound like an apology anymore.

Dean nodded once, satisfied. “Yup.”

Logan picked up his controller. “They’re fucking.”

Tucker reached for the remote and turned the TV volume up three notches with the resigned precision of a man who had lived in this house too long. “Good for them.”

Dean lifted his beer toward the ceiling. “Mountain Lion won.”

“You don’t win a fight by sleeping with Garrett after,” Tucker said.

Dean considered this. “Depends on the fight.”

Logan unpaused the game and immediately got shot. “I still think Garrett lost.”

“Oh, he definitely lost,” Tucker said.

Dean grinned, settling back against the couch as the game roared back to life and the upstairs became, blessedly, a problem the TV volume could mostly handle. “Yeah, but he’s not gonna know that until morning.”

From above them came another muffled thump, followed by Garrett’s laugh, low and pleased and stupidly gone.

Logan shook his head, respawning. “He’s so fucked.”

Tucker’s mouth curved faintly as he lifted his controller again. “Yeah.”

Dean, eyes on the screen now, smile still wide, said, “But in his defence, did you guys see her in that little skirt earlier?”

Tucker killed him instantly in the game.

Dean stared at the screen. “Wow.”

“Respect women,” Tucker said pointing at Dean, calm as anything.

Logan laughed so hard he missed his next shot, and upstairs, Garrett Graham continued very loudly pretending he didn’t have a girlfriend.

The room has gone quiet in the aftermath, the sort of quiet that arrives after a small, localised weather event has torn through and left evidence everywhere for later people to pretend not to see. 

Garrett’s comforter is half on the bed and half dragged toward the floor, one corner caught under her knee. A pillow has somehow ended up near the closet. Her shirt is inside out beside the desk chair. One of Garrett’s socks is on the nightstand, which makes absolutely no sense, but the whole room has taken on that loose, wrecked, airless quality of a place where nothing had been put down so much as flung away in the service of more urgent priorities. 

The lamp throws soft gold over the wall and across the pile of clothes at the foot of the bed, and under it all the house is still making noise downstairs: gunfire from the TV, somebody laughing too loud, a dull male groan of defeat that is probably Dean dying in the game again.

She’s sprawled on her stomach across Garrett’s chest, bare skin warm against bare skin, one leg tangled in the sheet and the other hooked lazily over his thigh like she has no intention of giving his body back to him anytime soon.

Her chin rests over his sternum, and she traces nonsense patterns over his chest with the tip of one finger, slow little loops through the faint sheen still drying there, feeling the hard, steady thud of his heart under her cheek when she tilts down. 

It’s stupid, really, how quickly the fight has gone soft at the edges now that they’ve burned through it. Her throat still feels a little raw from yelling. Her body feels heavy and loose and humming in places she’s absolutely not going to name out loud. Garrett’s hand sits at the base of her spine, thumb moving every now and then like he keeps forgetting he’s doing it.

For a while neither of them says anything. Which is probably for the best, because words have been historically risky in this room tonight. Then the floorboards creak somewhere downstairs and Logan’s voice carries faintly up, followed by Dean’s laugh, bright and stupid and unmistakably delighted by his own existence.

She stills. Garrett’s hand pauses on her back.

Her eyes lift to his face. “Do you think the guys heard us?”

Garrett looks down at her for half a second, mouth already fighting the kind of grin that means he’s decided honesty will be funniest if delivered without mercy. His hair’s a mess from her hands, curls pushed in every wrong direction, face flushed in that warm, post-sex way that makes him look softer and smugger at once, which should be illegal on a man who already has enough advantages.

“Think the whole campus heard us,” he says.

She lets out an offended little laugh and drops her forehead against his chest. “Shut up.”

“No, seriously.” His voice is lazy now, rough around the edges, pleased with himself in a way that makes her want to bite him. Again. “Pretty sure the women’s soccer team knows you’re mad at me. And now... not so mad at me.”

“Oh my God.” She presses her face harder into his chest, but she’s giggling now, because the alternative is imagining Logan, Tucker, and Dean downstairs, all three of them going dead silent and absolutely listening like the worst little creeps in Massachusetts. “I hate you.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I literally do.”

“You’re naked on top of me.”

She grins into his chest. “That’s unrelated.”

“Feels related.”

She lifts her head just enough to glare at him, which doesn’t work at all because he’s grinning at her like she’s the funniest, most inconvenient thing that has ever happened to him.

That look gets under her skin in a way she hates. The part where his amusement goes warm and stupid around the eyes because he’s not just entertained. He’s happy she’s there. Happy she’s still touching him. Happy in the middle of a room that looks like a crime scene made of laundry and bad decisions.

His hand slides up her back, slow and broad, then comes around the side of her neck with the kind of easy confidence that makes her body go annoyingly still. His fingers resting lightly beneath her jaw, thumb brushing once along the side of her throat while he tips her face up.

“C’mere,” he murmurs, and kisses her before she can say something defensive.

It’s quick, technically. Barely more than a press of his mouth to hers, warm and lazy and smug at the corner because he can probably feel the way she melts by half an inch the second his hand settles there. 

But it does something ridiculous inside her anyway. Something bright and helpless and fluttering low in her stomach. She kisses him back without meaning to make anything of it, but he smiles against her mouth, and that’s somehow worse.

When he lets her go, she blinks down at him. “You’re very annoying after sex.”

“Before too.”

“True.”

“During, though?”

She pauses, letting her eyes move over his face with theatrical consideration. “Tolerable.”

Garrett’s eyebrows lift. “Tolerable?”

“Mhm.”

“That’s crazy, considering the volume you were using ten minutes ago.”

She gasps and shoves at his chest, but he catches her wrist before she gets far, laughing low in his throat, the sound moving under her palm. “Garrett.”

“What?”

“You’re so full of yourself.”

“Evidence-based confidence, baby.”

She rolls her eyes, but the baby lands anyway, soft and warm and stupidly effective in the middle of all that cocky shit. Which is exactly the problem. Garrett could say something that made her want to smother him with his own pillow and then two seconds later say baby like it belonged in his mouth, like he hadn’t even had to think about it.

He gives her ass a lazy pat and exhales, long and reluctant, glancing toward the clock on the nightstand. “I gotta get up.”

Her brows draw together. “Why?”

“Because I told Coach I’d be at the rink early.”

“It’s nighttime.”

“I'm captain.” He shifts under her, and she makes a small noise of protest before she can stop herself, which makes his mouth twitch again. “Don’t start.”

She pouts. “I didn’t say anything.”

“You made a sound.”

“I’m allowed to make sounds.”

“Clearly.”

She narrows her eyes at him, but Garrett’s already moving, careful and slightly awkward with the sheet and her limbs and the fact that she has absolutely no interest in helping. 

He sits up, easing her off his chest and onto the mattress, and she flops onto her back with the kind of boneless indignation only a girl who has just been thoroughly ruined and then abandoned for hockey can really commit to.

The air cools instantly where his body was, and she hates that too. Hates the little absence of heat along her side. Hates, more than anything, the fact that she notices.

Garrett gets out of bed naked, completely unbothered by the fact that he looks like that in lamplight and has the audacity to walk away from her with broad shoulders and hockey-built thighs and his back scratched to hell. 

She hadn’t realised she’d done quite that much damage. There are red marks dragged down over the muscle beside his spine and along one shoulder blade, bright against his skin, some already fading, some very much not. The sight sends a hot little pulse through her, equal parts pride and embarrassment and something so pleased it probably needs to be medically reviewed. She bites her bottom lip to stop the grin. It doesn’t work.

Garrett bends to grab his boxers from the floor and pulls them on, then glances back over his shoulder because he feels her looking. “What?”

She shrugs against the pillow, still grinning. “Nothing.”

His eyes narrow slightly. “That face is obviously not nothing.”

“It’s nothing.”

“You look way too proud of yourself for nothing.”

“I’m just lying here.”

“Yeah,” he says, turning enough that she gets the full benefit of his expression now: amused, suspicious, a little too aware of his own effect on her and absolutely not above using it. “That’s the problem.”

She lets her gaze drag over him again on purpose this time, slow enough to be rude, from the messy curls to the bare chest to the low waistband of his boxers, then back to his face. Garrett watches her do it. 

His mouth parts like he’s about to say something, then closes again. His jaw shifts. He looks briefly toward the ceiling, as if appealing to God, Coach, or whatever patron saint governs self-control in sexually compromised hockey players.

She giggles. “What?”

Garrett exhales through his nose. “Nothing.”

“No, what?” She props herself lazily up on one elbow, sheet slipping down just enough that his eyes drop despite his clear attempt to be a disciplined athlete with somewhere to be. “What did I do?”

He gives her a look.

She widens her eyes, all fake innocence and bare shoulders and hair messy around her face in ways she knows are not helping him. “I’m not doing anything!”

“You look like that,” Garrett says, accusingly.

She glances down at herself like this is new information. “Like what?”

“Like that.” His hand moves vaguely in her direction because apparently language has left him. “All…” He stops. Swallows. Drags a hand over his mouth. “Fuck.”

The grin takes over her whole face now, slow and delighted. “Garrett Graham. Are you objectifying me?”

“I’m trying very hard not to.”

“How noble.”

“I’m a good guy.”

“You’re currently staring at my boobs.”

His eyes snap up. “I’m flawed.”

She laughs, and the sound loosens something in his face. For one second he just looks at her, standing there beside the bed in his boxers with scratches down his back and his hair wrecked by her fingers, caught between leaving and crawling right back over her. 

The room feels warmer for it. Smaller. The mess of it suddenly not messy so much as lived-in for one strange little slice of time – her clothes with his, her phone on his nightstand, his handprint still warm somewhere on her hip, the argument hanging around but no longer sharp enough to cut.

Then he sighs like she’s personally ruined his life. “I’m gonna be late.”

She frowns immediately, because the words take a second to land in the right order. “No, you’re not.” She rolls onto her side and reaches for her phone on the bedside table, fingers searching blindly until they close around it. The screen lights her face blue for a second. “You have plenty of– oh.”

The oh comes out because Garrett’s moved while she was checking the time. Fast. Smooth. Infuriatingly athletic, even in boxers, which feels unfair given the circumstances.

One second she’s looking at the screen. The next his hands are around her thighs, warm and sure, tugging her down the mattress until her hips slide to the edge of the bed and the phone slips from her hand. She drops it with a soft thump into the sheet, breath catching in a little startled laugh as he steps between her knees.

“Garrett.”

“Yeah?”

“What are you doing?”

He lifts one of her ankles first, then the other, setting them over his shoulders like he has all the time in the world and not a single intention of using it responsibly. His hands settle against her thighs, thumbs pressing in just enough to make her stomach flip.

The lamplight catches on his grin when he looks down at her, all cocky mouth and dark, focused eyes and the kind of heat that makes every smart thing she might have said disappear before it reaches her tongue.

“I’m gonna be late,” he says.

For a second she just stares at him. Then her smile spreads, helpless and bright and already half-breathless. She lets her head fall back against the mattress, laughter spilling out of her as her fingers curl into the rumpled comforter. “You’re gonna be late.”

Garrett’s mouth curves, pleased, and his hands slide a little higher on her thighs.

“Yeah,” he says, like this is simply what the night has decided and who is he to argue with circumstances. “Definitely.”

❄︎ ❄︎ ❄︎

⤷ taglist ⋆⁺₊ ₄₄❅. @xlinxdax0704  |  @snowtargaryen  |  @goodbyetuesday  |  @staystrongsoa  |  @dadshirrt  |  @miya-111  |  @softburrow  |  @darlinglux  |  @waitingforsmartpeople  |  @seon9yeonie  |  @kmc1989  |  @laceyvt3  |  @sunny747  |  @cosmoh0lic  |  @blackgurlieee  |  @matchieee  |  @loomiz  |  @corvusmorte  |  @erin-alice  |  @cloudsxcherriesx  |  @lolskunk  |  @elizabeth123456767  | click here to be added to the taglist!

Dean, sprawled across the counter with a brownie in one hand, snorts. “You let Logan cut your hair sophomore year.”

“That was different.”

“That was traumatic,” Logan says, mouth full.

Tucker, from the other side of the island, shakes his head like the whole room has disappointed him morally. “I still think this violates, like, twelve health codes.”

“Thank you,” Garrett says, vindicated.

She points the needle at him. “You lost.”

Garrett’s eyes flick from her face to the needle, then down, and that’s where the problem starts, because she’s bent over him a little too far and the neckline of her sweater is making itself known at exactly eye level. He shifts in the chair. Clears his throat. Then shifts again.

“Oh my God, Garrett, sit still.”

“Sorry,” he says, not sounding sorry at all.

She freezes for half a second, follows his line of sight, then straightens with a sharp exhale. “Jesus Christ.”

“What?” Garrett says, palms up, ice still pressed to his ear, grin trying to happen despite the fear. “They’re right there.”

Dean makes a wounded noise. “Can we not make this weird while I’m eating?”

“You make everything weird,” Logan says.

She glares down at Garrett, heat crawling up her neck in a way she refuses to give him the satisfaction of noticing, then bends again with her mouth set. “Three, two, one.”

He yelps.

“Oh, please,” she says, already sliding the little hoop through with careful fingers while he sits there looking betrayed by both her and modern jewellery. “You’ve taken slap shots to the ribs.”

“That was different,” he says again, higher this time.

“There,” she murmurs, turning the hoop once until it sits right. “Done.”

And it’s deeply unfair, actually, how good he looks. The gold catches against his skin, small and bright and stupidly perfect, doing something dangerous to the shape of his grin when she hands him his phone so he can look at himself in the front camera.

Garrett tilts his head, eyes narrowing. “Oh.” His mouth curves. “I kinda like it.”

Across the kitchen, Logan looks up from the plate. “Dude, these brownies are insane.”

Dean nods seriously. “Like, marriage-level brownies.”

Her attention snaps over, grateful and pleased in a way that makes her whole face soften before she can stop it. “Oh! Good. It’s a new recipe. More chocolate.”

“Keep doing that,” Tucker says.

Garrett’s hand lands at her hip, warm and familiar, patting twice, nudging her back so he can stand. She moves automatically, then finds him right there, too close, gold hoop glinting, grin gone absolutely unbearable.

“Thanks, princess.”

She rolls her eyes, even though her stomach has gone a little useless. “I told you I don’t like that nickname.”

Garrett only smiles wider, reaching past her for a brownie. “Uh huh,” he murmurs. “I heard you.”

to be notified when i post new fics, follow @kooksandpearls-library and turn on notifications! i no longer use a taglist for garrett fics.

Because he’s carried her laundry basket up three flights of stairs without being asked, eaten half her cereal with his hand in the box, fallen asleep facedown on her rug during finals week, and once let himself in at one in the morning because she texted him that she thought there was a weird sound in the hallway and he arrived in grey sweats and slides with his hockey stick in hand, and the kind of serious expression that made her forget to be embarrassed for a full eleven seconds.

So, no. She doesn’t think about the tank top.

She thinks about philosophy notes and the fact that her car’s being held hostage in the hockey house driveway while Logan fixes it, which so far seems to involve standing over the open hood with Tucker, a YouTube video, and the blind male confidence of men who have never met an engine problem they couldn’t make worse. 

She thinks about the rink, because Garrett’s supposed to take her there before his late skate and she’s supposed to sit in the stands with her laptop and pretend she doesn’t secretly like the smell of cold air and rubber mats and hockey boys yelling obscenities at each other.

She’s hunched over her desk in jeans and the white tank, hair clipped messily up off her neck, one bare foot tucked under her thigh, when the door opens behind her with exactly zero hesitation.

“Okay, so Logan says your car’s making this noise,” Garrett says, already halfway inside, “and I told him that’s not a fucking diagnosis because cars make a lot of noises, and then he got offended like I was disrespecting his craft, which is rich because his craft is apparently–”

He stops. He stops like someone’s walked into the room and slapped the sentence directly out of his mouth.

She looks over her shoulder, pen still between her fingers. “What?”

Garrett’s standing just inside her doorway in his Briar hoodie and track pants, duffel bag hanging off one shoulder, curls still damp from a shower or the snow outside or whatever irritatingly athletic thing he was doing before this. His mouth is slightly open. His eyes are very much not on her face. 

They flick down again, fast and guilty and not guilty enough. “Dude,” he says.

Her eyebrows pull together. “What?”

“When the fuck did you get your nipples pierced?”

For a second, the room goes very still around the heater rattling under the window. Then she looks down at herself. And, okay. Fine. The tank top is thinner than she remembers. 

The little metal bars are pressing faintly against the cotton, visible enough now that he’s said it, and her whole body does this annoying internal jump, not embarrassment, because Garrett has seen her in bikinis and sick and wearing a face mask that made her look like a swamp creature. 

But it’s something. A hot little awareness under her skin, as if the room has suddenly learned a new angle. She turns back around too quickly and scoffs, because dignity is mostly just committing to a tone before your pulse can betray you. “Months ago.”

Garrett nods once. Slowly. Like he’s received devastating news from a doctor with poor bedside manner. “Months ago.”

“Yes?”

“So for months you’ve just…” He looks at the ceiling, then the wall, then her face, where he very clearly intends to remain through force of character alone. “Right. Right. Cool.”

She narrows her eyes. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“That wasn’t nothing.”

“What?” he says, and the innocence would be more convincing if his ears weren’t faintly pink. Garrett Graham, Briar hockey captain, man who has smiled his way out of consequences that would have ended lesser men, is standing in her dorm room looking like his entire operating system has crashed over a white tank top.. “I’m just processing information.”

“You’re being weird.”

He presses his lips together and shakes his head. “I am being so normal right now.”

“You walked in here, stared at my chest, and short-circuited.”

His gaze drops for half a second again, involuntary and hopeless, before snapping back up. “Because you weaponised casual nudity.”

“I’m wearing a shirt.”

“That’s a suggestion of a shirt.”

She barks a laugh before she can stop herself, sharp and disbelieving.

He points at her like that proves something. “See? You know.”

“I know you’re an idiot.”

“I know a lot of things,” he says, still looking pained. “Unfortunately, I now know one more.”

There’s no reason for that to make heat crawl up the back of her neck, except that Garrett has shifted against the door without seeming to realise it, shoulders broad enough to make the frame look underprepared, one hand gripping the strap of his duffel. 

He’s trying very hard to turn this into a bit. She can see the effort in the slant of his mouth, in the way his eyes keep dragging back to hers like he’s hauling them up with a rope.

She stands from the chair, mostly because sitting there suddenly feels weirdly vulnerable and also because she genuinely does need to change before they leave. “I’m not going like this. Relax.”

He exhales through his mouth, cheeks puffing slightly. “Thank God.”

Her eyes narrow again. “Excuse me?”

“Nothing.”

She crosses her arms across her chest, which does nothing for his cause. “No, go on. Thank God why?”

He lifts both hands, palms out, the duffel sliding down his arm. “Because I wasn’t in the mood to fight someone tonight.”

She stares at him. He stares back, dead serious for about two seconds before his grin starts sneaking in around the edges, all stupid golden-boy charm and teeth and the unbearable confidence of a man who knows exactly how often he gets away with saying things like that.

“Oh my God,” she says flatly. “You are so annoying.”

“I’m protective.”

“You’re annoying.”

“Those overlap.”

“They don’t.”

“With me they do.”

She rolls her eyes so hard it almost hurts and walks past him toward her bedroom, close enough that her shoulder brushes his arm. It’s nothing. It’s normal. They’re always touching in ways that don’t count, or didn’t count, maybe, before Garrett noticed her piercings and temporarily lost access to the English language. 

But now the brush of him feels too present, the warmth of his hoodie against her bare upper arm registering with an irritating amount of detail. She pulls a jersey over the tank first because it’s closest, the fabric falling big over her hips and smelling faintly like laundry detergent and that cold rink smell Garrett always carries around like a second cologne. Then she grabs a jacket from the chair, shoves her arms through it, and gives herself exactly half a second in the mirror to look normal.

She looks normal. Mostly. Her face is a little too warm, but Garrett doesn’t get to know that.

When she comes back out, he’s leaning against the wall near her door, scrolling on his phone with an expression of intense concentration that’s almost definitely fake. He looks up when she enters.

And then just looks. His eyes move over the jersey, the jacket, her face, the way she’s tucked her hair back from her cheek with the annoyed efficiency of someone pretending she’s not just changed clothes with a man in the next room thinking about her nipples. His mouth does something small and private before he catches it.

“What?” she says.

He shakes his head once. “Nothing.”

“You keep saying nothing in a way that feels suspicious.”

“That’s because you’re paranoid.”

“That’s because you’re being weird.”

He pushes off the wall and opens the door for her. “I’m never weird.”

“You’re being weird right now.”

“I’m being gentlemanly.”

“You let yourself into my dorm.”

“Gentlemanly after the felony.”

She snorts and walks past him into the hall. His hand lands at the small of her back as she goes. Warm through the jacket. Familiar enough that she shouldn’t notice it. She does anyway.

Garrett closes the door behind them and, as they head down the hall, slings his arm around her shoulders like he’s done a thousand times before. Heavy and easy and a little too smug. 

She groans immediately, mostly for self-preservation. “You’re very touchy tonight.”

He hums, pleased with himself in a way she can feel through his ribs against her side. “Mhm.”

“That wasn’t an answer.”

“Wasn’t trying to be.”

She tips her head back enough to glare at him. He’s already looking down at her, grin lazy now, but his eyes are still doing that thing. Brighter, sharper, like something ordinary has been tilted a few degrees and he’s pretending he hasn’t noticed the whole room slide.

“You’re unbearable,” she says.

“I’m driving you to the rink out of the goodness of my heart.”

“Because Logan broke my car worse.”

“Allegedly.”

She shoots him a look. “Garrett.”

“Fine. Probably.”

She huffs, but she lets herself lean into him by half an inch because the hallway is cold and because his arm is warm and because, irritatingly, he smells good. He squeezes her shoulder once, casual enough to be deniable, except his thumb brushes the side of her neck afterward, small and absent and not absent at all.

They make it to the stairwell before he says, “So. Months, huh?”

She stops on the top step and slowly turns her head. He’s staring straight ahead now, mouth twitching.

She points at him. “Do not.”

“I’m not doing anything!”

“You’re thinking loudly.”

“I’ve suffered a shock.”

“You saw the outline of jewellery through a shirt.”

“Exactly. I’m suffering here.”

“You’re such a loser.”

“Maybe,” he says, then glances down at her, all grin and trouble and something warmer under it that makes her stomach dip in a way she fully intends to ignore until death. “But I’m your ride, so be nice to me.”

She starts down the stairs before he can see her smile. “I liked you better when you couldn’t speak.”

“Yeah,” Garrett says behind her, voice rough with laughter. “Me too, actually.”

❄︎ ❄︎ ❄︎

taglist ⋆⁺₊ ₄₄❅. @xlinxdax0704  |  @snowtargaryen  |  @goodbyetuesday  |  @staystrongsoa  |  @dadshirrt  |  @miya-111  |  @softburrow  |  @darlinglux  |  @waitingforsmartpeople  |  @seon9yeonie  |  @laceyvt3  |  @sunny747  |  @cosmoh0lic  |  @blackgurlieee  |  @matchieee  |  @loomiz  |  @corvusmorte  |  @erin-alice  |  @cloudsxcherriesx  |  @lolskunk  |  @elizabeth123456767  |  @purplerainx1  |  @pinkgiraffebeach  |  @lucyysthings  |  @outpostsworld  |  @s0ftdr1nks  |  @maybankslover  |  @instantplaiddream  |  @droppedyourhnd  |  @bsenpai  |  @urfavadi  |  @em1ly57  |  @parker-barnes-af  |  @violyn20  |  @bootyliciousbutterfly  |  @bloomingflower13  |  @rexit-mo  |  @tpwkmera  |  @cherryrry581  |  @stevesxwhore  |  @solapeachtea  |  @giuliaasstuff  |  @pamacs-macs  |  @loonylosworld  |  @alice07ea  |  @hitting-euphoria4  |  @tessf13  |  @canupourme14theroad  |  @jayda12  |  @kmc1989  | 

Judging by the way he looked at her when she opened the door, hair messy, mouth curved, one hand already reaching for her waist like the rest of the evening had been mutually agreed upon by fate and grey sweatpants, it was very much the second.

“Hey, baby,” he said, warm and low, stepping inside before she could fully decide whether to warn him.

“Hi,” she said, and shifted the baby higher on her hip.

Garrett’s hand stopped halfway to her waist. His eyes dropped. For one perfect second, the great Garrett Graham, Briar’s captain, top-line centre, walking highlight reel, man who could read a defender’s shoulder from half a rink away and decide how to ruin his life in under two seconds, stared at the tiny six-month-old baby in her arms with the blank, careful horror of someone who had walked into an exam for the wrong subject.

The baby stared back. She had one fist shoved in her mouth, cheeks round and flushed from her bottle, dark lashes blinking slow and judgmental like she, too, had expected better situational awareness from him.

Garrett’s gaze flicked from the baby to her face. Then back to the baby. Then back to her. “Uh,” he said.

She bit the inside of her cheek.

His brows pulled together. “Did I… miss something?”

That broke her. A laugh came out before she could make it pretty, bright and helpless enough that Pippa startled, then smiled around her wet little fist like laughter was a game she had just invented and expected royalties from.

“No, idiot.” She bounced the baby once when Pippa’s legs kicked happily against her stomach. “This is my niece. Pippa.”

Garrett blinked. “Your niece.”

“Yes.”

“Right.” He nodded too many times, visibly reorganising the entire evening in his head. The door clicked shut behind him with his heel. “Yeah. Obviously. I knew that.”

“You absolutely didn’t.”

“I did.” His eyes dropped to Pippa again, his mouth doing something strange, not quite a grin yet, like he was afraid any sudden facial expression might commit him to childcare. “I just didn’t know she was gonna be… here.”

“She lives a very busy life.”

“Looks like it.” He leaned a little closer, cautious in a way she had literally never seen from him. Garrett Graham had taken hits from men built like refrigerators and grinned blood off his teeth. But faced with one damp, sleepy baby in a yellow onesie covered in tiny ducks, he suddenly looked like he was approaching an unexploded device. “Hi, Pippa,” he said, voice dropping into this awkward, overly polite register. “Nice to… meet you.”

Pippa took her fist out of her mouth with a soft pop and blew a bubble at him.

Garrett’s eyebrows lifted. “Yeah. Cool.”

She laughed again, softer this time, because he looked so stupidly sincere about the whole thing. “Garrett, she’s a baby.”

“Okay, sorry I’m being respectful.” He shot her a look, then glanced back at Pippa, who had started patting her own chest with one open palm like she was applauding the conversation. “I don’t know her yet. I’m making a good first impression.”

“You came over to hook up and now you’re networking with an infant.”

“I’m versatile.”

“You’re scared.”

His head snapped up. “I’m not scared.”

“Babe.”

“I’m not.” He straightened a little, like the accusation had challenged his captaincy. “I’m just being careful. She’s tiny.”

Pippa made a happy little shriek at the exact same moment, startling herself so badly her eyes went huge. Garrett froze. She immediately shoved her fist back into her mouth and drooled down her wrist with the calm recovery of someone who had no idea she had just almost sent a six-foot-two hockey player into cardiac arrest.

Her whole chest went warm. Garrett standing in her entryway, still built for sex and hockey, suddenly unsure what to do with his hands because there was a baby in the room and the baby was looking at him like he might be interesting if he proved himself.

She shifted Pippa higher, the baby’s warm little body settling against her side, one socked foot digging into her thigh. “My sister’s anniversary dinner ran late. She asked if I could take her for a few hours.”

Garrett nodded, still watching Pippa like she might evolve in real time. “Right. Cool. Yeah. That’s cool.”

“You can go, you know,” she said, amused, because it was easier than admitting how weirdly sweet he looked standing there trying to adjust. “I know this probably isn’t what you had planned.”

His eyes lifted to hers at once, and the grin finally arrived, crooked and familiar and much easier to recognise. “Depends. Is she gonna be here the whole time?”

She stared at him. He lifted both hands. “I meant for hanging out. Jesus. Don’t look at me like that.”

“You had exactly one thought when you walked in.”

“I’m a man of focus.”

“You’re a man of grey sweatpants and bad timing.”

His grin widened. “You noticed the sweatpants.”

“I have eyes.”

He sucked at his bottom lip. “Good ones.”

“Don’t flirt with me in front of my niece.”

“She doesn’t know.”

Pippa squealed again, louder this time, and slapped her hand against the front of her sweatshirt hard enough to leave a damp little print.

Garrett looked at her. “Okay, maybe she knows.”

“She’s very advanced.”

“Clearly.”

She moved toward the living room, and Garrett followed, slower than usual, his bag dropped near the door, hands shoved into the front pocket of his hoodie like he did not trust them unsupervised. Her apartment had been fully taken over in the last hour by things that were not hers. 

A soft blanket on the rug. A half-collapsed baby gym with dangling animals in colours nature had never intended. A bottle cooling on the coffee table. A diaper bag open on the couch, packed with enough wipes, tiny clothes, and unidentified pastel objects to suggest Pippa was planning a weekend away rather than a three-hour visit.

Garrett stopped beside the play mat and looked down at it. “She comes with gear.”

“She does.”

Pippa watched him over her fist, drool shining on her chin. Garrett watched her back. His mouth twitched. “She’s kind of staring me down.”

“She’s deciding if she likes you.”

“Important process. I respect it.”

“She usually likes everyone.”

His head turned toward her, offended. “Don’t say that. I wanna earn it.”

That got her again, the laugh catching lower this time, softer around the edges. She set Pippa down carefully on the blanket, one hand supporting the back of her head until she was settled on her tummy. Pippa made a small grunt of effort, immediately kicked both legs, and then began the serious business of trying to eat a cloth giraffe.

Garrett crouched beside the mat, forearms resting loosely on his knees, the size of him absurd next to all that baby softness. Big hands. Broad shoulders. Hoodie stretched over muscle. Hair falling slightly over his forehead. He looked like someone had dropped a golden retriever into a nursery and told it to act natural.

Pippa lifted her head, saw him closer, and smiled so wide her whole face folded into it. Garrett went still. “Oh,” he said, quieter.

She felt the sound more than heard it, tucked under the faint hum of the dishwasher and the cartoonish crinkle of the giraffe toy. His face had changed. His eyes had gone a little softer, caught on this tiny person who had decided that he wasn’t a threat and maybe even funny-looking enough to enjoy.

“She smiled at me,” he said.

“She did.”

“Like, on purpose?”

“Probably.”

“Okay.” He nodded, trying very hard to look normal about this development and failing badly. “Yeah. She’s smart.”

“She likes the ceiling fan too, so don’t get cocky.”

Pippa drooled onto the giraffe. Garrett pointed. “Is that… fine?”

“That’s fine.”

“She’s eating it.”

“She’s gumming it. It’s made for babies.”

“Oh.” He looked down at the giraffe again, then at Pippa. “Carry on, then.”

She lasted maybe eight more minutes before Pippa decided the play mat was a cruel prison and began making the small, offended little sounds that meant she wanted to be upright, involved, and possibly worshipped. 

She picked her up first, mostly on instinct, rubbing a hand over Pippa’s back while the baby huffed against her shoulder, warm cheek pressed to the collar of her sweatshirt. Garrett watched from the couch, elbows on his knees now, all that earlier awkwardness hidden under interest he was clearly trying to pretend was casual.

“You wanna hold her?”

The question hit him like a puck to the sternum. His eyes lifted. “Me?”

“No, the other enormous hockey captain in my living room.”

He looked at Pippa, then at his own hands, like he was reassessing whether thumbs were enough. “I mean. Yeah. I can.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I didn’t say I don’t want to.”

“You look like I just asked you to defuse a bomb.”

“That’s dramatic.” He sat up straighter, shoulders squaring. “Give me the baby.”

She paused. “Never say it like that again.”

He rolled his eyes, but there was a nervous edge under it that made her smile before she could stop herself. “Okay, fine. May I please hold Pippa, the baby, respectfully?”

“Better.” She stepped between his knees and shifted Pippa carefully in her arms. “Okay, put your arm like this.”

Garrett’s hands came up, big and hesitant. He had beautiful hands, which was an annoying thing to think right now, but also true. Hands that knew sticks and steering wheels and the back of her neck in the dark. Hands that could be careless with his own body but were suddenly so careful around Pippa that her throat did something strange.

“Support her head,” she said softly, guiding his palm under the baby’s neck. “Yeah. Like that. And this arm under her bum. There you go.”

Pippa transferred over in a warm, squirming little bundle, and Garrett’s whole body went rigid. Alert. The way he got before a faceoff, only if the puck had chubby thighs and one sock sliding off.

“Oh my God,” he said under his breath.

She laughed, one hand still hovering near Pippa’s back. “You’re fine.”

“She’s moving.”

“She does that.”

“Cool. Great.” Garrett stared down at the baby now nestled against the crook of his arm, his voice lowering like volume itself could destabilise her. “Hey, Pippa. We’re good, right? You and me?”

Pippa stared up at him, serious for one second, then reached out with one damp fist and grabbed the string of his hoodie. 

Garrett looked at her. “Strong grip.”

“She likes strings.”

“She can’t have it if it’s dangerous, right?”

“Right.”

He immediately tucked the other string away with his free hand, jaw set in concentration. “No choking hazards. I know that.”

“Look at you.”

He glanced up at her, smugness making a brave return despite the fact that he was still holding Pippa like she was made of glass and university liability. “Told you I got this.”

“You’re sweating.”

“I’m post-practice.”

He carefully adjusted Pippa higher, the movement clumsy for half a second before his instincts caught up and his hold settled into something sturdier. The baby’s cheek turned into his hoodie. Her little fist stayed locked around the fabric near his chest, and Garrett looked down at her with such focused, faintly stunned attention that the joke waiting on her tongue dissolved before it could leave her mouth.

Pippa made a sleepy sound and rubbed her face into his chest.

Garrett’s eyes lifted to hers, quieter now. “Is she okay?”

“Yeah.” Her voice came out softer than she meant it to. She cleared her throat. “She likes you.”

His mouth curved. “Yeah?”

“Mhm.”

“Smart girl.”

“She also likes licking table legs.”

“Still smart.”

She shook her head, smiling, and sat beside him on the couch, close enough that her thigh pressed into his. Garrett didn’t move away. If anything, he tilted slightly toward her, careful not to jostle Pippa, letting the baby’s weight settle between them like something neither of them had expected and both of them were, in their own ways, trying not to overreact to.

The TV was on low, some episode of a show neither of them was watching moving blue light across the room. The apartment smelled faintly like baby lotion and Garrett’s soap and the pasta she’d eaten standing at the counter before Pippa’s bottle because babysitting had made time weird and dinner had become whatever she could fork into her mouth while bouncing a tiny person with opinions. 

Somewhere outside, a car rolled down the street with music thudding faintly through closed windows. Normal stuff. Little stuff. The kind of evening that would not have felt dangerous at all if Garrett didn’t look so unexpectedly right with a baby tucked into his arm.

She hated that, a little. The sweetness of it. The way it slipped under her skin without asking. Garrett glanced over and caught her staring.

His grin appeared immediately, soft and unbearable. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“That’s not a nothing face.”

“I’m just watching you panic.”

“I’m not panicking. I’m thriving.”

She laughed and leaned her head lightly against his shoulder, careful of Pippa between them. Garrett’s cheek tipped down for half a second, brushing the top of her hair. It was so absent, so automatic, that it made her chest tighten more than if he’d said something sweet on purpose.

Pippa’s eyelids started to droop. Her fist loosened in Garrett’s hoodie, fingers uncurling one by one. He noticed before she did. “She’s doing something.”

“She’s getting sleepy.”

His voice dropped even lower. “Oh.”

“You can breathe, babe.”

“I am breathing.”

Pippa sighed then, a full-body little sound that ended with her mouth falling slightly open against Garrett’s chest. Garrett went still again, but differently this time. Less fear. More wonder trying very hard not to show up as wonder because he was still a twenty-one-year-old hockey player in grey sweats who had come over intending to get laid and had instead been promoted, temporarily, to furniture for a sleeping infant.

His hand shifted carefully over Pippa’s back, one broad palm almost covering the whole of her. He rubbed once, slow, then looked at her for confirmation.

She nodded. “That’s good.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

His mouth softened. He looked back down at the baby. “She’s tiny.”

“She’s actually chunky for her age.”

“She’s tiny,” he repeated, like this wasn’t up for debate, and there was something in his voice that made her stop teasing.

For a second, she wondered if he was thinking about his own family. Sometimes, when something gentle entered the room too suddenly, she could see the way he didn’t quite know where to put his hands around it. Like softness needed instructions. Like if he held it wrong, someone might blow a whistle somewhere only he could hear.

So she didn’t say anything too big. She only reached over and fixed Pippa’s fallen sock, tugging it back over one tiny heel, and let her fingers brush Garrett’s thigh on the way back. “You’re doing good,” she said.

His eyes came to her face. For once, he didn’t grin immediately. “Yeah?”

“Mhm. Natural.”

That made him huff. “Liar.”

“A little,” she admitted, smiling. “But you’re cute, and very brave.”

“I know.” His grin came back, smaller now. “Might put it on my résumé. Can hold one baby under supervision.”

She scoffed softly. “Barely.”

“Successfully.”

“For seven minutes.”

“Still undefeated.”

She laughed softly, and Pippa stirred against him, face scrunching. Both of them froze. The baby sighed and settled again. Garrett exhaled through his nose, triumphant and silent, like he’d just won a championship in not waking up infants. She had to press her lips together to keep from laughing again.

He looked at her, eyes bright. “Did you see that?”

“I saw.”

“Handled.”

“You did.”

“Captain material.”

She leaned into him a little more, her shoulder tucked against his arm, the warmth of him spreading through the old sweatshirt she was wearing. His body was still keyed underneath the stillness, all coiled athlete forced into gentleness, but his breathing had slowed. 

Pippa’s small back rose and fell beneath his hand. The room seemed to soften around the three of them, domestic in a way she didn’t want to name because naming it would make it too real and maybe too much.

Garrett was quiet for a while. He didn’t rush to fill the space with some joke about her baby-trapping him or ask if this meant his original plans were permanently cancelled or make one of the million stupid comments he could have made to rescue himself from looking soft. He just held Pippa and let his thumb move, once, twice, barely there over the baby’s back. Then, very quietly, he said, “She smells good.”

She looked at him.

He glanced back. “What?”

“Nothing.”

His brow furrowed slightly. “Don’t make it weird.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were thinking something.”

She smiled, pressing a kiss to his shoulder. “I was thinking you just discovered babies smell nice.”

“Well, I didn’t know.” He looked down again, faintly defensive. “I don’t hang out with a lot of babies.”

“Your loss.”

“Clearly. Pippa and I are boys now.”

“She’s a girl.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Do I?”

He nudged her knee with his. “Don’t start.”

She smiled down at Pippa, asleep against the big Briar captain like this was a perfectly reasonable place for a nap. Her cheek was squished into the soft cotton of Garrett’s hoodie, one hand curled near his collar, one sock already trying to escape again. Garrett followed her gaze and, with great seriousness, adjusted the sock before it could fall.

Her stomach did something deeply stupid. His eyes flicked to her face, and the grin that spread this time was slow. Warm. A little cocky around the edges, because Garrett Graham could hold a baby for ten minutes and immediately become insufferable about it.

“What?” he asked.

“You look very pleased with yourself.”

“I am.”

“Because you’re holding a sleeping baby?”

“Because I’m good at it.”

“You were shaking when I handed her to you.”

“Yeah, and now look at me.” He nodded down at Pippa with all the confidence of a man who had survived one diaper-free interaction and was ready to write a parenting manual. “Growth.”

“She’s asleep. That’s mostly her doing.”

“Team effort.”

“Sure.”

His grin widened, then softened again when Pippa moved, tiny mouth working against the fabric of his hoodie. Garrett’s eyes dropped, and his hand stilled until she settled. He looked ridiculous. Gorgeous and too big for the couch and smug over the smallest possible achievement, with a baby asleep in his arms and his original plans for the night lying somewhere dead in the entryway beside his gym bag.

She leaned up and kissed the corner of his jaw.

Garrett’s eyes cut to hers, interested immediately despite Pippa, because he was still Garrett and there were some instincts not even a sleeping infant could fully neutralise. “Careful.”

She smiled against his skin. “What?”

“You start kissing me while I’m holding a baby, and I can’t do anything about it.”

“That’s tragic for you.”

“That’s cruel.”

“It’s one kiss.”

“Yeah, that’s how it starts.”

She laughed under her breath, and Pippa didn’t wake this time, only snuggled closer into Garrett’s chest like she had decided he was acceptable and possibly permanent. 

Garrett watched her for a second, then looked back at the girl beside him, his mouth softer than his voice when he spoke. “So,” he said. “How long until your sister gets back?”

She narrowed her eyes. “Garrett.”

“What?” He looked almost offended, except his grin was doing too much damage. “I’m asking because I care about Pippa’s schedule.”

“You are so full of shit.”

“I’m deeply invested in her routine.”

“Her routine is bottle, nap, diaper, maybe scream at a lamp for no reason.”

“Sounds like Dean.”

She pressed her face into his shoulder to muffle the laugh, and Garrett smiled down at her, his hand still steady over Pippa’s back. For a while, they stayed like that. Pippa asleep. Garrett pretending not to be proud. Her tucked into his side with one hand resting lightly on his thigh, feeling the warmth of his body, the slow rhythm of his breathing, the tiny rise and fall of the baby between them. The evening hadn’t gone where he wanted. Not even close.

But when her phone buzzed twenty minutes later with a text from her sister saying they were on their way, Garrett looked down at Pippa, then at her, and frowned. “Already?”

She stared at him.

He shrugged, defensive. “What? We were hanging out.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Don’t say it like that.”

“You like her.”

“She likes me.”

“She’s asleep.”

“Exactly. Trust.”

She smiled so hard she had to look away. His knee knocked gently into hers, and when she looked back, he was watching her with that soft, stupid, dangerous warmth that always made her feel like she’d missed a step coming down stairs.

“What?” she asked, quieter.

He shook his head once, eyes dropping briefly to Pippa before coming back to her. “Nothing.”

“That’s not a nothing face.”

“Yeah,” he said, and leaned in carefully, Pippa still asleep between them, to kiss her once. Soft. Quick. Warm enough to make her toes curl against the edge of the rug. “But you like it.”

She rolled her eyes, but she was smiling when he pulled back, and Garrett, holding her sleeping niece like he’d been trusted with the Stanley Cup and maybe something more important, looked far too pleased to be proven right.

❄︎ ❄︎ ❄︎

taglist ⋆⁺₊ ₄₄❅. @xlinxdax0704  |  @snowtargaryen  |  @goodbyetuesday  |  @staystrongsoa  |  @dadshirrt  |  @miya-111  |  @softburrow  |  @darlinglux  |  @waitingforsmartpeople  |  @seon9yeonie  |  @laceyvt3  |  @sunny747  |  @cosmoh0lic  |  @blackgurlieee  |  @matchieee  |  @loomiz  |  @corvusmorte  |  @erin-alice  |  @cloudsxcherriesx  |  @lolskunk  |  @elizabeth123456767  |  @purplerainx1  |  @pinkgiraffebeach  |  @lucyysthings  |  @outpostsworld  |  @s0ftdr1nks  |  @maybankslover  |  @instantplaiddream  |  @droppedyourhnd  |  @bsenpai  |  @urfavadi  |  @em1ly57  |  @parker-barnes-af  |  @violyn20  |  @bootyliciousbutterfly  |  @bloomingflower13  |  @rexit-mo  |  @tpwkmera  |  @cherryrry581  |  @stevesxwhore  |  @solapeachtea  |  @giuliaasstuff  |  @pamacs-macs  |  @loonylosworld  |  @alice07ea  |  @hitting-euphoria4  |  @tessf13  |  @canupourme14theroad  |  @jayda12  |  @kmc1989  |  click here to be added to the taglist!