Your band—Wolfsbane Theatre, a name your drummer Rusty had chosen at two in the morning and which you'd all been too tired to argue with—was still setting up, cables coiled across the stage like sleeping snakes, your Fender Jaguar propped on its stand while you crouched to adjust your pedalboard. The venue was called The Horseshoe Vault, a long, narrow room with exposed brick and a ceiling low enough that your bassist Kai had once jumped during a set and nearly knocked himself out on a ductwork joint, and tonight it was packed tighter than usual, bodies pressed against the bar rail and spilling into the alcoves near the pool tables.

You didn't notice the table of tall men near the back when you first walked in, because why would you. You were focused on the setlist tucked into your back pocket—seven songs, three originals, four covers rearranged into something that sounded like you, which meant a little grungy, a little dreamy, loud enough to feel in your sternum—and on the fact that your E string had been buzzing for two days and you still hadn't gotten it looked at. Rusty was already behind his kit, adjusting the angle of his crash cymbal, while Kai plugged in his bass and plucked a few low, resonant notes that thrummed through the floorboards. Your rhythm guitarist, Dana, was tuning quietly in the corner, her dark hair curtaining her face, and you could see her mouthing the notes as she twisted the pegs. This was your ritual. This was the part of your life that made the forty-five minutes crammed against the window on the Bloor-Danforth line worth it, the spreadsheets and the fluorescent lights and the coworker who microwaved fish every single Tuesday worth it, every exhausted evening worth it.

Joseph Woll hadn't wanted to come out tonight. He'd had a perfectly good evening planned, actually, which involved the remaining sixteen hundred pieces of the LEGO Technic Lamborghini Sián he'd been building on his coffee table, a glass of peppermint tea, and maybe some quiet time at the piano working out the bridge of a Debussy piece that had been giving him trouble. But Matthew Knies had shown up at his condo at eight thirty with Auston Matthews and William Nylander in tow, Matthew already talking a mile a minute about how Joseph was "turning into a hermit before thirty" and how this was "an intervention, actually, a fun one, but still an intervention," and before Joseph could finish his protest about the Lamborghini's rear axle assembly, he was being ushered into an Uber with his jacket half on. Now he was wedged into a booth at a bar he'd never been to, nursing a beer he was barely touching, his broad shoulders making the booth feel like it had been built for a different species of human entirely, while Matthew and Auston argued about something that had started as a conversation about the power play and devolved into an increasingly heated debate about something he couldn't even decipher.

He was zoning out, genuinely zoning out, his mind drifting back to that Debussy bridge and the way the left hand arpeggios needed to feel more like water than notes, when the stage lights shifted from their idle amber wash to a sharper, cooler white, and a voice came over the crackling house PA—"Hey, we're Wolfsbane Theatre, we're gonna play some stuff for you, try not to throw anything"—and he looked up, and then he kept looking up, and then he forgot where he was entirely.

You were adjusting the mic stand, your fingers wrapped around the cold metal, your guitar already slung across your chest, and when you leaned in to test the levels, your voice cut through the room's chatter with a low, easy "Check, one, two—yeah, that's good, thank you," that made several heads turn. But it wasn't just the voice, though the voice was something—warm, a little raspy at the edges, the kind of voice that sounded like it knew things. It was you. The way you moved on stage with a loose, unbothered confidence, shoulders relaxed, one foot already finding the monitor's edge like you'd done this a thousand times even though your band was still small enough that you loaded your own gear. 

You were wearing a mesh, deep purple cardigan over a tight black tube top, and a tiny, pleated leather skirt complimented by artfully ripped up tights, tucked into chunky boots. Your hair was falling in your face just enough to look intentional, and when you smiled at something Rusty said from behind his kit, it was this quick, unguarded flash of teeth that lit up your whole face and made Joseph's hand tighten around his beer bottle for absolutely no reason.

"Jo. Jo. You're staring, buddy." Matthew's elbow landed in his ribs, sharp and deliberate, and Joseph blinked, the back of his neck going warm. "I'm not staring, I'm just—" He didn't have a finish for that sentence. Auston was already grinning, that slow, insufferable grin that meant he'd clocked exactly what was happening and was going to be insufferable about it for weeks. 

"You're staring," Auston confirmed, leaning back with his arms crossed, looking entirely too pleased with himself. "The hermit comes out one time and immediately loses his mind over a girl with a guitar. This is poetic, actually."

William, who had been on his phone, finally glanced up and then over at the stage, assessing. "She's good," he said mildly, which from William was practically a standing ovation, and Joseph wanted to sink into the booth's vinyl and disappear, except he also couldn't stop looking at the stage, so disappearing was off the table.

Rusty counted in the first song with four sharp clicks of his drumstick—"One, two, three, four"—and then your guitar erupted into a riff that was dirty and shimmering and impossible to ignore, a wall of distorted sound that filled every corner of the low-ceilinged room and made the beer glasses on tables rattle faintly. It was an original, one of yours, something you'd written on the GO Train commute home from your office job in mid-January, scrawling lyrics on the back of a receipt for a medium coffee while the city streaked past the window in shades of grey and ice. The song was called "Switchblade Sunday," and it opened with a brooding, pulsing verse that let your voice settle into something smoky and close before the chorus blew the whole thing open, your guitar crashing into a bright, aching melody that sounded like heartbreak you could dance to. 

You played like you were having a conversation with the room, leaning into the mic for the quiet parts and pulling back for the loud ones, your fingers moving over the fretboard with a practiced, fluid ease, and when you hit the chorus for the first time—voice climbing, raw and soaring, the kind of sound that made strangers stop mid-sentence—something shifted in the crowd. People who'd been talking turned. People who'd been facing the bar turned. The room listened.

Joseph felt it in his chest, that sound, the way you felt a clean save when the puck hit your pad just right and you knew, you knew, before the whistle even blew, that you'd owned it. It was that kind of certainty, that kind of presence. He set his beer down because he'd forgotten he was holding it, and Matthew said something beside him that he didn't hear at all, and it didn't matter because you were already moving into the second verse, your eyes half-closed, your boot marking time on the stage floor, and the stage light caught the side of your face and the worn edge of your guitar and the silver rings on your fingers and Joseph Woll, goalie for the Toronto Maple Leafs, six-foot-three, two hundred and twelve pounds, was completely, irreversibly, unhelpfully spellbound.

Between the third and fourth songs, you took a breath, wiping your forehead with the back of your hand, and leaned into the mic. "So that last one was about my landlord," you said, deadpan, and a ripple of laughter moved through the room. "He raised my rent and then asked if I wanted to use his parking spot, so." You paused, adjusting your guitar strap. "This next one is also about my landlord. Different vibe, though." Kai snorted audibly behind you, and Rusty hit a single, ominous drum roll that earned another laugh. You grinned—that same quick, lightning-flash grin—and launched into a cover of "Champagne Supernova" that you'd slowed down and dragged through a filter of reverb and distortion until it sounded like the song was being remembered in a dream, your voice floating over the wall of sound with an ache that felt like November in Toronto, cold and golden and full of longing for something you couldn't name.

"Go talk to her after," Matthew said, and Joseph shook his head immediately, the reflex fast and firm. "I'm not gonna—" 

"You're literally not blinking, man. I'm concerned for your ocular health." Auston nodded solemnly in agreement. "It's like watching a nature documentary. The goalie spots the—the what's the female guitarist equivalent of a mate—" 

"Please stop talking," Joseph said, his ears red, and William, without looking up from his phone, said, "I will put twenty dollars down right now that you don't talk to her," and Joseph thought about his Lamborghini, and his peppermint tea, and his quiet piano, and he thought about the way your voice had just cracked on the word wonder in the chorus, just slightly, just enough to make it feel real, and he didn't take the bet, which Auston immediately flagged as the most telling non-action of the evening.

The set barreled on. You played another original—"Glass Jaw," faster, punkier, all snarling guitars and propulsive drums—and then a cover of "Kool-Aid" by Bring Me The Horizon that you'd stripped down and rebuilt with fuzzed-out bass and your voice doing things that should have been illegal in a public establishment. Between songs you bantered with the crowd with an easy, dry wit that kept everyone leaning in, trading jokes with Kai and Rusty like you were all hanging out in someone's basement instead of on a stage. "This is for anyone who's ever sent a text they regretted," you said, introducing the sixth song, and someone in the back yelled "THAT'S ALL OF US," and you pointed at them with a laugh and said, "Exactly, so this one's for the whole room," and Joseph watched your fingers find the opening chords—clean this time, shimmering, delicate against the distortion you'd been wielding all night—and he leaned forward without realizing it, his elbows on the table, his whole vast frame tilted toward the stage like you were magnetic north and he was a compass needle spinning helplessly in your direction.

The set ended at eleven forty-three, and by midnight the room had already begun to hemorrhage its crowd in earnest. You coiled cables with numb fingers while Rusty broke down his kit and Dana packed her pedalboard into a case held together with duct tape and optimism, and the three of you moved through the teardown with the wordless efficiency of people who'd done this enough times that every cable had a pocket and every piece of gear had a place in the Tetris of whoever's car was driving tonight. 

Kai offered you a ride—he always offered—but you shook your head, telling him the train was fine, you needed the decompress, which was true in the same way that saying you were "kind of tired" was true when you were actually so exhausted you could feel it in the roots of your teeth. What you actually needed was fifteen minutes of cold air and the particular blankness of a late-night subway car to let the set drain out of you, the adrenaline and the noise and the bright hot thing that lived in your chest when you played still buzzing under your skin like a current that hadn't found its ground.

You hugged Dana goodbye, fist-bumped Rusty, told Kai to text you when he got home, and slipped out the back exit into the alley behind The Horseshoe Vault, where the air hit you like a slap of November and you immediately regretted not bringing a heavier layer. The mesh cardigan was good for stage aesthetic and absolutely nothing else, and the wind cut through it like it wasn't there, finding every inch of bare skin between the tube top and the waistband of that ridiculous little skirt you'd worn because it looked good under stage lights and not because it was remotely practical for a Toronto autumn. You wrapped your arms around yourself and started walking, boots clicking on the wet pavement, breath coming out in thin pale clouds, heading east toward Dundas West station because it was closer than Lansdowne and you knew the shortcut through the side residential streets that shaved four minutes off the walk if you cut through the alley behind the furniture warehouse.

You didn't think about the guy from the bar. You should have, maybe, but you'd been doing this long enough that you'd developed a kind of selective amnesia for hecklers, a mental filing system that sorted crowd noise into categories—enthusiastic, drunk, genuinely into it, creepy—and then deleted the ones that didn't serve you. There had been a guy near the front, off to the right, broad and red-faced and drinking something amber from a glass, who'd started loud enough to be funny and then gotten quieter and more specific in a way that wasn't funny at all, leaning toward the stage with his phone up and his mouth moving around words you couldn't hear over your own monitors but could read well enough from the shape of his lips and the way the women standing near him had shifted away. 

Rusty had given you a look. You'd shaken your head barely, a millimeter of movement, the universal signal for I've got it, leave it, and you'd launched into the next song and let the distortion swallow whatever he'd been saying. That was your move. Play louder. It had always worked before.

Joseph had left the bar ten minutes before you, which meant he was maybe a block and a half ahead on the same street, walking in the same direction, and he hadn't noticed. He was thinking about the set—not in a predatory way, not in the way Auston would tease him about later, but in the way his brain latched onto things that moved him, turning them over like puzzle pieces, trying to understand why. The way your voice had cracked on that one word. The way your hands looked on the guitar strings, sure and quick and completely certain. He'd wanted to stay, had actually been angling for a way to naturally linger without it being weird, but Matthew had gotten an Uber with Auston and William had peeled off toward Yorkville, and the group had dissolved the way groups do, everyone scattering into the night with claps on shoulders and see-you-at-practice murmurs, and Joseph had been left standing on the sidewalk outside the bar thinking I should go back in and tell her the set was good, and then immediately thinking that's insane, you don't know her, she doesn't need your validation, go home, work on the Lamborghini, and so he'd started walking toward Dundas West because the subway was grounding, the rhythm of it, the way it shook under your feet, and he needed something to do with his body that wasn't replaying the sound of your voice singing about a landlord.

He had his hood up and his hands in his jacket pockets, his long stride eating up the sidewalk at a pace that was barely above a walk but still somehow faster than everyone around him, and he was maybe two hundred meters from the station entrance when he heard it—a voice, male, slurred and aggressive, coming from somewhere close and to the right, and then a second voice, yours, sharp and clipped and carrying the tension of someone trying very hard to sound unbothered. He registered it the way you register a puck leaving a stick blade—before conscious thought, before decision, somewhere in the deep wiring of pattern recognition and reflex—and his feet had already slowed before his brain caught up, his hood turning, his eyes finding the scene in the alley in front of him like a spotlight finding a stage.

You were backed against the brick wall of the furniture warehouse, the alley shortcut mouth maybe ten feet to your left, and the guy from the bar—the red-faced one, the one whose lips you'd read from the stage—was standing in front of you with one hand on the wall beside your head, leaning his bulk into the space you were trying to occupy. He was bigger than you'd realized, thick-necked and barrel-chested, a former-frat-boy build gone slightly soft around the middle, and he was talking in a low, wet voice that carried the particular menace of someone who thought they were being charming. "Come on, don't be like that, you were looking at me all night," he was saying, and you had your arms crossed tight over your chest, shoulders drawn up, chin lifted in defiance even as your back pressed harder into the brick. 

"I wasn't looking at you at all," you said, your voice steady in a way that cost you something. "I was on a stage. Doing my job. Excuse me." You tried to step left and he shifted to block you, his free hand coming up to grip your elbow, thick fingers closing around the bare skin of your upper arm where the cardigan offered nothing, and you felt the squeeze, felt the pressure of it, felt your stomach drop through the sidewalk.

"Hey." Joseph's voice came from behind the guy, level and calm and carrying the kind of quiet authority that came from spending years in a position where you had to be the most composed person on the ice at all times. "Hey, man, she asked you to move. Let her go." 

The guy turned, and there was a beat where the two of them sized each other up—the guy taking in Joseph's height, the breadth of his shoulders under the hoodie, the way he stood with his weight centered and his hands still in his pockets, deliberately non-threatening—and you watched the calculation happen behind the guy's bloodshot eyes, the drunken risk assessment wobbling between back off and make it worse. "Mind your business, big guy," the guy said, and his hand was still on your arm, his fingers digging in, and you tried to pull free but his grip tightened. "She's fine. We're just talking."

"She's not fine, and you know that," Joseph said, and his voice didn't waver, didn't rise, stayed in that same steady register that was somehow more unnerving than yelling. He took a step closer, held both hands up, palms out. "Look, I don't want any trouble. Just let go of her arm and walk away, and we'll all go home. That's it. Nobody needs to do anything stupid tonight." He meant it. Every word. He would have let the whole thing dissolve right there, would have watched the guy stumble off into the night and never thought about him again, would have walked you to the station and probably said something awkward about your set and then ridden the train in silence and gone home to his Lego and his tea and been perfectly, genuinely happy with that outcome.

The guy laughed. It was a ugly sound, drunk and contemptuous, and he looked you up and down with a leer that made your skin crawl, then turned back to Joseph with a grin that split his red face like a crack in pavement. "What, you want her for yourself? Is that it? Gotta save her so she'll—what, thank you properly?" He made a gesture with his free hand, crude and explicit, and then he yanked your arm harder, pulling you toward him, and you gasped—actually gasped, the sound torn out of you before you could stop it—and something in Joseph's face changed.

It wasn't dramatic. There was no cinematic shift, no thunderclap, no slow-motion. It was more like a door closing. Like every exit, every off-ramp, every reasonable and measured and patient pathway he'd been building in his mind for the last ninety seconds just—shut. All at once. His blue eyes, which had been warm and open and carefully non-threatening, went flat and bright and cold, the colour of lake ice in January, and his jaw set with an audible click, and the hand that had been holding the guy's arm was suddenly holding the guy's collar, and Joseph Woll—who hadn't been in a fight since ever, who mediated, who de-escalated, who was described by every coach he'd ever had as the calmest person in any room—pulled the guy away from you and hit him once.

It was a clean punch. Mechanical, almost. The kind of punch that comes from a body trained to track moving objects at a hundred miles an hour and intercept them with precision, the kind of punch that starts in the legs and travels through the core and arrives at the fist with the full force of two hundred and twelve pounds behind it. It connected with the guy's jaw with a sound like a dropped melon, and the man's eyes went blank before his body even registered the impact, and then he was falling—straight down, like a puppet with cut strings, like every bone in his body had simply dissolved—and he hit the sidewalk with a heavy, final thud and did not move.

Silence. Total, ringing, absolute silence, the kind that fills the space where noise just was like water rushing into a void. You stood with your back against the wall, your arm still raised where his grip had been, the ghost of his fingers already blooming into a tenderness you'd feel for days, and you stared at the man on the ground and then at the man who'd put him there, and your mouth was open and nothing was coming out. Joseph stared at his own fist like he'd never seen it before, like it belonged to someone else, like it had acted without consulting him, and for three full seconds neither of you moved or spoke or breathed.

Then Joseph dropped to his knees on the cold wet pavement beside the unconscious man and the spell broke, not into triumph but into panic—raw, white-faced, shaking-hands panic, the kind that made your chest tight just witnessing it. "Oh God. Oh no, no, no—hey, hey buddy, can you hear me?" His voice had gone high and thin, stripped of every ounce of that pre-punch composure, and his enormous hands were suddenly gentle and frantic on the man's face, turning his head carefully, tilting his chin up to clear his airway. 

"Can you hear me? Hey. Hey." He pulled his phone from his pocket with shaking fingers, fumbled the flashlight app on, and aimed the beam directly into the man's eyes, leaning in close, watching the pupils with the terrified concentration of someone who had possibly just ruined his own life. "Pupils are reactive, they're reactive, okay, okay that's good, that's—" He exhaled a breath that shuddered out of him like he'd been holding it since birth, and then he was pulling open the man's jacket, pressing two fingers to the side of his neck, counting silently, his lips moving around numbers you couldn't hear.

"He's breathing, his pupils are equal and reactive, I think he's—" He pressed his ear to the guy's chest, listening, and you watched the back of his hooded head rise and fall with each enormous breath he was taking, his shoulders still trembling with the kind of adrenaline dump that makes your hands useless and your brain loud.

"Hey." You crouched down next to him, your knees on cold pavement, and put your hand on his arm. Under the jacket sleeve, his bicep was rock-solid, shaking like a plucked string. "Hey. Look at me." He turned, and up close his eyes were even more absurdly blue, even more wide and panicked and pretty, like a spooked husky trying to perform emergency medical care. "You didn't do anything wrong. That guy grabbed me. You asked him to stop. He didn't. You defended me. That's the whole story, and it's a good one, so can you please stop trying to be his doctor?"

He blinked at you, and his mouth opened, and then closed, and then opened again. "I think his breathing is shallow."

"His breathing is fine. He snores. Listen." You tilted your head, and sure enough, a wet, rattling snore was emanating from the unconscious man on the sidewalk, the kind of deep, contented snore that suggested he was having a better night than either of you. "See? He's sleeping great. He's having the time of his life down there."

Joseph stared at the snoring body. Then at you. Then at the body again. "I punched him."

"You did."

"In the face."

"Very squarely, yeah."

"And he's..." He gestured vaguely at the man's sleeping form, at the slow rise and fall of his barrel chest, at the thin trail of drool already connecting his lip to the pavement. "He's snoring."

"He's snoring." You stood up, brushing off your knees, and looked down at him, this enormous, gentle, clearly devastated human still kneeling on the wet sidewalk in his hoodie like a very large and contrite golden retriever who'd knocked over a trash can. "We can't leave him here."

"I know."

"So let's move him."

He looked up at you. "Move him where?"

You glanced down the street. Two blocks east, the fluorescent glow of a Circle K sign buzzed against the dark sky like a beacon of bad decisions. "There. Convenience store. Someone there can keep an eye on him, maybe call someone to pick him up."

"He's going to wake up and not know where he is."

"He grabbed a woman's arm on the street after harassing her all night. I genuinely do not care if he wakes up confused." You extended your hand down to him, and he took it, and his hand swallowed yours completely as he pulled himself up, his weight shifting as he stood to his full height, which was considerable, close up, tall enough that you had to tip your chin to look at him properly. "Come on. Grab his arms."

"I should grab under his—"

"Arms. I'll get his feet. Let's go before someone sees this and calls the cops and we both have to explain why a two people are carrying unconscious body through the streets of Toronto at midnight."

He winced but complied, bending down to hook his hands under the guy's armpits, while you grabbed both ankles—god, his legs were heavy, everything about this guy was heavy—and together you shuffled down the sidewalk at the pace of a very slow, very absurd funeral procession. The man's head lolled back against Joseph’s chest, mouth open, still snoring, and a couple walking a golden doodle on the opposite sidewalk slowed to stare. "He's fine!" you called over, bright and convincing. "Just had a little too much! We're getting him home!" The couple sped up. The dog looked concerned.

The Circle K was one of those narrow, over-lit, perpetually humming convenience stores that existed in the same aesthetic dimension as hospital waiting rooms and airport lounges at three a.m.—fluorescent tubes buzzing overhead, racks of chips and energy drinks casting long shadows, a linoleum floor so aggressively polished it reflected the ceiling. The cashier was a woman in her fifties with reading glasses on a chain and the bone-deep weariness of someone who had seen things in this store that would fill a novel, and she looked up from her phone as the automatic doors slid open and the two of you carried a snoring, unconscious man through the entrance like a very poorly constructed piece of IKEA furniture.

"Can I help you," she said. It was not a question.

Joseph stepped forward, and you watched him assemble what he clearly believed was a competent, trustworthy expression, and what was actually the face of a man whose heart was still hammering at a hundred and sixty beats per minute. "Hi. Hi, sorry. We, um." He looked at you. You raised both eyebrows. He looked back at the cashier. "We found him."

"Found him," the cashier repeated.

"Yeah, he was just—on the sidewalk. Out cold. We don't know him. We were just walking by and he was lying there, so we thought we'd bring him somewhere safe, somewhere with light, where someone could maybe keep an eye on him until he wakes up." He delivered this entire speech with the conviction of a man who had never lied about anything in his entire life and was therefore catastrophically bad at it, his voice cracking on the word found and his hands doing something strange and hover-y at his sides, like he wanted to gesture but couldn't remember how.

The cashier looked at the unconscious man, who was now propped against a rack of Doritos, his head tilted at an angle that suggested he'd be sleeping in the chip aisle whether anyone wanted him to or not. She looked at Joseph. She looked at you. She looked at the man's very obviously punched jaw, already swelling into a deep, ugly purple. "You found him," she said again.

"On the sidewalk," you confirmed, nodding. "Just lying there."

"And his face was already like that."

"Must have fallen," Joseph said quickly. "Before we found him. He fell. On the sidewalk. Which is where he was. When we found him."

The cashier took a long, slow breath, adjusted her reading glasses, and looked at the two of you, deciding exactly how many fucks she had left to give at twelve-fifteen on a Friday night. The answer appeared to be zero. "I'm calling a cab for him," she said, reaching for her phone. "You two need to leave."

"Thank you so much," you said, already grabbing Joseph's sleeve and pulling him toward the door, "thank you, you're doing God's work, have a great night," and then you were both back on the sidewalk, the cold air hitting your faces, the automatic doors closing behind you with a soft hiss, and you looked at each other for one beat—two—three—and then you were both walking, fast, not running but walking with purpose, your boots and his sneakers hitting the pavement in a rapid syncopation as you put distance between yourselves and the Circle K like two people who had definitely not just abandoned an unconscious man in a chip aisle.

"That was terrible," he said, half-laughing, half-hyperventilating. "That was the worst lying I've ever done. She knew. She absolutely knew."

"She knew the second you said found him with that voice."

"What was wrong with my voice?"

"Everything. You sounded like a kid telling a teacher the dog ate his homework." You were smiling now, really smiling, the adrenaline and the absurdity of the whole night catching up to you in a wave of giddy, slightly hysterical energy that made your cheeks ache. "I found him, officer, he was just lying there, on the sidewalk, with a fist-shaped bruise on his jaw, it was crazy—"

"Okay, okay." He was laughing too, a real laugh now, bright and startled and warm, the kind of laugh that cracked open his whole face and made him look younger, less like a guy who'd just knocked someone unconscious and more like a guy who couldn't believe any of this was happening. He ran a hand through his hair, pushing his hood back, and the streetlight caught his face properly for the first time—soft jaw, straight nose, those ridiculous blue eyes still a little wild with leftover adrenaline—and you thought, distantly, irrationally, oh, he's actually—

You shook it off. You turned left, orienting yourself. Dundas West was four blocks north, and if you hurried you could catch the last eastbound train, and you could be home in twenty minutes, and you could shower off this entire night and crawl into bed and process nothing about it until tomorrow, preferably with a large glass of wine. You pulled your cardigan tighter around yourself again, and started walking that direction.

"Where are you going?"

"Train."

"No." His voice changed, not sharp but firm, the same way it had sounded when he'd told the guy to let go of your arm, steady and certain and built on a foundation that didn't wobble. He caught up to you in two strides, his long legs making your brisk walk look like a leisurely stroll. "I'm not letting you get on a train right now."

You stopped and turned to look at him. "You're not letting me?"

"That came out wrong." He paused, rubbed the back of his neck, and the gesture was so genuinely awkward, so completely at odds with the squared-off solidity of his frame, that something in your chest did an inconvenient little flip. "I just mean—it's late, it's freezing, you're not dressed for the cold, and that guy is back there. What if he wakes up and comes looking for you? What if he—"

"What if he what? Tracks me through the subway system using his incredible powers of drunken observation?" But even as you said it, you knew he had a point, and he could clearly see that you knew, because he gave you a look—patient, steady, a little bit pleading. "I'll be fine. I take this train three nights a week."

"And tonight's different, and you know it." He already had his phone out, thumbs moving across the screen. "I'm calling you an Uber. It'll be here in four minutes. Please just—let me do this."

You opened your mouth to argue. Closed it. Opened it again. He glanced up from his phone, his eyes catching yours, and there was something in them that wasn't pity or white-knight posturing or any of the things you'd braced for—it was just concern, real and unguarded and slightly desperate, the look of someone who needed to know you were safe almost as much as you needed to be safe. You exhaled, a long pale cloud dissolving into the dark.

"Fine," you said. "If you insist."

He smiled, then turned the phone screen toward you briefly—the Uber app, a car four minutes away, a little sedan icon creeping toward your location on the map—and then pocketed it and shoved his hands back into his jacket, rocking on his heels. Silence settled between you, not uncomfortable but charged, the kind of silence that happens when two strangers have shared something too big for small talk and too weird for silence. You stood on the sidewalk under a streetlight, your arms wrapped around yourself, his frame casting a shadow that practically reached the other side of the street, and the night moved around you—distant sirens, a dog barking somewhere, the muffled bass of music from an apartment window.

"Thanks," you said. "For back there. I had it under control, but... thanks."

"He had his hand on you." Something flickered across his face, a shadow of that earlier coldness, quickly suppressed. "You shouldn't have had to handle that. I should've gotten there sooner."

"You don’t know me. You got there exactly when you needed to." You looked up at him, meaning it, and his expression shifted into something softer, something that made the sharp planes of his face go gentle in the streetlight. Headlights swept across the street—a white sedan, pulling up to the curb, a phone glowing on the dashboard. "That's me."

"Yeah." He stepped back, giving you space, and lifted one hand in a small wave that was so earnestly dorky it almost broke your heart. "Get home safe. Please."

"Thanks," you said, and pulled open the Uber door, slid into the backseat, and closed it behind you. The heat was blasting, the radio was playing something soft and acoustic, and the driver, a middle-aged man with a neat beard and kind eyes, glanced at you in the rearview mirror.

"Rough night?"

"Long one," you said, leaning your head against the cool window. The city slid past outside—streetlights, closed storefronts, the occasional late-night walker hunched against the cold—and you watched the last glimpse of the tall man standing on the sidewalk, hands in his pockets, watching your car until it turned the corner and he disappeared from view. You closed your eyes. The adrenaline was draining out of you like water from a cracked glass, leaving behind a bone-deep exhaustion and the phantom warmth of a huge, steady hand on your arm and a voice that said get home safe, please like it actually meant it, like it was the most important sentence in the world.

The driver glanced at you in the rearview again, and you caught the movement, your gaze refocusing on the interior of the car—the neat dashboard, the phone in its mount showing the route, a small air freshener shaped like a pine tree swinging gently from the rearview mirror. He seemed nice. He seemed like the kind of person who would answer a question without making it weird.

"Hey, can I ask you something?" You sat up a little straighter, pulling your arms tighter around yourself.

"Of course." His eyes flicked to the mirror, then back to the road.

"The person who booked this ride—the account holder—you see their name on your end, right?"

He nodded, slowing for a red light. "First name, yeah. That's all they give us."

"What is it?"

The light turned green. He glanced at the screen on his dashboard, tapping it once with his index finger to wake it from its dim standby, and read it off with the casual disinterest of a man who saw hundreds of names a week and didn't think twice about any of them.

"Joseph," he said.

You're only half-listening to Rusty and Kai’s conversation, chin propped on your fist, sipping the same beer you've been nursing for twenty minutes because you haven't eaten since noon and Rusty's already told you twice not to get "pre-game sloppy." Dana is next to you scrolling through her phone, occasionally holding up photos of pedal configurations from some forum she's obsessed with, and the four of you are settled into the kind of comfortable, scattered orbit that happens before a gig, when your bodies are here but your minds are already on the stage, already running through intros and transitions and the one part in a song where Kai always comes in a half-beat late and you have to turn around and glare at him.

The game is just noise. It's always just noise—some fast-moving blur of color and motion on the screen above the bar, the play-by-play voice droning in that cadence sports commentators have, simultaneously urgent and monotonous, like a man narrating his own house fire. You don't dislike hockey. You just don't watch it. It exists in the same category of things-you-don't-think-about as fantasy football, cryptocurrency, and whatever Rusty's opinion on hot dogs is: technically present in the world, functionally irrelevant to your life.

Dana holds up her phone. "What about this fuzz pedal? The green one."

"I don't know what I'm looking at," you say, squinting.

"It's a fuzz pedal."

"Yeah, I got that part. What's the question."

"Should I buy it?"

"Buy whatever you want, Dana, you're a grown woman."

She pulls the phone back, mutters something about unsupportive bandmates, and you let your eyes drift. Just the idle, screen-tired wander of someone whose brain needs a landing pad that isn't another pedalboard photo, and your gaze travels across the shelf of liquor bottles, past the cluster of guys in jerseys two stools down who are groaning about something, and lands on the television screen mounted above the bar.

It's a goalie. That much you can parse from the visual—a player in full goalie gear, crouched in his crease, painted blue and white from mask to pads, settled into that particular ready stance that looks almost meditative, weight forward, glove open, eyes tracking something out of frame. The camera is tight on him, close enough that the broadcast is clearly building a moment around him—a save sequence, maybe, or an intermission package—and the shot holds, and you look at him the way you look at anything on a bar TV, with the passive, consuming blankness of someone who is watching without seeing.

And then you see.

It's the eyes. It's stupid that it's the eyes, because you can barely see them through the cage of his mask, just these two smudges of color visible through the bars, but they're bright, absurdly bright, even on a screen, even through broadcast feed and a goalie cage, and they're the kind of blue that doesn't look real, that looks like someone picked a color from a painting and gave it to a person. The shape of them, the way they're set in his face, the quality of focus—calm, patient, alert without being anxious—it tugs at something. Something deep and recent and very specific. You sit up a little straighter.

The camera tightens further. The mask comes off.

Brunette hair, pushed back, damp with sweat. A soft jaw clean above the bulk of his chest protector. A mouth that's set in a serious line but somehow looks like it's two seconds away from smiling, like the seriousness is a costume and the smile is what's underneath. And those eyes, freed from the cage now, blinking once in the arena light, sweeping the ice, settling—

Your stomach drops through the floor.

"Hey," you say, but it comes out strange, too quiet, aimed at no one. Kai and Rusty have moved on from a hot dog debate to something about set break timings and neither of them hears you. Dana is still staring at her phone. You reach out and grab her arm.

"Ow—what?"

"Look at the TV."

She glances up, assesses the screen with the same indifference you'd had thirty seconds ago. "Hockey," she says, like she's identifying a species of insect. "Cool."

"No, look at the—the goalie. The goalie, Dana, look at his face."

She squints. On screen, the goalie takes a drink from his water bottle, tips his head back, and the camera catches him in profile—the line of his nose, the slope of his jaw, the way his throat moves when he swallows—and then he lowers the bottle and his face is front-on again and those blue eyes are right there, right there, and you can feel your pulse in your fingertips where they're gripping Dana's arm.

"He's cute," Dana says, which is so monumentally unhelpful that you almost let go of her. "Is he—do you know him?"

"I don't know him. I met him. Maybe. I think I met him. He was—" You stop. You don't know how to explain it. You don't know how to say a few weeks ago a very tall, very gentle stranger punched a man unconscious for me and then panicked about it and then called me an Uber and then stood on the sidewalk watching me leave like a golden retriever watching its owner drive away without sounding like you've lost your mind. "He might be someone I met."

Dana's eyebrows climb her forehead. "You met the goalie? How do you meet a goalie?"

"I didn't know he was a goalie! He was just a guy! He must've been at The Vault the night we played, and then after, there was this—there was an incident, and he—he was there, and—" You're staring at the screen so hard your eyes ache. The goalie stretches his legs in his crease, rolling his neck, and there's something in the motion, in the particular way he carries his shoulders—huge and deliberate and careful, like he's always aware of how much space he takes up—that lands in your memory like a key sliding into a lock. You know those shoulders. You stood next to those shoulders. Those shoulders carried half an unconscious man to a Circle K while you carried the other half and lied badly about finding him on the sidewalk.

"Oh my god," you whisper.

"What? What happened?"

"Nothing, I just—" You point at the screen, jabbing your finger toward the glass like you're trying to physically reach through it and confirm what you're seeing. "I need to know his name. I need the TV to tell me his name right now."

Right on cue, as if the universe has decided to stop being coy, the broadcast cuts to a graphic—his stats, presumably, though you don't read numbers, you read the text at the bottom of the screen, the clean white caption block that appears beneath a replay of him making a glove save, and the letters assemble themselves into a name, and the name reads Joseph Woll.

"Joseph Woll," you read aloud, and the name sits on your tongue differently now. Not just a word an Uber driver read off a screen at twelve-thirty in the morning but an actual, verifiable, captioned, broadcast-on-live-television name belonging to an actual person who plays an actual sport for an actual living, and you are staring at the screen with your mouth slightly open and your beer completely forgotten.

"Joseph Woll," Dana repeats, testing it. She looks at you. Looks at the screen. Looks at you again. "And you met him."

"I met someone. I think. I'm not sure it's him."

"You just said you thought it was him."

Rusty has turned around now, drawn by the specific frequency of two women having a conversation that sounds like it's about a guy, his interest piqued like a dog hearing a treat bag rustle. "Who are we talking about? What's happening?"

"Nothing's happening."

"She met a hockey player," Dana says, cheerfully throwing you under the bus.

"I didn't meet a hockey player. I met a guy outside Dundas West after a gig a few weeks ago. He might be—" You gesture vaguely at the screen, where Joseph Woll has settled back into his crouch, mask back on, just a shape now, just pads and posture and those eyes hidden behind the cage again. "That guy. Maybe. I don't know. It was dark."

Kai leans forward, elbows on the table, his conversation fully abandoned. "Wait, outside Dundas West? Like, after that show where we were—"

"After that show, yes."

"And you didn't mention this? You've been sitting on this for weeks?"

"There's nothing to sit on. He helped me out with a thing, walked me to an Uber, and I left. That's it. I didn't even know his last name until right now. I still don't know anything about him other than his first name and the fact that he apparently catches pucks for a living."

"What kind of thing did he help you out with?" Rusty asks, and the question is casual but his eyes sharpen, because Rusty is the oldest of you and has known you since you both worked at the same dish pit in university and he can read your deflections like sheet music.

You take a sip of your beer. It's warm. You swallow it anyway. "Some guy was being a creep after the show. He stepped in. End of story."

"End of story," Rusty echoes, unconvinced.

"End of story, Rusty."

He holds your gaze for a moment, and you can see the gears turning—questions about whether you filed a report, whether you're okay, whether he needs to find someone and have a conversation about appropriate behavior toward women leaving venues at midnight—but you give him a look, small and firm and private, the look that says I handled it, I'm fine, drop it, and after a beat he nods and turns back to his discourse with Kai.

Dana is harder to shake. She leans into your space, voice dropping to a murmur. "He's really cute, though."

"I didn't notice."

"Fine." She holds up her hands in mock surrender, but she's grinning, that insufferable knowing grin that means the conversation is paused, not over, and she'll be circling back to it at the worst possible moment, probably mid-set. She goes back to her phone, and you exhale slowly, quietly, into the neck of your beer bottle.

On the screen above the bar, the period ends. The broadcast cuts to a wide shot of the arena, players filtering off the ice, and for a split second the camera catches the goalie at the bench, pulling his mask off again, shaking sweat from his hair, and he smiles—quick and reflexive and bright—at something a teammate says, and it hits you like a wrong note, sharp and unmistakable, because you know that smile. You saw it once, on a dark sidewalk, aimed at you, and it looked exactly like that, and then you looked away, and then you got in a car, and then you went home, and the whole time he was this. This person on a screen in an arena full of thousands of people, this person whose name is captioned and whose stats are tallied and whose face is recognizable enough to be identified by a broadcast graphic, and he was standing on a sidewalk in a hoodie at midnight punching a guy for you.

"Set's in two hours," Rusty says, checking his phone. "We should do a soundcheck by nine."

"Yep," you say, and your voice sounds normal, and your face is calm, and your hands are steady around your bottle, and somewhere behind your sternum something is rearranging itself quietly, a small private renovation that you do not have the time or the inclination to inspect right now, not with a gig in two hours and a setlist to finalize and a stage to get on. Later, maybe. Later you'll pull out your phone and search the name and sit with whatever you find. But not now. Now there are songs to play and cables to coil and a room full of sticky floor and cheap beer that needs someone to sing at it, and that someone is you, and you have work to do.

The game ends while you're doing your final soundcheck, a 4-2 win that you know nothing about because you've been on stage adjusting your mic stand and arguing with Rusty about the order of the middle three songs for the last twenty minutes. By the time the room starts filling, the bar's regulars have been supplemented by a post-game crowd—looser, louder, several people still in jerseys—and you file that away the way you always do, reading the room, calibrating your energy to match what's in front of you. 

You count in the opener with a sharp nod to Rusty, and the first riff splits the room open like a crack in glass—something angular and driving that you wrote in the back of a coffee shop in August, all jagged rhythm and propulsive bass, your voice coming in low and tight before the chorus detonates into something loud enough to rattle the glasses on the bar rail. The set is tight tonight, sharper than usual, and you can feel it in the way the room locks in early, the chatter at the back dying by the second song, heads turning, bodies drifting closer. 

You play a new one for the first time—something slow that builds into a wall, your voice carrying the melody over Dana's shimmering chords—and then shift into a cover you've been workshopping, something that started as an acoustic ballad and that you've rebuilt into a snarling, fuzzed-out thing that barely resembles the original. Kai's bass is locked in all night. Rusty doesn't rush a single fill. It's one of those sets where the alchemy works and you can feel it humming through the floorboards and up through the soles of your boots and into your blood, and by the time you hit the final song—a short, brutal, two-minute burst of pure adrenaline that ends on a single sustained chord—you're breathing hard and smiling and the room is loud, the good kind of loud, the kind that means you did your job.

You hop off the stage feeling an intense buzz that comes after a set where nothing went wrong, the warm, wrung-out hum of a body that just spent forty-five minutes converting adrenaline into sound. Your first instinct is water, so you weave through the crowd toward the bar, squeezing between bodies with a murmured stream of sorry, excuse me, sorry, and when you finally plant yourself at the rail you lean both elbows on the sticky wood and catch the bartender's eye with a raised finger. "Just water, please. Big one if you've got it."

You don't scan the room. You don't look for anyone. The set is still vibrating in your bones and your ears are ringing in that muffled way that means you'll need to sleep with one ear pressed into the pillow to hear your own thoughts, and all you want is cold water and maybe a spot to sit for five minutes before you help break down the gear. The bartender slides a pint glass across the bar, ice clinking, and you wrap your hand around it and drink half of it in one long pull, eyes closed, throat working, and you're wiping your mouth with the back of your hand when a voice lands beside you.

"Set was really good."

The sound of it hits before the words do. Low, steady, warm, with the quality of someone who isn't trying to project, just speaking at a volume calibrated for proximity, and every nerve in your body fires at once because you know that voice, you've heard it exactly twice—once on a dark sidewalk, steady and calm above the sound of your own racing heart, and once on a television screen during an intermission interview, muffled and distant through bar speakers—and your body reacts before your brain catches up, your shoulders jerking, your hand tightening on the glass, your head snapping sideways so fast something in your neck clicks.

He's right there. Right there, standing at the bar less than two feet from you, taller than you remember, which shouldn't be possible because you already remember him being absurdly tall, but up close and in person and not in the adrenaline-blurred chaos of a midnight sidewalk, he's somehow more—broader in the shoulders, longer in the arm, his frame occupying the space next to you with a quiet, unhurried solidity that makes the bar feel smaller. He's in a dark jacket over a plain grey henley, no hood tonight, and his hair is pushed back and his face is exactly the face from the television, except real, except three-dimensional, except aimed at you with those eyes and the expression you remember—gentle, a little amused, maybe the faintest trace of something cautious underneath, like he wasn't entirely sure he should come over and is gauging your reaction to the fact that he did.

"Jesus," you say, your hand flat against your own sternum. "You scared the shit out of me."

"Sorry." He doesn't sound sorry. He sounds like he's trying not to smile. "Didn't mean to sneak up. You were—sorry."

"You keep saying sorry."

Now he does smile, a real one, quick and slightly crooked, pulling to one side of his face in a way that the television didn't capture because the television only caught the bright, reflexive version. This one is slower, more private, the kind of smile that knows it's being witnessed and doesn't mind. "Can I buy you a drink? Soda counts, but I mean something with a little more going on, if you want."

You look at him. You look at your water. You look at him again. "You want to buy me a drink."

"That's the idea, yeah."

"You—the guy from the sidewalk."

"The guy from the sidewalk," he confirms, and the smile widens a fraction, and there's a warmth in it that you don't know what to do with, so you take another sip of your water and set it down and turn to face him properly, because apparently this is happening.

"Okay," you say. "Sure. Whatever you're having."

"I'm not having anything, actually. Early morning tomorrow. But whatever you want is on me." He flags the bartender with an easy lift of his hand, the gesture natural and unhurried, and when you order a gin and tonic because it's the first thing that comes to mind, he nods and pulls out his card without looking at the total and hands it to the bartender with a thanks that sounds like he means it. While the drink is being made, he leans one elbow on the bar, and the angle brings him closer, not invasive but present, and he looks at you with those blue eyes and says, "I didn't know you'd be playing here tonight. I came with a friend and his wife, and I saw the setup and thought, okay, live music, could be good, and then you walked on stage and I thought—"

"That it was me."

"That it was you." He nods slowly. "Took me about three seconds."

"Three seconds is fast."

"You're pretty recognizable."

"Straight from a hockey game?"

The words are out before you can think about them, light and reflexive, just a flick of humor, and you watch his face carefully for the reaction. There isn't much of one. His expression shifts—barely, a slight lift of the eyebrows, a fractional pause—but he recovers immediately, rolling with it the way someone rolls with a compliment they've already accepted, easy and unbothered.

"So you looked me up," he says.

"The Leafs tend to be televised. I was at a bar. The TV was on."

"Fair." He takes the card back from the bartender, signs, pockets it. "What gave me away, the name or the face?"

"Both. The face first, then the name confirmed it."

"That's flattering, I think."

"Don't let it go to your head." You accept the gin and tonic from the bartender, the cold glass sweating against your fingers, and take a sip. It's strong. You're grateful for it. "Who's the friend?"

He glances over his shoulder, toward the back of the room, and you follow his gaze to a table near the wall where a very large man—huge, actually, somehow even broader than the man standing next to you, with a thick dark beard and the general build of a refrigerator someone taught to walk upright—is sitting with a woman who looks like she's telling a very animated story, her hands moving, her face bright. The large man is watching her with the particular soft expression of someone who has heard this story before and will happily hear it a hundred more times. "That's Tony," he says. "And his wife, Jenna. I brought them because my other friends would've—" He pauses, searching for the word. "Made it a whole thing."

"A whole thing."

"If they knew I was here to see you play, they would've—" He stops himself, shakes his head. "It would've been a lot of chirping. Teasing. I didn't want to deal with that tonight."

Something about the way he says it—plain, unguarded, like he's explaining a practical decision and not confessing that he deliberately brought backup to avoid being roasted by his friend group—makes you want to laugh. "So you brought a ringer."

"Tony doesn't chirp. Tony is the most unbothered person alive. You could tell him the building was on fire and he'd finish his drink first."

"You brought the chillest guy you know so you could come watch a band without getting made fun of?"

He looks at you, and there's a beat where you can see him decide whether to be embarrassed or just accept it, and he lands on accept, his shoulders relaxing a fraction, that sunny smile returning. "Basically, yeah."

"Mmhm."

"Your set was great, by the way. Different from last time."

"You already said that. You remember last time?"

"I remember everything about last time." He says it without bravado, without performance, just a statement of fact delivered in that same steady, even voice, and the plainness of it is what makes it land harder than any clever line could have. He gestures vaguely toward the stage behind you. "The fast one you opened with, that was new. And the slow one in the middle, the one that built up. I liked that one a lot. There was something in the second verse where your voice dropped down and it almost sounded like—" He stops, frowning slightly, like he's reaching for a word he can't quite catch. "I don't know how to describe it. Like something cracking. In a good way."

You stare at him. He stares back, blue eyes steady, clearly unaware that he's just described a vocal choice you agonized over for three weeks during the writing process, the specific moment where you pull back from the mic and let the note thin out until it almost breaks, because you wanted it to sound like a hairline fracture, like something on the edge of splitting open. "So I'm guessing you're a bit of a musician yourself?" you say. 

"Piano," he says. "A little. Not like you, not—yeah. Piano."

"That's why you said it like that. The cracking thing. That's a musician thing to notice."

He ducks his head, just slightly, and you catch the faintest flush along the tops of his ears, barely visible in the bar light, and it is so unexpectedly endearing that your grip tightens on your gin and tonic for reasons you choose not to examine. He recovers fast, lifts his head, meets your eyes again, and says, "The last song was intense. I really liked it."

"Thanks." You take a sip of your drink. He shifts his weight, his elbow still on the bar, and the closeness of him registers again—the sheer physical presence of him, the warmth radiating off his arm where it rests near yours, the low ambient hum of his breathing. He's not doing anything. He's just standing there, solid and patient and unhurried, and somehow that's worse than if he were trying, because it means this is just how he is, naturally, this is the resting state, and the resting state is a lot. "So," you say, because the silence is doing something to your chest that you don't appreciate. "Joseph."

"Most people call me Woller. Or Jo."

"Which do you prefer?"

"Joseph's fine."

"Joseph." You test it again, the way you tested it in the back of the Uber, except this time it has a face and a voice and a body standing next to you at a bar, and it sounds different in your mouth. Warmer. "Okay, Joseph. I have a question."

"Go ahead."

You swirl the gin and tonic, letting the ice clink against the glass. Then you tilt your head, let your mouth curl into something sharper, and level your gaze right at him.

"Why did you really come see me tonight?" Your voice drops, steady and dry. "Shouldn't you be exhausted after a game? Don’t you guys come off the ice drenched and heroic and dehydrated or whatever?"

His eyebrows jump, and then he breaks into a laugh, a low, warm sound that makes your pulse jump just a bit. "Well, I showered."

"Good to know." You lean your elbow on the bar, angle yourself toward him, make it impossible for him not to notice the way your gaze drifts down his chest and back up slowly. "But that doesn’t answer the question."

You hold his eyes—God, they're steady—and he blinks once, slow. There’s a flush creeping up his neck now, like he’s trying to decide what to risk and how much to say, and you watch the moment he lands on the truth. His arms fold loosely across his chest, not defensive but grounded, and the corner of his mouth lifts as he leans in a little closer.

“I wanted to see you again.”

You let that hang between you, your throat going dry even though you’ve got a drink in hand. You take a sip just to give yourself something to do, then tilt your chin up, enjoying the way he’s looking at you now, direct and earnest and the tiniest bit wrecked.

“You get hit with slapshots for a living but coming to a dive bar to watch me is your idea of a thrill?”

“It wasn’t that complicated.” He swallows hard, shakes his head. “I couldn’t stop thinking about you. The show. How you looked up there. So I figured—if I had a shot to see that again, I should take it.”

Heat flares in your cheeks and you tamp it down with sheer force of will, giving him your slowest smile. “That’s a better answer.”

He looks relieved, a little breathless even though all he’s doing is standing there and telling you he thinks you’re cool. Your gaze drops to his hands, fingertips drumming lightly on the bartop, and you shift your weight toward him, letting your knee graze his thigh. Neither of you pretends it didn’t happen.

“You know,” you say, voice barely above the hum of the room, “you could’ve just asked.”

“Yeah?” He dips his head, smiling now, softer than before.

“Mhm.” You sip your drink, eyes never leaving his. “Could’ve walked up after the show and said, ‘Hey, I’m the guy who knocked out a creep and called you an Uber, can I see you again?’”

His laugh is smaller this time, tighter at the edges. “Would that have worked?”

“You’re here, aren’t you?”

He shifts his weight, and the movement brings him a half-inch closer, close enough that you can feel the warmth coming off his chest. His tongue touches his lower lip—a quick, unconscious thing—and he squares his shoulders like he's bracing for something.

"Can I take you out sometime? Like, not here, not after a gig, just—" He pauses, rubs a hand along his jaw. "Dinner, maybe. Or coffee. Or whatever you'd actually want to do. I'm not picky."

You let the question sit for a beat, watching him, the way his fingers have gone still on the bartop and his breathing has gone just slightly shallow, and then you lean in, closing the distance between you until you can smell him—something clean and warm, cedar maybe, undercut with the faintest trace of whatever soap he uses—and you drop your voice to a murmur that lands somewhere right below his ear.

"Joseph."

"Yeah?"

"You don't just want to take me home right now?"

The sound he makes is not a word. It's somewhere between a laugh and a cough and a sound a man makes when all the blood in his head tries to relocate south at the same time, and the flush that was creeping up his neck floods into his face in a hot, sudden wave that turns his cheekbones pink and makes the tips of his ears go red. His mouth opens. Closes. Opens again.

"No—no, no, I didn't—that's not—" He runs a hand through his hair, pushes it back, drops the hand, picks it up again, and you are enjoying this so much it should probably be illegal. "I mean, I would—not that I'm saying—I didn't come over here to—I just want to get to know you better, that's all, I swear, I'm not trying to—"

"Joseph."

"—I mean, obviously you're—" He gestures at you vaguely, a helpless encompassing wave that takes in your whole body, and the gesture is so genuinely overwhelmed that something in your chest clenches hard. "You're incredibly—you're so—" He cuts himself off, presses his lips together, and stares at the ceiling for a full two seconds like he's asking it for strength. "Yes. I mean, yes, obviously, I would—not that I'm expecting—I just—" He blows out a long breath through his nose and looks back at you, and his face is so open right now, so completely undefended, every thought playing out across his features like a ticker tape, and he says, "I think you're amazing. And I think you're beautiful—" He stops. Swallows. The Adam's apple bobs. "But that's not why I came over here. I came over here because a few weeks ago I knocked a guy out, and I met this really, really cool girl, and I want to take her to dinner and listen to her talk about her music for three hours and maybe make her laugh the way she was laughing with her bandmates earlier, and if that's all I get, that's enough."

You stare at him. The bar noise rushes back in—the clinking of glasses, someone feeding quarters into the pool table, the muffled thump of Rusty's kick drum as he tests a pedal behind you—and none of it registers, because this enormous, flustered, blue-eyed man just said beautiful and enough in the same breath without seeming to understand that the combination might be the most devastating thing anyone has ever said to you in a bar at eleven o'clock on a Wednesday night.

"Okay," you say, and your voice comes out softer than you intend, stripped of the teasing edge, and you watch him register the shift.

"Okay?"

"Dinner. Yes. Give me your phone."

He blinks. Reaches into his back pocket. Hands it to you, unlocked, and his fingers brush yours during the handoff and neither of you pulls away fast enough, and the contact is small and electric and lingers. You open a new contact, type in your number, save it under a name you know will make him laugh, and hand it back.

He looks at the screen. His mouth twitches. Then he laughs—full, bright, real—and turns the phone toward you so you can see what you typed: Girl from the sidewalk with a skull emoji after it.

You pick up your gin and tonic, take the last sip, set the empty glass down, and lean in close enough that your lips nearly brush his ear. "Text me, Joseph. Don't make me find you on TV again."

His breath catches. You pull back, give him your widest smile, and walk away toward the stage where Rusty is already coiling cables, your pulse hammering against your ribs the entire way, your back straight, your chin up, and you don't turn around, but you can feel him watching you go.

The date is fine.

That's the word you keep coming back to, turning it over in your head on the train ride home, examining it from different angles like a stone that might reveal something hidden if you hold it up to the light long enough. Fine. He picks a restaurant in the Distillery District—warm, low-lit, the kind of place with exposed brick and candles in amber glass and a menu that doesn't have prices on it in any font size you can read without squinting—and he's already there when you arrive, standing near the host stand, and when he sees you his whole face does that thing, that immediate unfurling of warmth, like you're the answer to a question he's been holding all day. He hugs you hello and it's brief and careful, one arm, a respectful distance, his hand landing flat between your shoulder blades and lifting away almost before you register the weight of it.

Dinner is two hours. He asks about your music—when you started, why guitar, what your writing process looks like—and he actually listens, not the performative nodding thing most people do while waiting for their turn to talk, but real listening, his fork pausing halfway to his mouth when you say something that catches him, follow-up questions that prove he was paying attention. You ask about the piano, and he lights up, telling you about the bridge he's been stuck on, and then he tells you about the Lego Lamborghini like it's a perfectly normal hobby for a grown professional athlete to have, and you laugh, and he grins, and the conversation moves easy and natural from one thing to the next without either of you forcing it.

He pays. You try to split it and he says "absolutely not" with such calm finality that you don't argue, and when you tell him you'll get the next one he nods, and the fact that he doesn't make a joke or push or assume anything about what "next one" means registers quietly in the back of your mind. He walks you to the station. You talk about nothing notable, and when you reach the entrance he stops, shoves his hands in his coat pockets, and looks at you with those blue eyes and says he had a great time, and you say you did too, and it's true, and then there's a pause, a breath of space where something could happen, and he says "get home safe," and you say "goodnight, Joseph," and you go down the stairs and through the turnstile and you don't look back because there's nothing to look back for.

It was fine. It was nice. He was a perfect gentleman, attentive and warm and genuine, and you felt comfortable the entire time, never once reaching for your phone or scanning the room for an exit, and the conversation was good and the food was good and he smelled like spice and cold air when he hugged you goodbye, and you ride the train home with your earbuds in and your head against the window and you think: that was a nice date with a nice guy who is not going to call you again because there was no spark, no moment, no electricity, just two people eating dinner and being pleasant, and that's okay, not every connection has to be a thing.

You're wrong about that, it turns out. He texts you the next morning—had a great time last night, hope you got home safe—and you reply, and he replies, and the texting continues in a low, easy rhythm over the next few days that you don't overthink because it's just texting, it doesn't mean anything, it's just a nice guy being nice. You tell yourself this firmly. You tell yourself this while typing back a response in under thirty seconds. You tell yourself this while saving a song he'd asked about to a playlist labeled Stuff for Jo that you absolutely do not overthink the naming of.

And then it's Friday, and you're at a different venue, and you're doing your pre-show ritual, tuning, adjusting pedals, running through the setlist in your head, when Rusty nudges you with his elbow and nods toward the door.

"Your boyfriend's here."

"Shut up. I don't have a boyfriend."

"Cute tall guy, blue eyes, looks like he could bench press the bar. That one."

You glance toward the door, casual, disinterested, just a reflexive check to confirm whatever random stranger Rusty has mistaken for your personal life, and your hand stills on your tuning pegs.

He's coming through the door. Joseph. In a brown jacket and a beanie pulled down over his hair, scanning the room with the slightly wide-eyed expression of someone who has never been in this venue before and is trying to figure out the layout without bumping into anyone. He's alone tonight—no refrigerator-sized friend, no teasing teammates, just him, hands in his pockets, shoulders slightly hunched against the cold still clinging to his jacket, and he finds you on the stage within about four seconds, and his face does that thing again, that full-body softening, that quiet there you are that hits you from across a crowded room like a frequency only you can hear.

He raises one hand in a small wave.

You raise your pick hand back.

"What did I tell you," Rusty mutters. "Boyfriend."

"I will fire you from this band."

"You can't fire me, I own the van."

You don't have a comeback for that, because the truth is you don't own the van and Rusty is unfireable and also because your attention has been hijacked by the way Joseph is weaving through the crowd toward the bar, nodding politely at people, his height making him easy to track even in a packed room, and you watch him order something—you can't see what, his back is to you, but you watch the line of his shoulders under the jacket, the way he leans one elbow on the bar while he waits, and something tugs at you, something you don't want to name yet, something that feels less like a spark and more like a slow, steady accumulation of heat, like a pilot light you didn't know was lit.

You don't go over to him. You can't—you have a set to play in twenty minutes and your guitar is half-tuned and your in-ear monitor is acting up and Dana needs help with her strap. So you stay on stage and he stays at the bar and he doesn't try to come over, doesn't wave again, doesn't make it weird, just settles onto a stool with his drink and turns to face the stage like a man who is here for exactly one reason and is content to wait for it.

And when you count in the first song—four clicks of your drumstick against the mic stand, one-two-three-four—you're looking at the stage, at your hands, at your band, at the room full of people who came to hear loud music on a Friday night. But somewhere in the back of your mind, in the place where songs come from, in the dark tender space between the notes where the real stuff lives, you can feel him there, watching, steady and patient and warm, and your voice comes out stronger than it has all week.

He keeps showing up. That’s the thing that catches you off-guard, his figure becomes a fixture at the edge of the crowd, tall and easy to spot, half-shrouded in a hoodie or a ballcap, always standing back just enough to let the music fill the space between you. After your sets, he never makes a scene. No dramatic gestures, no flowers or fanfare, just a warm smile, a little wave, a “Hey, you sounded great tonight,” and sometimes, when you’re brave enough or he’s tired enough, a hug that lingers. He keeps it simple. He keeps it safe. You never know if he’s coming until you catch him standing by the bar—sometimes alone, sometimes with his friend Tony, sometimes just nursing a ginger ale and watching the stage with that quietly focused energy you’ve started to crave.

You don’t talk about it with the band, not really. Rusty teases you in passing, Dana raises her eyebrows every time she sees him in the crowd, but it settles into the background of your life like a motif in a song—always there, humming along, building quietly. One night he brings you a coffee after a late set, the lid already scribbled with your name and a smiley face, and you sip it on the curb together, knees brushing, talking about nothing and everything while the city winds down around you. Another night he stands in the rain outside the venue holding an umbrella, waiting for you to finish packing up, and you let him walk you to the station, your hands jammed deep in your pockets so you don’t accidentally reach for his.

You tell yourself it’s not a thing, that it’s just a nice guy who likes your music and maybe likes you a little, that you’re not waiting for him to show up every week, that you’re not scanning the crowd for his height, his shape, the way he stands with his arms crossed loosely over his chest, always looking like he’s holding back something bright. You tell yourself that, and you almost believe it.

And then, one week, he’s not there.

You notice it before you even step on stage. The crowd is thinner than usual, the lighting weirdly harsh, and for the first time in months, you feel exposed—like there’s a gap in the audience where something should be, an anchor you didn’t realize you’d gotten used to. You play through the set, your voice tight, your fingers fumbling a chord change in the second song, and after, you go through the motions: coil your cables, thank the crowd, hug Dana goodbye, ignore Rusty’s jokes about your “missing number one fan.” You check your phone, but there’s nothing from him, not even a “good luck” text, and you tell yourself it shouldn’t matter, but you walk home with your fists clenched, fingernails digging into your palms, the night pressing in around you, heavier than usual.

You get home and drop your bag by the door, tossing your jacket on the back of a chair, and you’re halfway through reheating leftover noodles when your phone rings. The name that flashes on the screen makes your heart stop so abruptly you nearly drop the bowl.

You answer on the third ring, voice steady, “Hello?”

There’s a pause, then his voice, rich and familiar, fills the line. “Hey. Sorry, did I wake you up?”

You slide down into your kitchen chair, fighting the smile that tugs at your mouth. “No, you didn’t wake me. You forget where you were supposed to be tonight?”

He groans, low and sheepish, and you can hear the rustle of fabric, the background hum of a hotel HVAC unit. “Shit. I know, I know. I’m in Boston right now. Road game. I should’ve told you—”

You go quiet for a beat, embarrassment warming your cheeks as the reality crashes back in—of course he’s not just some guy, of course he has a job that takes him out of the city for days at a time. “Right. Hockey. Duh. That makes sense. I… forgot.” You close your eyes, letting your head tip back against the wall. “I thought maybe you’d just gotten bored.”

He laughs, a deep, teasing sound that makes your stomach do a small, traitorous flip. “Bored? You? Not possible. You miss me or something?”

You bristle, but it’s playful, the words tumbling out before you can stop yourself. “Don’t get cocky. Maybe I just missed the free coffee.”

He hums, the sound sending a little shiver down your spine. “Sure. That’s all it is, huh?”

You roll your eyes, even though he can’t see it. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

“Mmm. Too late,” he says, voice velvet-smooth, and you can hear the smile in it. “You’re the one who called me out. Didn’t think you even liked me.”

You let the silence stretch, then admit, quieter, “Maybe I don’t. You’ll have to find that out for yourself.”

He chuckles, then he’s silent for a long moment, then he lets out a slow breath. “I’ll be back in the city tomorrow morning. Early. If you want me to come over, I will.”

Your heart thuds, slow and certain. You swallow, suddenly unsure of your voice, but you make yourself ask, “You want to?”

“I do,” he says, and there’s no hesitation now, just soft certainty. “Tell me when and I’m there.”

You close your eyes, smile blooming, the weight in your chest lighter than it’s been in days. “I’ll text you my address.”

“I’ll bring coffee,” he promises, and the call lingers, neither of you willing to hang up first, the two of you suspended in the warmth of the line, the distance between you already shrinking, already feeling like nothing at all.

You sleep through your alarm.

This isn't unusual. You've never been a morning person, and after last night's gig your body has apparently decided to reclaim every hour of sleep you've stolen from it over the past week, dragging you down into a dense, dreamless dark that swallows your phone's tinny chirping whole. You're face-down in your pillow, one leg kicked free of the blankets, hair a disaster across your face and the sheets, wearing an old t shirt so washed-out soft the print has dissolved into a ghost of itself and a pair of shorts you don't remember putting on. The room is warm and dim, curtains drawn, and you are so deeply, thoroughly unconscious that when the doorbell rings, it enters your awareness not as a sound but as a distant annoyance, something happening in a different dimension that has nothing to do with you.

It rings again.

You groan into the pillow, mash your face deeper into it, and consider the possibility of ignoring it entirely. Then it rings a third time—insistent, patient, the kind of measured pressing that belongs to someone who is not going away—and you rip the blanket off with a grunt, shove yourself upright, and yell, voice cracked and raw with sleep, "It's open! Just come in!"

You assume it's Dana. She has a key. She's the only person who shows up unannounced on a Saturday morning, usually because she got a match on Hinge and needs a second opinion or because she's hungover and wants company while she eats breakfast. You hear the front door open and close, the shuffle of someone removing their shoes in the entryway, and then footsteps—heavier than Dana's, you register distantly, but your brain is still swimming up through layers of fog and doesn't flag it—and you drop back onto the mattress, pulling the pillow over your head.

The footsteps travel down your hallway. They reach your bedroom door, which is ajar, and they stop, and there's a pause, a beat of stillness that lasts just long enough for something to feel wrong, and then the door pushes open all the way and the footsteps resume, softer now, careful, and the edge of your mattress dips under a weight that is decidedly, absolutely, not Dana.

You freeze. Pillow still over your face. One eye cracking open beneath it.

"I didn't know what kind of coffee you like, so I just got you a double-double. That's okay, right? I can run back out if you want something else."

You rip the pillow off your head.

Joseph is now sitting on the edge of your bed, near your knees, one long leg stretched out and the other bent at the edge of the mattress, looking like he was assembled in a factory specifically for the purpose of sitting on beds in the early morning. He's in grey sweatpants and a dark hoodie, unzipped halfway over a white t-shirt, his hair still damp from what must have been a post-morning-flight shower, beanie gone, and he's holding a Tim Hortons cup in one enormous hand, angled toward you like an offering.

 His cheeks are flushed from the cold outside, pink across the bridge of his nose, and his mouth is curved in a smile he's clearly trying and failing to suppress—not his usual bright, reflexive grin but something smaller, more contained, almost private, like he's savoring something he doesn't want to startle away. His eyes move over your face, your wrecked hair, the bunched-up collar of your shirt, and the look in them is so openly, devastatingly fond that your stomach executes a full gymnastics routine.

"Oh my god," you say, yanking the blanket up to your chin. "Oh my god."

"Hi."

"I thought you were Dana."

"I'm getting that impression."

"What time is it?"

"Nine forty-five."

"You were supposed to—you said morning, I didn't think you meant—" You scrub both hands through your hair, which does nothing to improve the situation, and stare at him with what you can only imagine is the expression of a person who has been caught completely, irreversibly off-guard in their natural unguarded state. "I look horrible."

"You look—" He pauses, bites the inside of his cheek, and the smile wins, spreading slow and wide across his face, crinkling the corners of his eyes. "You look like you just woke up."

"Thank you for that observation, Joseph."

"I like it."

"You like people looking at you when you just woke up?"

"I like looking at you like this." He says it simply, without grandstanding, without a clever follow-up, and the directness of it silences you more effectively than anything clever could have. He lifts the coffee cup, waggling it gently. "Double-double. Still warm. You want it?"

You reach for it with one hand, the other still clutching the blanket to your chest like a shield, and he hands it over, his fingers brushing yours during the exchange, and the contact sends a jolt through you that has no business being as strong as it is at ten in the morning when you haven't even brushed your teeth. You take a sip. It's hot and sweet and exactly right, and you cradle it against your sternum while he sits there, patient and warm and solid, his hip against your shins through the blanket, looking around your bedroom with open curiosity.

"Your place is nice," he says, glancing at the posters on your wall, the overflow of cables and gear in the corner, the stack of setlists and notebooks on your nightstand. "Smaller than I pictured."

"I can't afford whatever you're picturing."

"Fair." He looks back at you, and his gaze is different now, softer, the teasing edge melted into something quieter and more intent. He shifts his weight, turning toward you more fully, and his hand comes up—slow, deliberate, giving you every chance to pull away—and his fingertips brush your temple, catching a strand of hair that's stuck to your cheek, peeling it back, tucking it behind your ear with a gentleness so careful it makes your throat tight. His fingers linger at your temple, tracing the line of your hairline back, and the pad of his thumb grazes the shell of your ear and the sensitive skin just below it, and you forget to breathe.

"You missed a spot," he murmurs, still smoothing hair back from your forehead, his touch featherlight. "Right here."

"That's just my face."

"Mm. Nice face."

"I haven't brushed my teeth."

"Don't care."

"You should care. I'm gross right now."

His laugh is low and quiet, more of a breath than a sound, and his hand drops from your hair to the mattress, landing near your hip, his fingers curling loosely against the sheet. He's close enough that you can smell him again, and the presence of his cologne is doing things to the part of your brain responsible for decision-making, things that are not helped by the way he's looking at you, all soft and amused and quietly thrilled, like he can't quite believe he's sitting on your bed on a Saturday morning and you're in a ratty band shirt with pillow creases on your cheek and he's happy about it, genuinely, radiantly happy, the kind of happy that lives in the set of his mouth and the ease of his shoulders and the way his body has settled onto your mattress like it was always supposed to be there.

"I can't believe you're in my bed right now," you say, and it comes out more honest than you intended.

"I can leave, if you want,"

"Don't you dare."

The words are out before you can stop them, stripped of irony, stripped of the cool distance you've been maintaining, and his eyebrows lift—not in surprise, exactly, but in recognition, like you've just confirmed something he already knew but wasn't pushing. His hand finds your knee through the blanket, palm flat and warm, fingers curving around the shape of it, and he squeezes once, light and grounding.

"I'm not going anywhere," he says. "Drink your coffee."

You melt into his touch, the lazy way his broad palm settles at your knee and his thumb draws little circles through the blanket. It’s like your body’s been waiting for this—his hand, the warmth of him at your side, the gentle brush of his fingers sweeping your hair back, and you can’t help the involuntary, contented sound you let out, a quiet, throaty hum that lives somewhere between a sigh and a purr. Your lashes flutter, and you lean into his hand before you can stop yourself, letting the comfort of it wash over you. He notices—you can tell by the way the corners of his mouth tug up, the way his thumb slows and lingers.

You open one eye, fixing him with a look that’s half sleepy, half sly. “You know, you should really give me a heads up when you’re going to be out of town. Just so I don’t get my hopes up, or wait around for you like an idiot.” Your tone has a little bite, but the edge is softened by the way you’re curled up under his attention, the blanket bunched around your waist, your coffee cradled in both hands.

He laughs, the sound low and easy, and he nudges your knee with his. “Alright. I’ll keep you posted. Better yet—maybe you should come see me play sometime. That way you’ll know exactly where I am.”

You snort into your cup, arching an eyebrow at him. “That’s a pretty big ask. Isn’t that, like… a girlfriend thing?”

He shrugs, still smiling, his hand slipping from your knee to your shin, fingers tracing back and forth in a way that sends warmth radiating up your leg. “I come to your shows all the time. I thought that was just a ‘liking someone’ thing.”

You roll your eyes, but you’re smiling too, your cheeks warming under the attention. “That’s different. My shows don’t involve a giant arena and tickets and… whatever else happens at hockey games.”

He leans in a little, voice softer now, his eyes never leaving yours. “It’s the same. Just you doing what you love, me doing what I love. I like watching you. You could try watching me, just once.”

You take another sip of the double-double, letting the warmth spread through your chest, and look at him over the rim. He's waiting, patient as always, his thumb still drawing those slow arcs along your shin, and you can feel the fight draining out of you because there was never really much of a fight to begin with. You wanted to go. You've wanted to go since you saw him on that bar TV, crouched in his crease with those bright eyes tracking the puck, you just didn't want to admit what it meant.

"Fine," you say. "One game. I'll come to one game."

His face does something complicated and wonderful, a flicker of surprise quickly smothered into composure, like he wasn't actually expecting you to say yes and is now trying very hard not to look as thrilled as he is. His hand stills on your leg, fingers pressing gently through the blanket, and he nods once, slow and deliberate. "Yeah?"

"Don't make it a thing."

"I'm not making it a thing." He's making the face of a man who just won something he's been quietly, patiently angling for, and the effort it's taking him to keep his expression neutral is visible in the tightness at the corners of his mouth and the way his jaw is working slightly, like he's physically biting back a grin.

You finish your coffee in two long swallows and set the cup on your nightstand, next to the pile of setlists and the tuner you keep meaning to replace. The warmth of it sits in your stomach, layered now with the warmth of him beside you, and you pull the blanket up to your chin again, burrowing deeper into the mattress with the boneless contentment of someone who has no intention of moving for the next several hours.

He watches you do this. Lets a beat pass. Then his hand leaves your leg and finds the edge of the blanket, tugging it down an inch. "Okay, sleepyhead. Get up."

"No."

"You've been asleep for—I'm assuming—nine hours."

"Respectfully, I don't care. I'm warm and you're here and the bed is doing everything I need it to do right now."

"Come on." He tugs the blanket again, firmer this time, and when you grab it and hold fast he laughs under his breath and stands up from the mattress, the absence of his weight and warmth registering immediately against your side like a small loss. He stretches, arms above his head, his hoodie riding up to expose a strip of stomach that you absolutely do not look at, and then he extends his hand down to you, palm open. "Let's go on a walk."

You think about fighting back again, but you're already sitting up, legs swinging toward the floor, because the thing about Joseph is that his suggestions never feel like demands, never carry that pressuring edge that makes you want to dig your heels in out of spite. He just offers, plainly, like here's a thing we could do, and the choice is always yours, and somehow that makes you want to say yes more than any persuasive argument could.

You take his hand. His fingers close around yours and he pulls you to your feet with an ease that reminds you, absurdly, of how little physical effort things take him—he's so strong, so solidly built, that hauling you upright is probably the equivalent of lifting a coffee cup—and you stand in front of him in your ratty shirt and your shorts and your disaster hair, and he looks down at you with that quiet, open fondness, and his thumb strokes across your knuckle once before letting go.

You go to your first game and you understand nothing.

The arena is louder than any venue you've ever played, a full-throated roar that vibrates in your molars and makes your chest rattle, and the pace of the sport is bewildering—players cycling in patterns you can't decode, whistles blowing for reasons you can't parse, the puck disappearing into scrums of bodies and then shooting out the other side like a pinball. You spend the first period squinting at the jumbotron and trying to figure out which one is him, the goalies looking the same in their masks and pads, and then the second period starts and he makes a save—glove hand, quick and clean, the puck disappearing into his mitt with a soft thud—and the crowd surges to its feet and the jumbotron flashes his name and you feel something crack open in your chest, pride, you think, or something close to it, something warm and startled, and you clap your hands over your head and yell with everyone else even though you still don't understand icing.

You go to a second game. A third. By the fourth you can identify a forecheck and a breakout and you know what a butterfly save is, and you've started to notice the things about his play that feel like him—the patience, the economy of movement, the way he reads the play with a stillness that reminds you of the way he listens, fully and without fidgeting, tracking the conversation with his whole body. He's quiet in the crease. Controlled. Even when the puck takes a weird bounce or a forward crashes the net, he resets with a steadiness that makes your stomach flip because you recognize it, you've seen it before on a dark sidewalk when his voice stayed level and his hands stayed open and he asked someone to walk away three times before he made them.

After the third game, you end up in the back of his car.

It's not planned. It's never planned with him. He's driving you home from the arena, his hand on your knee at a red light, and you lean over the center console and kiss him for the first time—really kiss him, not the careful goodbye press of lips at a train station but a real one, your hand fisting in the collar of his jacket, your mouth opening against his—and he makes a sound against your lips that detonates something low in your belly, and he pulls the car into a dark corner of a parking structure near the waterfront and kills the engine and climbs into the backseat with you in a tangle of long limbs and urgency.

His hands are everywhere. Those enormous, careful, goalie hands, spanning your waist, cupping your jaw, sliding under the hem of your shirt with a slowness that's almost unbearable, his fingertips tracing the line of your ribs like he's memorizing the architecture of you. You pull him down over you on the backseat and his weight settles between your thighs and the sheer size of him, the density and heat and breadth of his body pressing you into the leather, pulls a sound out of your throat that you don't recognize. He kisses your neck, slow and open-mouthed, and his hand slides down your stomach, fingers dipping beneath the waistband of your pants, and you arch into his palm because you want it, you want his hands on you, and when his fingers find you, he groans against your mouth, low and rough, and the vibration of it travels through your lips and into your teeth.

He takes his time, touches you like he has all the time in the world, like there's nowhere else he needs to be, like the feeling of you against his fingers is something he wants to study and learn and get right. He finds a rhythm—slow, deliberate, the pad of his middle finger tracing circles that make your hips buck—and he watches your face, reads you the way he reads the ice, adjusting pressure and pace based on the sounds you make, the way your breath catches, the way your fingernails dig into his shoulders through his shirt. When he slides two fingers inside you, his thumb still working that devastating circle, your back arches off the seat and you say his name in a voice you've never heard come out of your own mouth, broken and raw and needing, and he says "I've got you, I've got you" against your jaw, and he does, he does, and you come apart underneath him in the back of a parked car in a concrete structure near the lake with one hand fisted in his hair and the other braced against the fogged-up window.

It's the best you've ever had, and you hate that it's the best you've ever had.

You keep seeing him, keep sleeping with him—in his car, in your apartment, once in his condo on a bed with a duvet so soft you almost cried—and you keep telling yourself it's casual, that you're not his girlfriend, that you're just two people who like each other's company and happen to have incredible physical chemistry and that's it, that's all it is, a nice arrangement between two adults who are busy and independent and definitely not falling for each other. You say this to yourself firmly. You say this to yourself while making him dinner at your apartment because he mentioned he hadn't eaten properly in three days. You say this to yourself while wearing his hoodie to band practice because it smells like him and you couldn't sleep without it. You say this to yourself while watching him on TV from your couch with your knees pulled up and your lower lip between your teeth, tracking his every movement in the crease with an intensity you've never applied to any sport in your life.

Because that's happening now. You watch hockey. Not just his games—all of it, or at least enough of it that you start to recognize other players, start to understand the standings, start to have opinions about power play formations that you keep to yourself because the moment you voice them out loud you will have to accept what you've become. You watch at home, alone, your phone in your hand, texting him things like nice glove save in the second and watching the three dots appear as he types back from whatever locker room or team plane or hotel he's in, and you tell yourself this is normal behavior for someone who is definitely, categorically, not in a relationship.

He doesn't push. That's the worst part, the thing that makes it so hard to maintain your distance—he never pushes, never asks for more than you're giving, never applies pressure or guilt or the quiet manipulation of someone trying to lock you down. He just keeps showing up. Keeps being warm and steady and present, keeps touching you like you're something worth being careful with, keeps watching your sets from the back of the room with that quiet intensity that makes you play harder, sing louder, as if the sound could reach him specifically, as if every note is a sentence in a conversation only the two of you are having.

And then one night, sitting on the train home from your office, the city sliding past the window in streaks of grey and early dark, a melody lands in your head. Not the usual kind—not the angular, driving riffs you write for the band, not the fast punk-influenced bursts of energy that make up most of your catalog. Something slower. Something that breathes. A chord progression in a minor key that unfolds like someone opening a door they've been standing in front of for a long time, and a lyric fragments itself across your mind in pieces, not words yet but feelings, shapes—the warmth of a hand on your knee in a dark car, the sound of your own name in a voice gone rough with want, the quiet certainty of someone who keeps showing up without asking for anything, the terrifying tenderness of being known by someone you haven't given yourself permission to need.

You pull out your phone and open the voice memos app and hum the melody into it, low and rough, your voice barely above a murmur against the rattle of the train, and an older woman across the aisle glances at you and you don't care, because the song is already forming, already building itself in the space behind your sternum where you keep the things that matter too much to say out loud. It's moody and deep and aching in a way you haven't written before, more exposed than anything in your catalog, and you know—even as you hum it, even as the chords arrange themselves in your head—that this one is going to be hard to sing, because it's about him, all of it, every note, and you haven't even told him what he is to you yet.

You save the voice memo. You title it nothing. You put your phone away and watch the city go dark through the window, and the melody stays with you, lodged behind your ribs like a second heartbeat, patient and steady and impossible to ignore.

You text him on a Tuesday. The show is a Saturday, a slightly bigger venue than usual, a room you've been trying to get booked into for over a year, and the fact that they finally said yes means this matters, this is a step, and you want him there for it. You keep the text casual because that's still the game you're playing, even though the rules have been blurring for weeks.

Playing on Saturday. 9pm. Bring the boys if you want, make a night of it.

His reply comes fast. Wouldn't miss it. I'll round them up.

Saturday arrives cold and clear, the kind of Toronto evening where the sky goes violet over the rooftops and the streetlights flicker on early and every breath comes out visible and sharp. You get to the venue at seven-thirty because you need time—the stage is small but elevated, the room is long and narrow, the acoustics are different from anywhere else you play, and you want to feel out the space before it fills with bodies. Rusty is already inside, assembling his kit, and Kai is coiling a cable near the monitors while Dana tunes in the corner, her foot tapping an idle rhythm against the stage floor.

You're crouched over your pedalboard, adjusting the trim on your delay with a small screwdriver you keep in your gig bag, when you feel him before you see him. A shift in the air, a warmth at your back, and then a hand—large, warm, steady—settling on the small of your back, and you know it's him the way you know a key change, instant and physical, your whole body recalibrating around the point of contact.

"Hey," he says, close, his voice pitched low under the ambient noise of the room filling up around you.

You straighten up and turn, and he's right there, close enough that you have to tip your chin up, and he's smiling—not the big public smile but the private one, the quiet one, the one that starts at his mouth and ends somewhere in his eyes and makes your ribs feel too small. Behind him, loitering near the bar with varying degrees of subtlety, is a small crowd of enormous men. 

"They all came," you say, lifting your eyebrows.

"I told them it was a good show. They wanted to see." His hand is still on your back, his palm warm through the thin fabric of your top, and his thumb traces a small arc against the ridge of your spine, absent and grounding. "You nervous?"

"No."

"Really? You look nervous."

"Shut up." But you're smiling, and he catches it, and his hand presses a fraction firmer against your back, pulling you a half-step closer, not a hug, just a drawing-in, a gravitational tug that your body follows without consulting your brain. He ducks his head, bringing his mouth near your temple, and his breath is warm against your hair when he speaks.

"You're going to kill it. You always kill it. This room is going to love you."

"You're biased, though…"

"Incredibly." His lips brush your cheek—the corner of your mouth, almost, but not quite, landing instead on the high plane of your cheekbone, warm and soft and lingering for a beat longer than friendly. Your eyes close. His hand stays on your back. The noise of the bar—the laughter, the clinking glasses, Matthew saying something loud to Auston about the setlist written on the chalkboard near the door—fades to a dull hum at the edges of your awareness, and for a second it's just this, the pressure of his mouth on your skin, the steadiness of his hand, the smell of him, clean and warm, and the feeling that lives in your chest when he's close, the one you've been calling something else for weeks because calling it what it is would mean admitting you were wrong about what this is.

He pulls back, gives you one more look, steady and warm and certain, and squeezes your hip once before letting go. "Go do your thing."

You watch him walk toward his friends, greeting Tony with a shoulder bump, nodding at the others, settling into the group with the easy comfort of someone who belongs exactly where he is. Matthew says something to him and he responds with a shake of his head and a shove that the younger man absorbs with a grin, and then they're all facing the bar, drinks in hand, a wall of broad shoulders and NHL paychecks ordering round after round, and you turn back toward the stage.

You stand there for a moment. Your hand drifts up to your cheekbone, where the ghost of his mouth still lingers, warm as a fingerprint. Then you drop it, square your shoulders, and climb the two steps to the stage.

"Hey," you say, and your voice sounds strange to your own ears, tighter than usual, thrumming with something you haven't named yet. Rusty looks up from his cymbal stand. Dana glances over mid-tuning. Kai is already plugged in, his bass humming a low idle note through the monitor. "I want to change the set."

Rusty's eyebrows lift. "Change it how?"

"Drop something from the fourth slot. Move everything up. And—" You pause, your heart hammering against your sternum, because this is the part where it becomes real, where the melody you hummed on a train weeks ago and refined in your bedroom and practiced with the band exactly twice becomes something you perform in front of a room full of people, including a man who doesn't know it's about him. "Remember that new one we've been working on? The slow one."

Dana straightens. "The slower one?"

"Yeah."

"You want to play it here? Tonight?" Rusty's voice is careful, measured, the voice of a man who knows you well enough to hear what you're not saying. "We've only run it twice."

"I know. But it's ready. I can feel it." You look at each of them—Dana with her hand still on her tuning pegs, Kai with his bass silent against his hip, Rusty behind his kit, all of them watching you with the focused attention of people who've played with you long enough to recognize the specific certainty in your voice. "I want to close with it."

Rusty holds your gaze for a long beat. Then he nods, once, and reaches behind him to rearrange his setlist tape on the floor drum. Dana plugs the new chord progression into her memory and starts quietly fingering the opening, her head tilted, listening to the shape of it in the room. Kai finds the root note on his E string and lets it ring.

"Okay," Rusty says. "Let's do it."

When the set winds toward its close, the crowd thick with heat and anticipation, you’re running on adrenaline, every nerve strung tight as wire. Your fingers ache from gripping the neck of your guitar, your voice is a little raw from pushing it over the wall of sound, but your head is clear—crystal, sharp, a trembling line of focus that holds you upright at the mic. The band falls quiet behind you, last song written in marker at the bottom of your setlist, and you let the silence settle over the room. 

You find him instantly: Joseph, right where he said he’d be, half-shadowed by the low light at the back, leaning forward on the edge of his seat, surrounded by teammates who seem to shrink beside him, even in a crowd of giants. He doesn’t notice anyone else. He’s locked onto you, blue eyes steady and open, his lips parted like he’s about to say something but can’t, not with the music about to start.

You strum the first chord, low and slow, the sound blooming through the speakers and spilling into the crowd, and you can feel the room shift, the attention settling on you in a way that feels different from every other show you’ve played. Your band falls in behind you, Rusty’s brushes soft on the snare, Dana’s guitar weaving a counter-melody, Kai’s bass a heartbeat under it all. The song is darker, deeper, more vulnerable than anything else you’ve put out in the world, and you feel every word in your chest, every line scraped out of the rawest part of you.

You sing, and you stare at him—really stare, every note, every lyric an arrow aimed straight at his heart. He meets your gaze, not flinching, not looking away. There’s a gravity in the space between you, as if the rest of the world has faded to black and you’re performing only for him, only for this one pair of eyes that have watched you with patient devotion, match after match, night after night. Every verse is a confession you never spoke aloud, every chorus a plea you’re only just admitting to yourself. 

Your voice is low, husky, breaking at the edges, and the lyrics spill out—about wanting, about needing, about the ache of being seen and the terror of letting yourself be known. You pour it all into the song: the way he holds you in the morning, the way his hands make you come apart, the way you count the days he’s on the road and pretend you aren’t. You let yourself feel everything, let it burn through you, and you don’t blink, don’t break the connection, singing directly to him like there’s no one else in the room.

You see it in his face—something unguarded, something bare. He leans forward, elbows on his knees, fingers threaded together, jaw tight, and you realize that you’re both holding your breath, both suspended in this impossible moment, the band and the audience and the clatter of glasses at the bar all falling away, the only thing left the thread running between you.

You reach the final verse, and your voice drops to a whisper, almost lost under the instruments, and it’s just you and him and the truth you’ve been writing in your bones for months: that you’ve never felt this way, that you don’t believe anyone else could feel this way about him besides you, that the world could be on fire and you’d still find him in the smoke, that the whole of you is lit up with wanting, aching, needing him, and that you don’t know what to do about it except sing.

When the last note dies, you let the silence stretch, your eyes on his, your chest heaving, pulse thrumming wild under your skin. The crowd erupts—applause, cheers, whistles—but it all feels far away, muffled by the pounding of your heart and the weight of his gaze. He’s still staring, stunned, a slow smile curling at his lips, and you know—without words, without anything else—that he heard every single thing you meant.

You come offstage shaking, breath shallow and chest tight, the blood in your veins still singing with every note of that song. The crowd’s noise is a wild, hungry thing in your ears, but you barely register applause or the blur of faces—just the echo of every word you sang, the ache in your hands from gripping your guitar, the way your knees threaten to give with every step. Dana is at the mic, laughing, thanking the crowd, promising to see them next time, her voice bright and sure where yours would have cracked. You slip away through the back, skirting the edge of the green room, needing space, needing quiet, your head full of static and your heart hammering so loud you swear the whole city can hear it.

You’re moving on some half-conscious instinct—just get away, just breathe, just don’t fall apart in front of everyone—when a familiar warmth finds you. A hand, broad and steady, lands on the small of your back, pulling you out of your daze. You freeze, then lean into the touch without thinking, let it anchor you. His fingers press through the fabric of your shirt, grounding, and then he’s there, right behind you, so close you can feel his breath stir your hair.

“Baby,” he says, voice low and soft, one word that melts everything inside you. “Hey. I’ve got you.”

You turn, slow, your body still humming with adrenaline, and Joseph’s smiling at you—smiling like you just handed him a secret he’s been waiting for, like you just gave him the world. He’s flushed from the crowd and the noise, his hair a little mussed, his eyes shining, and he doesn’t let go, just keeps his hand at your back, thumb rubbing slow circles, coaxing you to stay present. You realize you’re trembling, that your legs really might give, and you clutch his forearm to steady yourself.

He takes it all in, doesn’t rush you, just keeps you close, his free hand coming up to brush your cheek, thumb gentle at your jaw as he tilts your face toward his. “You okay?” he asks, smile still lingering. “That was… that was incredible.”

You laugh, shaky, the sound catching and breaking, and you bite your lip to keep from spilling everything at once. Still, the truth comes out in a rush, voice ragged, eyes stinging. “I don’t know what’s happening to me. I meant all of it, every word, I just—” You swallow hard, searching his face for any sign that you’ve gone too far, that you’ve exposed too much. “I can’t breathe when you’re not there. I feel like I’m coming apart when I see you in the crowd. I wrote that song because I didn’t have another way to say it. You make me feel more than I thought I could. I think I’m—” The word teeters on your tongue, just out of reach, too soon and too raw. “—falling in love with you.”

He doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t look surprised, not really. That smile—the one that always comes on slow, that starts at his mouth and then glows through the rest of his face—just deepens, soft and sure, as if he’s only been waiting for you to catch up. He cups your jaw with his other hand, cradling your face like you’re something precious, and leans in, his forehead brushing yours. His breath is warm and steady, and when he speaks, his voice is lower, softer, threaded with a kind of wonder that makes your knees threaten to buckle all over again.

“I know,” he says, and it isn’t smug, it isn’t teasing, it’s just the truth—quiet and certain, like a secret kept safe until you were ready to hear it. “I know. I feel it, too. I’ve felt it since the first time I saw you.” His thumb smooths across your cheekbone, gentle, and you can hear the smile in his words. “You wreck me, you know that? I watch you up there and I think, ‘That’s mine. I get to love her.’ And it’s wild. It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

You let out a shaky laugh, relief and disbelief mingling in your chest. The tension drains from your shoulders, and you move closer, pressing your brow to his, your hands finding his waist, gripping his shirt like you need to anchor yourself to the world. “Oh my god. I thought I was insane.”

He grins, eyes closed, letting out a low, contented sigh as he wraps both arms around you, pulling you in until there’s not a hair of space left between your bodies. He kisses your cheek, then the corner of your mouth, then your jaw, slow and careful, like he never wants to stop. “Come home with me,” he murmurs, voice intimate and playful against your skin. “Let me thank you properly. Let me take care of my beautiful, brilliant, unbelievably sexy girlfriend tonight. Please.”

Your heart stutters at the word—girlfriend—because it’s the first time he’s said it out loud, and somehow it feels bigger and more right than anything else. You nod, laughter caught in your throat, and he beams, bright and easy, as if the whole world has just fallen into place.

You looked over at Macklin, who was slumped forward, his head seemingly already feeling heavy. The sight made you smile, you looked back at Will and pointed at Mack. The older boy burst into laughter at the sight of his boyfriend looking like he had no control over his own head.

Mack's head snapped up at the sound of both of you laughing, "what?" He was pouting now, looking between you guys, "what's so funny?"

"You," Will announced, pointing at him.

You noticed the way Mack's red eyes started tearing up, the pout on his lips intensifying.

"Oh, baby," you held your arms open, "come here, sweetie."

He crawled over into your arms, sniffling and tucking himself against you.

"Don't be a baby, Macklin," Will scolded, still laughing.

The words made Mack whimper and hide his face in your neck.

"Hey," you turned to the other boy, your voice firm, "be nice."

Will shrunk under your stern command, an unusually uncertain look on his face, "o-okay. I'm sorry," he whispered, his eyes glossy and half lidded now.

"Good boy," you praised, watching his face closely to see his reaction.

You were surprised by the little nod he gave, the way he allowed you to assert that dominance over him. Will was usually the most dominant one in this relationship, he usually took charge over both you and Macklin. So it was new for you to now be in charge of both of the boys, but you could see the way the weed was affecting both of them. Your own head felt a little fuzzy now, but you were used to this feeling, you loved being at this state of your high.

"Mommy," Mack's whisper caught you by surprise, you'd almost forgotten he was even there, and that name was something he'd only called you a select few times in the past.

"Yeah, baby?" you asked.

"'M hungry," he whined, gripping at your shirt.

You smiled, of course he would get the munchies, "what do you wanna eat?" He shrugged, so you looked over to the other boy, "are you hungry?"

Will shrugged too, "Mack, baby, do you want something sweet?" he asked, his voice slower than usual, "I think there's still cookies from when we baked the other day."

You watched him as he spoke, surprised by the way he was still taking on a caring role towards Mack despite not acting that way towards you right now.

Macklin looked at Will with wide eyes, "cookies?"

Will nodded, "I think so."

"Go see if there are some left, baby," at your words, Will stood up and shuffled into the kitchen. 

You spent the next few minutes playing with Mack's hair, listening to his steady breathing. When Will came back, he was holding a plate of cookies and a glass of milk, which he set on the coffee table.

"Here, Mackie," he said softly, then turned to you, "I could only carry one glass of milk, do you want one too, mommy?"

The name made you freeze completely, Will had never called you that. You almost questioned him, asked where this side of him suddenly came from, but you didn't want to upset him or make him feel like he wasn't allowed to call you that. So you kept a soft smile on your face and responded to him.

"Yes please, baby."

He smiled at you then turned back to the kitchen. Mack watched him walk away, then looked back up at you.

"He called you mommy," he whispered like it was a secret. 

"Mhm," you nodded.

"He's allowed to do that?" Mack's voice was so soft and genuinely curious it made you want to melt. 

"Of course he is. You call me that sometimes, why can't Will?"

"I guess it's okay," a smile grew on his face, "it's just a little silly," and suddenly he was in a fit of giggles.

You laughed too, though not quite as hard as Macklin did, "it's not silly, it's just different," you told him through your laughs. You noticed Will coming back into the room, so you pushed Mack to sit up, "don't laugh at him. He brought you cookies, you should be saying thank you."

"Here, mommy," Will set one glass of milk in front of you then sat down and put his own in front of him.

"Thank you, baby," you kissed his forehead, scooting closer to the table. 

"Thank you..." Mack giggled, "daddy."

 "You're welcome."

For the next few minutes, the three of you just sat together and ate your milk and cookies. Both of the boys seemed to lean against you more and more with each passing second until you had a big hockey player completely pressed to each side of you. You loved this, your two strong hockey player boyfriends looking so small and gentle.

When the cookies and milk were gone, you shifted, starting to pick things up off of the table, but Will sat up quickly and took everything from your hands, "I got it."

You let him take it from you, watching as he took it all to the kitchen. Once he was out of sight, you looked back down at Mack who seemed to have been watching Will go too.

"How you feeling, baby?" you asked, pushing his hair back from his forehead so you could get a good look at his heavy lidded eyes that were very pretty when they were so red and glossy. 

"He's so pretty," he whispered to you, a seemingly uncontrollable smile spread on his face.

You laughed softly, "you think Will's pretty?"

He nodded.

"Me too," you whispered back as if it was a secret. 

Macklin giggled, "I wanna kiss him."

You smiled at him, "you can kiss him," you assured him, "I think he'd really like that."

"Really?" Mack's eyes lit up, there seemed to be genuine wonder in them, you would think he didn't get to kiss Will all the time. 

"Yeah, baby," you nodded, "when he comes back."

You watched him as he started giggling and nuzzling into your chest. Your fingers ran through his hair until you heard Will's footsteps approaching. When you looked over at him, you noticed the way he was swaying slightly as he walked.

He sat back down next to you, his head resting on your shoulder and his hands immediately moving to the fluffy rug beneath you, seemingly entranced by it. You smiled, then looked back at the younger boy, only to find him staring at Will with the same look of amazement that Will had while looking at the rug. The sight made you giggle and you poked Mack in the side, trying to quietly remind him of what he said he wanted to do. 

He just looked up at you, his eyes suddenly wide and nervous.

"Go ahead," you encouraged him quietly.

There was a moment of hesitation before he took a deep breath and spoke, "Will?"

His head snapped up to look at him, "yeah, Mackie?"

"Um, can I kiss you?" he asked with a blush.

Will smiled and nodded, "c'mere."

Macklin crawled across you and settled into Will's lap, who wrapped his arms around his waist and leaned in to kiss the blushing boy. You watched happily, your head feeling even fuzzier now. Your eyes focused on where their lips connected, then where Will's hands gripped Mack's waist, and where Mack's hips squirmed in Will's lap. You felt a familiar heat spreading through you and you shifted closer to them, reaching out to run your fingers through the older boy's curls. 

He whined into the kiss before pulling back to look at you, "mommy," he whispered, which made Mack's head turn toward you too.

"My good boys," you smiled dreamily. 

They both blushed at the praise, watching your face as if awaiting your next words. Will was leaning into your touch like an animal being pet, but his hands were firm and steadying on Macklin's waist. Mack was just leaning into his chest, letting himself be held, which was a familiar sight. 

"Is he making you feel good, baby?" you asked.

Mack nodded in response, his hand instinctively gripping onto Will's shirt as if he was a toy that he was afraid you were going to take away from him. 

You just sat there, looking between them for a moment, considering the situation. You weren't used to being in charge of both of them. Sure, Macklin was always more submissive, but Will was usually dominant with both of you, allowing you to just follow his instructions most of the time. Now, it seemed that you were expected to be giving the instructions. 

"Do you wanna make him feel good too?"

Mack's response was another nod, this one completely frantic and enthusiastic. 

"C'mon," you stood up, taking the younger boy's hand to help him stand.

He immediately fell into you, wrapping his arms around your waist. With a jerk of your head, you motioned for Will to stand too, letting him follow behind as you guided Macklin to the bedroom. 

In the bedroom, you pointed Will toward the bed, "sit down."  

He did as you said and sat on the edge of the bed.

"Okay, baby," you rubbed Mack's back, "I want you to get on your knees," you nudged him toward where the other boy was sitting. 

Will smiled as Mack approached him and sunk to his knees between his legs. Once Mack was settled, he looked back at you for instruction.

"Pull his pants down, baby, take his dick out."

With just a slight hesitation, he slipped his fingers into Will's waistband and pulled his sweats and boxers down, revealing his already hard dick.

"Now grab it," you instructed him, "hold him at the base and take the tip into your mouth."

Once again, he did exactly as you said, sucking happily on the head of Will's cock. 

"Good," you said after a few seconds, "start moving your head, take more of him," you all knew that Macklin already knew how to suck dick, you didn't need to teach him, but you told him what to do anyway. 

Will groaned, his hand moving to Mack's hair.

"Is he making you feel good?" you asked Will, moving closer to them. 

He nodded in response, another groan falling from his lips.

"Tell him," you ordered, "let him know how good he's doing."

He grunted and gripped Macklin's hair tighter, "good boy," his voice wass strained and breathless, "feels good, baby."

You could see the way Mack reacted to the praise, his glossy eyes staring up at Will as he increased his efforts.

"Yeah, that's it," you sank to the floor behind him, your hands slipping under his shirt to run over his abdomen and chest while you started kissing his neck. You could hear him whining around Will's length, which made the older boy grunt.

"So good, babe," his thumb brushed Mack's cheek.

You watched Will closely, and as soon as it looked like he was getting close to the edge, you tapped Macklin's jaw, "that's enough, baby."

"No," Will whined at the loss, "keep going, baby," he tried to tell Mack, "mommy, please."

You pressed your hand to Mack's chest, pulling him back against you so he knew he didn't need to listen to Will.

"It's okay, baby," you kissed his temple, "you did a good job," you leaned forward, across Mack, so you could reach Will's dick. You pressed a kiss to his tip and looked up at him through heavy eyes, "we're not done." Then you turned your attention back to the boy in your arms, "let's get your clothes off."

He stood up with you and let you strip him until he was naked while Will sat on the bed and watched, his eyes taking in every newly exposed inch of skin on his body.

"Go sit against the headboard," you told the younger boy.

He scrambled onto the bed and settled against the headboard, his hands immediately gripping the sheets under him to stop himself from touching himself without permission. 

You turned your attention to Will, "c'mere."

Once he was in front of you, you took his clothes off too, and just like Will had watched Mack, Mack was now watching Will. You noticed the way Mack's head had slumped back against the headboard, and suddenly he was giggling. Will's head whipped around to look at him.

"What's he laughing at?"

"He's just giggly cause he's high," you assured him.

"Oh," a second passed and then Will was giggling too, his weight now leaning completely against you, your body the only thing keeping him from falling over. 

"Okay, silly boys," you smiled, guiding Will over to the bed where he sat down next to the other boy, "should I take my clothes off or would you two rather watch a funny movie and go to sleep?"

They both stopped giggling then and looked up at you with hopeful eyes.

"Take yours off too, please," Will said.

"Want you, mommy," Mack whined.

You smiled and quickly undressed yourself. The boys watched as you got naked and climbed onto the bed in front of them. You looked between them, considering your options. Finally, you decided on straddling Will's lap.

You sank down onto his dick and Mack watched with admiring, hopeful eyes. Will whined and grabbed onto your waist, his head falling back against the headboard. 

Once you were fully seated, you reached over and took Macklin's dick into your hand, jerking him off at the same pace you used to start bouncing on Will's length. It was music to your ears the way both of your boyfriends were moaning for you.

You kept up with the same rhythm for a while, until Will's moans got higher pitched, his grip on you tightening.

"You gonna cum for me, baby?" you asked.

He nodded, "please, mommy."

You let go of your hold on Mack so you could put both your hands on Will's chest and brace yourself as your movements sped up. 

"Go ahead, honey," you encouraged him, "cum for me."

With a loud moan, Will came, pumping his cum inside of you until his body went slack. He laid there panting, a soft whine slipping from his lips when you pulled off of him. 

Mack was still watching you with half lidded eyes, which lit up with excitement as you moved into his lap.

"Hi, baby," you smiled, a little giggle escaping you.  

"Hi, mommy," he responded with a blush.

His cock was hard and leaking against his abs, so without much pretense, you lined him up with your entrance and sank down onto his length. Will turned his body toward the two of you so he was laying on his side right next to Mack. As you set a steady rhythm moving up and down on Macklin's dick, Will kept a hand on your hip, gently caressing your skin. At the same time, he leaned over and started kissing the younger boy's neck, pulling cute little whimpers from him.

"You feeling good, baby?" you asked Mack, who now had one hand fisted in the sheets and one gripping Will's shoulder.

He nodded frantically, and you could tell he was trying to get out a verbal response, but it came out as another high pitched whine.

"Good boy," Will praised him as he kissed along his collarbone, "let mommy make you feel good."

“Y-yes, daddy,” he responded between moans.

It wasn't long before you felt Mack's cock twitching inside you and you knew he would cum soon. Will seemed to notice too, because his hand on your hip moved down until his thumb came in contact with your clit. 

"Oh," you moaned, bracing yourself against Mack's chest. 

"Mommy," Macklin whined, the sight of you feeling so much pleasure only spurring his own pleasure on, "please."

You nodded, unable to form words, trying to focus on keeping your movements steady. Will kept a steady pressure on your clit, rubbing small, firm circles onto the sensitive bundle of nerves. His other hand laced through Mack's hair as he encouraged the boy.

"You gonna cum for us, baby?" he asked him.

The sound of Will's deep voice seemed to be all Mack needed. He moaned loudly and spilled into you, his cum adding to the mess Will had already made inside you.

The feeling of Mack pulsing inside you combined with Will's persistent touch on your clit pushed you over the edge next. You fell forward onto Mack's chest, completely breathless as the pleasure washed over you in waves. 

It was a long time after that before any of you spoke. But once you did, it didn't take much time at all for the boys to find their places laying on your chest. You pressed kisses to both of their foreheads, praising them quietly until they drifted off to sleep.

The consensus among the Penguins was that they loved you.

How could they not? You’re an angel on earth, who somehow managed to tame their captain. It’s amazing, actually, how you’ve clearly lowered the cortisol of a man who can give himself a nervous breakdown in two seconds flat. 

You’ll come into the locker room, bearing cookies, and the whole room’s attitude will change. You’re just so shy, and you have this stupidly soft voice that makes Sid’s big, tough teammates feel dumb for being anything but soft as well, around you. 

It's safe to say that you're very loved in that locker room. You could not tell those boys that Sid’s girl did a thing wrong. This is why the locker room fell into a total, shocked silence on a random night after a win.

The mood is high, but Sid is fucking exhausted. All he wants to do is go home to you and sleep. The conversation he’s currently having with a rookie is secondary in his mind to putting on his street clothes. The moment he pulls the compression shirt off his shoulders, the rookie, seemingly shocked, looks away nervously. Sid blinks at him for maybe a second before the entire locker room goes quiet.

“Holy shit, Sid! Did you lose fight to bobcat?!” Geno’s booming voice breaks the silence. Turning towards him, Tanger lets out a low whistle. 

“Jesus Christ, Sidney Crosby!” “What? What are you all talking about?” “Your back! You’ve been mauled!”

Sid’s brows furrow before he realizes. Across his broad, muscular back are multiple rows of deep, angry scratch marks that expand from his collar down the expanse of his spine. He helplessly touches his back from the front of his neck, and looks around at the dozen men looking at him.

“Oh.”

He sighs, rubbing his forehead and trying very hard to deflect. To stop them from connecting dots.

“...Shut up,” he grumbles, quickly putting his shirt on to hide the marks that you so lovingly placed on him last night. 

“Wait…” somebody says very quietly, of which Tanger picks up the slack. 

“Stop! That was that… the… Sid!? That was that girl!?” 

“No. No! With the lemon bars and the cookies!?” Geno yells, and the tips of Sid’s ears are bright red at this point. He is violently packing up to go home. 

“She climbed you like tree, Sidney! How long are her nails?!” “Alright, alright. Jesus.” 

He’s looking up, ready to never look any of them in the eyes again, and finds his team all staring at him. Again. 

“What? She’s shy around you guys. Not me.” 

The entire room erupts, and Sid’s fighting back a stupid, smug smile after he says it, and finally leaves.

He opens the door to his house, greeted by your dog, and cannot refrain from setting his stuff down on the floor to say hi to her. He’s cooing at her when you get to the door. 

“Hi, Sid,” you start, smiling ear-to-ear. “How was- oh!”

Immediately, in the foyer, he takes his shirt off—not even in a heated way (which has happened), just… taking it off.

He stares at you. You stare at him. “Uh… Hello?” Sid huffs, before turning around, displaying the scratches his entire team saw. “Oh, wow,” you say softly, reaching forward to trace the scratches.

Sid looks over his shoulder, smiling smugly at her. “You were hungry last night, huh, baby?” You giggle, pushing yourself up on your tiptoes to kiss the side of the cheek you can reach. “Always. Your back is just so… big.” Sid smiles, turning around to face you, instinctively wrapping both arms around your waist. “Oh yeah?”

“Yes. It’s very distracting,” you observe, running your hands all over his bare chest. 

The expression Sid gave you can only be described as dopey. “Can I kiss you?” He asks. He always asks. It melts you every time. “Yes, Sidney, you can.”

Zach knew something was wrong the second he unzipped his suitcase.

At first, he thought maybe he was just tired. It had been a long travel day — early flight, delayed connection, too many people crowding baggage claim, and a team staff member who had been rushing everyone toward the bus like the airport itself was on fire. Zach had barely looked at his luggage before it had been loaded with the rest of the bags.

Black hard-shell suitcase, silver zipper, tiny scratch near the handle, same as his or, apparently, not his.

Because the second he opened it in his hotel room, instead of finding neatly folded team clothes, extra shoes, and the hoodie he’d thrown in last minute, he was staring at a soft cream sweater, a makeup bag, a book with a bent corner, and something pink and silky that made him immediately slam the suitcase shut like it had burned him “Oh my god,” he muttered.

From the other bed, Kirby looked up. “What?” Zach stared at the suitcase, then at the luggage tag, then back at the suitcase.

His stomach dropped, because hanging from the handle was not his tag, it was yours. Your name, your phone number and beneath it, your hometown.

The same one he had grown up in, for a second, Zach just stood there like an idiot, because there was no way, no actual way.

He hadn’t seen you in years. Not properly, at least. There had been the occasional Instagram story, the odd mutual friend reposting something, the blurry memory of your smile in the background of summer pictures from home. But real life? Face to face? Not since before hockey had fully taken him away.

And now your suitcase was sitting in his hotel room, which meant his suitcase was probably with you, which meant he had your clothes and you had his “Dude,” kirby said slowly, narrowing his eyes. “Why do you look like you just saw a ghost?”

Zach swallowed “I have the wrong suitcase.” Kirby blinked, then grinned. “That’s not great.”

“No,” Zach said, still staring at your name. “It’s really not.”

“Is it some random person’s?” Zach hesitated and that hesitation was all it took, Kirby sat up immediately. “Oh, you know her.”

Zach ran a hand over his face. “Kind of.”

“Kind of?”

“We grew up together.” that wasn’t exactly the full truth, the full truth was that you had lived three streets over from him. That your parents knew his parents. That he had seen you every summer at neighborhood barbecues, every winter at the outdoor rink, every school event where he tried way too hard to act cool whenever you were nearby.

The full truth was that when Zach was thirteen, he used to intentionally miss the first shot during driveway hockey if you were watching because he thought maybe it would make you laugh, the full truth was that at fifteen, when someone asked him who his first real crush was, your name almost came out before he managed to cough and say “nobody.”

The full truth was that you had been his childhood crush, not a small one either a devastating one, the kind that made him forget how to talk when you smiled at him. The kind that made him keep the friendship bracelet you had made him at some summer camp event even after it got too small for his wrist. The kind that never fully went away, even when life got busy and distance turned you into someone he thought about only when he was feeling nostalgic.

Kirby's grin widened. “Oh, this is good.”

“It’s not good,” Zach said quickly.

“It’s a romantic comedy.”

“It’s a luggage mix-up.”

“With a girl you know.”

“With a girl I haven’t talked to in years.”

“Even better.”

Zach ignored him and picked up his phone, typing your number from the tag before he could overthink it, then he stared at the message box.

Hi, I think I have your suitcase.

Too dry.

Hey, this is Zach Bolduc. I think there was a luggage switch-up at the airport.

Too formal.

Hey, this is Zach. I promise I’m not trying to steal your sweaters, but I think we have each other’s suitcase.

He stared at that one for three full seconds before deleting it, horrified at himself, Kirby was now openly watching him. “Are you writing a novel?”

“Shut up.”

Eventually, Zach sent:

Hey, this is Zach Bolduc. I think there was a mix-up at baggage claim. I accidentally ended up with your suitcase. I’m guessing you might have mine?

He pressed send before he lost his nerve, for exactly one minute, nothing happened, then two, then three. Zach tried to act casual about it, but he kept glancing at his phone every few seconds. Kirby snorted from across the room “Real smooth.”

“I’m checking because this is important.”

“Sure.”

Then his phone buzzed, your name popped up.

Zach Bolduc???

His heart did something stupid, then another text came through.

Oh my god. I was literally about to call the airline because I opened my suitcase and found hockey gear.

Zach laughed under his breath, relief loosening his shoulders.

Yeah. That would be mine. Sorry about that.

Your reply came almost instantly.

I was so confused. I thought I was losing my mind because the suitcase looked EXACTLY like mine.

The second he sent it, Zach froze.

Same. I opened it and immediately realized I was not the owner of a cream sweater and pink silk thing.

“Oh no,” he whispered, Kirby looked up again. “What did you do?”

“I mentioned the pink silk thing.”

Kirby burst out laughing, Zach wanted the floor to open and swallow him, your typing bubble appeared, then disappeared, then appeared again. Zach held his breath.

Finally, your reply came through.

Zachary Bolduc.

He winced, another message followed.

Please tell me you did not inspect my suitcase.

His face went hot.

I swear I opened it, panicked, and closed it immediately.

You panicked?

It felt like a crime scene.

My pajamas are not a crime scene.

So it was pajamas, that did not help at all, Zach sat down on the edge of the bed, rubbing the back of his neck.

Good to know.

Your reply came seconds later.

Do not make this worse for yourself.

He smiled despite himself, there it was, you still had the same sharp humor he remembered. The same ability to make him feel like an awkward teenage boy with one sentence.

I’m trying very hard not to.

How did this even happen?

One of the staff members grabbed it in a hurry. We both have the same suitcase.

Clearly one of us has excellent taste.

Or one of us copied the other.

I had mine first.

Zach grinned.

You don’t know that.

I absolutely do.

He leaned back against the bed frame, phone in hand, suitcase forgotten in front of him, for a moment, it didn’t feel like years had passed. It felt like being sixteen again, standing near the outdoor rink with frozen fingers and red cheeks while you teased him for pretending he wasn’t cold.

Then your next message came.

Where are you staying? I’m at a hotel close to the rink , I have a meeting tomorrow morning, but I can come swap them tonight if you’re close.

Zach sat up immediately, he was close, very close, too close for him to avoid this. Not that he wanted to avoid it, that was the problem.

I’m at the team hotel downtown. I can meet you halfway. You shouldn’t have to bring my giant hockey suitcase around, It is very heavy, Sorry.

What do you even pack in here? Bricks?

some clothes and hockey stuff.

So yes.

Zach laughed again, Kirby looked at him with raised brows “Still just a luggage mix-up?”

Zach threw a pillow at him, they agreed to meet at a small coffee place between both hotels. Zach changed out of his travel sweats into jeans and a jacket, then changed again because suddenly the first shirt felt wrong. Then he stared at himself in the mirror and muttered, “Relax. It’s just a suitcase.”

Kirby made a dramatic coughing noise from behind him “Childhood crush.”

Zach pointed at him. “Don’t.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You coughed it.”

“I have allergies.”

Zach left before he could say anything else, the coffee place was quieter than he expected when he arrived, all warm lighting and soft music. Outside, the evening had turned cold, and people moved quickly down the sidewalk with their collars up and hands tucked into their sleeves.

Zach stood near the entrance with your suitcase beside him, suddenly aware of every single second that passed, then the door opened.

And there you were and for a heartbeat, he forgot how to move.

You looked older, obviously. Not in a way that changed you completely, but in a way that made his memory of you feel softer around the edges. You still had the same eyes. The same smile pulling at your mouth when you spotted him. The same easy confidence that had once made teenage Zach trip over a hockey stick in his own driveway.

You were dragging his suitcase behind you with both hands “Zach?” He smiled before he could stop himself. “Hey.”

You stopped in front of him, looking him up and down in a way that made his ears heat “Wow,” you said. “You got taller.”

He laughed. “That’s what you’re going with?”

“I mean, I knew you got taller. I’ve seen pictures. But still.” You tilted your head. “You used to be all elbows.”

“I was not.”

“You absolutely were.”

“You were just short.”

You gasped, offended, and Zach felt something bright and familiar bloom in his chest “Oh, so this is how we’re starting?” you asked.

“I’m defending myself.”

“You were all elbows and bad hair.”

He put a hand over his chest. “Bad hair?”

“Terrible.”

“I was fifteen.”

“That’s not an excuse.” he shook his head, smiling like an idiot. “Good to see you too.” your teasing expression softened slightly “Yeah,” you said, quieter. “Good to see you.”

For a second, neither of you moved, then you both seemed to remember the reason you were there, you pushed his suitcase forward. “One hockey bag disguised as normal luggage.”

He slid yours toward you. “One definitely-not-a-crime-scene suitcase, your eyes narrowed. “You’re lucky I’m choosing to be forgiving.”

“I appreciate that.”

“You should.”

Zach reached for the handle of his suitcase, but you didn’t immediately take yours. Instead, your gaze dropped to the luggage tag, then back to him “I didn’t know you were flying in today.”

“Yeah, we got in this afternoon.”

“For a game?”

He nodded. “Tomorrow night.”

“That’s cool,” you said, and it sounded genuine. “Really cool, actually, there was something about the way you said it that made him look at you more carefully. “You follow hockey?”

“A little.”

“A little?”

“My dad still talks about you like he personally trained you for the NHL because he gave you one ride to practice when we were kids" Zach laughed, the memory hitting him instantly. “He did save me that day. My mom was stuck at work.”

“He tells everyone.”

“Good. He deserves credit.”

“He also says you were very polite.”

“I was.”

“You were quiet.”

“I was shy.” your smile turned amused. “Around everyone or just me?”

Zach froze, there it was, one casual question and suddenly he was fifteen again, you saw it too. He knew you did, because your smile shifted into something more curious “Zach?”

He cleared his throat. “I wasn’t that shy.”

“You barely looked at me for two years.”

“That’s not true.”

“It is very true. I thought you hated me.”

His head snapped up. “What? No.” you blinked at the suddenness of his answer, he exhaled, laughing a little under his breath. “No, I definitely didn’t hate you.”

Your expression softened, something in the air changed, the coffee shop felt warmer all of a sudden. Smaller. Like the world outside had gone quiet just to listen “You didn’t?” you asked.

Zach looked at you, and he knew he could dodge it. He could laugh. He could say something harmless. He could make this about being awkward as a teenager and move on, but he was older now, not always braver, maybe, but old enough to know that some chances didn’t come back twice “No,” he said. “I had a crush on you.”

Your lips parted slightly, Zach felt his heart hammering against his ribs, then you said, “You’re kidding.”

“I’m not.”

“You had a crush on me?”

“Pretty bad, actually.”

Your face changed in the most satisfying way, surprise first, then disbelief, then a slow smile that made his stomach flip “Zach Bolduc,” you said softly. “You had a crush on me and your strategy was to avoid eye contact?”

“It was a very advanced strategy.”

“It was terrible.”

“I was nervous.”

“You played hockey in front of hundreds of people.”

“Yeah, but none of them were you.” the words came out before he could stop them, you went quiet, Zach nearly closed his eyes, too much, maybe. Too honest, but then you smiled, smaller this time. Not teasing. Not amused. Something gentler “I had a little crush on you too,” you admitted.

Zach stared at you “No, you didn’t.”

You laughed. “Yes, I did.”

“No way.”

“Yes way.”

“You called my hair terrible.”

“It was terrible. That doesn’t mean I didn’t like you.” he was grinning now. He couldn’t help it. “This is unbelievable.”

“You were cute,” you said, shrugging like it wasn’t currently rewriting his entire teenage history. “And you were sweet. And you always helped me tie my skates when my fingers got too cold.”

“You remember that?”

“Of course I remember that.”

Zach’s smile softened, he remembered too, he remembered pretending not to notice how close you were. He remembered kneeling in the snow, fumbling with your laces while you complained about the cold. He remembered wanting to hold your hand afterward but shoving his own into his jacket pockets instead.

“All these years,” he said, shaking his head.

“All these years,” you echoed, then your phone buzzed in your coat pocket. You glanced down, and reality seemed to return around both of you.

“I should probably get back,” you said reluctantly. “Early meeting.”

“Yeah. Of course.” neither of you moved, your suitcase stood between you like the world’s strangest matchmaker, Zach looked at you. “Can I ask you something?”

“Depends.”

He smiled. “Do you want to get coffee? Not luggage exchange coffee. Actual coffee.”

Your eyes flickered to the café around you “We’re already in a coffee shop.”

“Okay, smartass. I mean another time.”

You looked pleased with yourself. “Another time?”

“Yeah.” He swallowed. “Maybe after the game tomorrow? Or whenever you’re free. No pressure.”

“No pressure,” you repeated, but your smile gave you away, Zach waited, trying not to look as hopeful as he felt, finally, you said, “I’m free after the game.”

His chest warmed “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” You pulled your suitcase closer. “But only if you promise not to steal my luggage again.”

“I didn’t steal it the first time.”

“That’s exactly what a suitcase thief would say.”

“I’m a victim here too.”

“You had my pajamas.”

“For thirty traumatic seconds.” You laughed, and Zach decided right then that he wanted to hear that sound again. Often, if possible.

“I’ll see you tomorrow”

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

You turned to leave, pulling your suitcase behind you, but after a few steps, you looked back “Oh, and Zach?”

“Yeah?”

Your smile turned teasing again “Your hair got better.”

He laughed, shaking his head as you walked out into the cold evening, the next morning, when Zach opened his actual suitcase and found all his own clothes exactly where they should be, he also found something else tucked between his hoodie and a pair of socks.

A small note, written on hotel stationery.

if the owner of this suitcase its the Zach Bolduc i think, I always thought the shy thing was cute.

Zach stared at it for a long moment, then he smiled so hard his cheeks hurt, Kirby noticed immediately “What now?”

Zach folded the note carefully and tucked it into the pocket of his hoodie“Nothing.” Kirby narrowed his eyes. “You’re lying.”

Zach zipped up his suitcase, still smiling, maybe he was, but for once, he didn’t care, because one rushed airport staff member, two identical suitcases, and years of bad timing had somehow managed to do what Zach never had the courage to do as a kid.

your hand slapped over your mouth, stopping another broken cry, and he chuckled, adjusting his head, turning it just another to kiss the inner of your thigh. “let it out,” he encouraged, working his fingers faster, curling them, your eyes blowing wide as he found that one perfect spot that curls your toes and makes your thighs tremble. “sound so fuckin’ pretty when you sing for me.”

“fuck off,” you bite, bringing your hand down, weaving your fingers through his hair, so much longer than the last time you had seen him. you guided his mouth back against you, his tongue lapping quickly at your clit, obedient to follow orders. “this is never happening again,” you mumbled, working your hips slowly, grinding against his mouth. there's a bit of stubble on his upper lip and it scratches your skin, forcing out a whimper. “and this time i mean it,” you quickly added, feeling his mouth quirk up on one side, some witty comeback silenced before it has a chance to be heard.

“we'll see,” he still has to say, voice muffled, but still dripping with a confidence that was close to arrogance, “you might get bored at the wedding tomorrow.” his fingers intrude your mouth, making you taste yourself, eyes focused, watching you suck them clean. “god, i've missed that,” he groaned, cock twitching against his stomach.

“don't get your hopes up,” you replied, and he wiped the string of saliva from your chin as he withdrew his fingers, “i have a date.”

he lifted his eyebrow, head cocked. “oh?” he wets his cock with your spit, stroking the head, grunting quietly under his breath. “and does he know you're in another guy's bed right now?”

“it's just charlie. and you're hardly a guy.”

“oh. just charlie,” he mocked, dragging himself down your slicked folds, the tip flushed and weeping, the first inch slotting in easily, “just charlie.” you dig your nails into his bicep, moaning as he pushes deeper, inch by inch, that impossible full feeling making you dizzy. he moved slowly, rolling his hips, making sure you felt every bit, one hand on your hip stopping you from squirming, as the other rested beside your head, keeping him from crushing you. “bet he was happy you asked him to be your date. did he blush like he did when he tried to ask to homecoming?”

“i didn't ask him,” you corrected him, sinking your teeth into your lower lip, forcing back another moan, “my mom did.” you hand slapped against his chest, forcing him onto his back, his mouth stretched wide, grinning. “now shut up about charlie,” you ordered, sinking back onto his cock, “or i'll go over to his place and ask him to finish the job you started.”

“you wouldn't,” he challenged, one large hand coming down, smacking you lightly across the ass.

Dean watched as Beau declined every advance to hang out or go drinking. Instead, Beau spent all his time in the gym. Running the treadmill, lifting the heaviest weights he possibly can without hurting himself, or even going to the fieldhouse and throwing the football until his arm felt like it was being ripped off his body. 

It wasn’t until Dean walked in on you bawling your eyes out in Hannah’s lap did he decide to take the matters into his own hands. If neither of you are going to make a move to fix your lives, he’s going to have to interfere. He’s tired of seeing his best friend, and by extension, you, be ridden with heartbreak that could easily be fixed by the two of you doing what’s best. Getting back together. 

So, that’s how Allie and Dean end up here. Their favorite coffee shop right off campus. It was supposed to be a date. But now, it’s a debriefing. “She barely leaves her bed, Dean.” Allie stresses to her boyfriend. “The other day I asked if she wanted to get a sweet treat and she said no.” Her eyes widen in fear. “She said no.” Dean puts his head in hands, deep in thought. “That’s not like her. She always says yes to a sweet treat. Even if it’s just for a ride.” Dean looks up, leaning back against the booth. 

“Beau doesn’t put the weights down. Every time I call or text him, he’s either at the gym or the fieldhouse. He won’t stop it.” Dean sighs. “He’s gonna push himself over the limit and end up hurting more than heartbreak.” 

“She went to the doctor. She’s been having horrible symptoms. They make her miserable. She’s practically bed-ridden. And she won’t listen to me.” Dean nods his head, thinking of what they could do. But everything they’ve tried, nothing is working. You won’t listen to Allie, and Beau won’t listen to Dean. Said blonde sits up straight, and his girlfriend can practically see the gears turning in his head. 

“That’s it.” He says, his very own eureka moment happening in the middle of the coffee shop. 

“What’s it?” 

“They’re not listening to us.” Dean says, putting an emphasis on the last word. “But maybe, they’ll listen to us.” He makes a swap motion with his fingers and Allie furrows her eyebrows in confusion. 

“What are you talking about, Dean?” Exasperation is evident in her voice and expression. 

“I’m saying, if Beau won’t listen to me, maybe he’ll listen to you.” Allie starts putting it together and her face lights up. 

“And she might listen to you!” She says, pointing to Dean. 

“Exactly!” Dean says, before slamming the table and pointing towards his girlfriend. “And before we know it, all four of us will be sitting in this exact booth again.” Allie smiles, already putting into motion what she’s going to say. 

–

Dean’s Turn

You study in the library because it’s the one place on this campus where you actually lock in on your homework. When you go into the library with five upcoming assignments, you go out with all of your homework down for the next two weeks. But, it takes up a lot of your time, so you don’t go often. 

Except for recently, because it’s one of the few places on campus you know Beau and his buddies won’t be at. Not because they’re not smart, but because they simply would rather do anything else than sit at the library and study. You would know. They told you to your face. 

However, you were proven wrong when you saw none other than Dean Heyward-DiLaurentis walk into the library, eyes searching around the floor you are on. You chose the quiet floor, the one where no one is to talk at all, and if they do, it has to be quietest of whispers. Dean’s eyes scan the room for a little while longer before they land on you. And his infamous smirk flashes the whole room. You roll your eyes, with no real heat behind it. Dean makes his way over to you, keys dangling in his hand. “What do you say we go for a ride?” He whispers and you look down at your homework in front of you. You open your mouth to protest, but Dean catches it. “I’m not really taking no as an answer.” He’s insanely lucky you have only one assignment left. 

Quietly, you pack your things, and when you go to grab your bookbag, Dean snatches it himself and carries it himself, leading you out of the quiet floor and down the library steps. Moonlight marks the pavement as you walk in step with your best friend’s boyfriend. For the most part, the walk to his car is silent, except for the chatter of students buzzing with excitement about the football game on Saturday. You’re a little confused why there’s still quite a few students on campus at this hour. “Are you going?” Dean asks after a long time of no talking. You shrug. 

“Most likely not.” 

“What?!” He asks almost a little too loudly. Causing multiple eyes to look towards you, and causing you to shrink in on yourself. 

“Shhhh. Shut up, DiLaurentis!” You beg, trying to keep the prying eyes off of you. Ever since your breakup with Beau, it feels like all eyes have been on you. Worse than when you were together. You hate it. 

“How can you not go? It’s against our rivals. It’s gonna be the biggest game all season. Everyone’s gonna be there.” You roll your eyes with an affectionate smile. 

“I highly doubt everyone is gonna be there.” 

“I wouldn’t doubt, young one.” You scoff. 

“I’m like, less than a year younger than you, Dean.” 

“My point exactly. You’re still young. You got life to figure out.” Dean’s car comes into view and you sigh, excited to taste the relief of privacy. Dean opens the door for you and lets you in, before shutting it and throwing your bag in the back. 

Before you know it, he’s on the road, driving aimlessly with seemingly no destination in sight. It’s nice. The serenity. No expectations. You roll the window down and lay your head against the door frame, feeling the wind against your face and hoping that it gets rid of the headache that has been forming since Dean approached you in the library. You know what this is about, but knowing doesn’t make the blow any less painful. 

“So, we need to talk.” He starts, and you turn your head slightly to stare at the blonde in the driver’s seat. Thoughts of all the memories you have with him, with Allie, with Beau. You’ve known Dean for longer than you’ve known Beau, Dean was the reason the two of you got together. So, naturally, you assume that this situation is just as heartbreaking for him. In some vicinity. And by the seriousness in his voice, it only confirms it. “You know what I’m about to talk to you about, right?” 

“Unfortunatley.” 

“See, that’s the thing.” He points to you. “I don’t think it’s unfortunate that we’re talking about it.” 

“Dean, whatever you are about to tell me, I guarantee you that I’ve already heard it from Allie.” Dean pulls the car over. “What are you doing?!” Eyes wide in confusion and a little bit of fear, you turn your head to Dean. You’re in the middle of the highway, so naturally, you’re just a little worried. 

“I’m sure you don’t want to hear this, but you need to.” The atmosphere in the car has you worried about what he’s about to say. “Beau is destroying himself. He rarely leaves the gym, and if he’s not at the gym, he’s at the fieldhouse. He only gets like one hour of sleep each night, and he gets obliterated at practice every day.”

“How would you know that?” Dean gives you a look that says, ‘seriously?’. 

“Because I go to watch the practices and I watch as he actually lets the defensemen tackle him to the ground. His coach is already royally pissed at him. It’s bad.” Dean lets out a sigh. “He misses you.” The words cause you to look down at your hands in your lap. “Like, a lot. Everything we talk about has a trace of you, whether verbally or if it’s hidden between the lines.” Tears fill your eyes, making your vision blurry. “Like, the other day, we were at Malone's. We were talking about the upcoming game on Saturday with some of the football guys and they were all mentioning about their girlfriends being at the game and Beau left the table and was gone for like ten minutes.” You wipe at one of the tears in your eyes. 

“Maybe he just-” 

“No, I’m sorry to cut you off, but no. You’re not gonna sit here and make excuses, when we both know what it is.” Dean is quiet for a few seconds. “He asked about you the other day.” You turn your head towards him, hoping to hear what was said. “He asked if I knew how you were doing.” 

“What did you say?” Dean lets out an exhale, thinking back on the conversation. It didn’t end well. 

“Well, I told him that from what I’ve seen, you bawling your eyes out in Hannah’s lap while Remember the Titans played in the background was a pretty clear image of how you’ve been doing lately.” Dean then leans forward. “He’s predicted to be the number one draft pick in April.” You shake your head, looking out the window. 

“I don’t care if he’s going to be number one in the draft if I’m not number one in his heart.” You cringe at what you said, understanding how insanely cheesy it was. But, it’s true. You don’t care about anything Beau is doing if you’re not at his side supporting him along the way. It’s selfish, but it’s how you feel. 

“Wow.” Dean says, shocked by what you said. “That’s… cheesy.” You roll your eyes, crossing your arms over your chest. It's quiet in the car for a few moments. You don’t say anything. Dean takes that as his cue and takes off on the road, driving towards your dorm. A sigh leaves your lips. 

“I really miss him.” You admit. “I don’t know how to live without him.” Dean chooses not to say anything to that, but rather lets you sit and think about what you just said. 

-

Allie’s Turn

While Dean decided to use the approach and corner tactic, Allie decided to go for a more calm approach. So, she texted Beau. 

Allie: Beau!!!! I haven’t seen you in so long my friend, would you want to go get some coffee with me tomorrow?? :) 

Beau: Hey Allie, sure, what time?

Allie: Does ten work?

Beau: yeah, i’ll be there

Allie: Yay! See you then!

Beau: See you.

That leads to now, where Allie sits in the booth at the coffee shop, her iced coffee sitting in front of her. It’s a little after ten, and she knows that Beau doesn’t mean any harm by being late. In fact, he probably doesn’t even realize he’s late. Unfortunately, you were always the one that made sure he was on time to everything. Allie thinks that your absence in his life has affected even the mundane areas without him noticing. The bell to the door rings and Allie looks up from her phone, smiling ear to ear when she sees Beau walk in with his hair wet and a Briar U football sweatshirt. Said man takes a survey of the room before landing on Allie, and while it’s not a full on smile, the corner of his mouth twitches. 

“Beau!” Allie greets, standing up and wrapping her arms around him. Beau hugs her back, before they sit down and he puts his hands in his sweatshirt pocket. “You look good.” It’s a complete lie. She can see the obvious eye bags underneath his eyes, he looks a little slimmer than usual, and there’s a melancholy feeling wrapped around him. 

“Don’t flatter me, Allie.” He says, leaning back against the booth. Similar to the way Dean did only a week ago. “How have you been? Joanna keeps asking about you.” Allie smiles bright, delving into her life lately, hoping that Beau will see this as a casual friend hangout rather than what it is: a talk of concern for his love life, or rather lack thereof. 

Beau nods along, listening like a gentleman, but Allie can tell that his mind is elsewhere. His eyes scan the room, his body turned towards the window in the booth, and his responses are short, either giving a hum or a shake of his head. By the time Allie has reached twenty minutes of talking about things such as the theatre department, Hannah and Garrett’s privacy problems, and how she’s excited for the football game on Saturday, she has had enough. “Okay.” She says as her hands slam down on the table abruptly. “You have barely been paying attention to me this whole time. Your mind is completely elsewhere. What’s the problem?” Beau takes his eyes off of the street corner and looks at Allie. 

“What do you mean? I don’t have a problem.” Allie sighs. 

“Listen, Beau, you may think that just because I’m her best friend, then I’m gonna automatically choose her side and defend her till the day I die, which is true I will, but if it makes you also think that I don’t care about what you’re feeling through all of this, then you are severely mistaken my dear friend.” She takes a dramatic pause to let him contemplate on her words. “Tell me what’s going on.” 

Beau looks down at his lap. “I thought that-” He gulps, not scared, but rather overwhelmed by his emotions. “I thought that if we took a break it would make the both of us happy. She wouldn’t have to feel like she’s becoming second place, and I wouldn’t feel like I am being bombarded with all the things in my life.” There’s people all throughout the coffee shop, and their voices overlap on top of each other, but nothing could make Allie not hear the next words that Beau has for her, “I’m more miserable without her than I have ever been with her. I thought that not having to juggle a relationship would be less stressful for me, but it made it all ten times worse. I can barely balance everything I’m doing without her. No one is there to remind me to take my medicine, no one is there laying in my bed at the end of the day just because she missed me and wanted to see how my day was, no one is there to help stitch me back up after I got drilled at practice.” Tears are gathered in his eyes and Allie realizes this is the first time she’s ever seen Beau cry. “She was the only steady thing in my life. And now she’s gone, and I don’t know how to operate without her.” A singular tear starts to slip, but he wipes it away before it can get past his cheekbone. There’s a heavy silence between the two. Neither of them have much more to say, but Allie thinks she has something that might bring him to realization. 

“If you feel this way, Beau, she needs to know.” Beau looks up at that. “She would kill me if she knew I told you this, but she’s not doing well, Beau. She’s sick. Like, physically sick. She doesn’t leave her bed. I- I had to force her to go to the doctor.” Beau sits up straight at that. 

“Is she okay? What did the doctor tell her?” There’s fear in his eyes, but the hope in Allie’s eyes overwhelms it. 

“The doctor said she’s fine.” Beau lets out a breath he’s been holding. “She’s okay, Beau, but what’s not okay is how both of you are treating this.” He hangs his head in shame. “Both of you are lovesick and heartbroken and the only thing that can fix that is reconciling. She’s a wreck without you, and I can tell that you are the same. I don’t know how, but you need to get her back. Both of you need to get each other back.” Beau thinks about it, a plan brewing in his head. 

“Do you think you could get her to the game on saturday?” Allie smirks, nodding her head. 

“Oh, without a doubt.” 

“I think I have a plan, but I might need help.” 

“I’m all ears” 

–

Eventually, Saturday comes and you’re sitting on the couch watching youtube videos when Allie comes bursting in from her room. “Uh, what are you doing?” She asks, watching as you shove another handful of popcorn into your mouth. 

“Watching youtube.” You mutter through the food in your mouth. 

“Okay, well, get up, cause you’re going to the game.” You finish chewing and swallowing the food before Allie grabs your hand and pulls you up off the couch. 

“What? No! That is the last place I want to spend my Saturday at.” Allie sighs, shaking her head and dragging you to your room. 

“I don’t care. You’re going, whether I have to force you or not.” You sigh, knowing that you’re not going to win this fight, so you barely fight back and start putting clothes on. Allie makes sure that you look good, curling your hair and helping you put some mascara on, (that’s all that you would let her put on) before making sure you’re wearing something that will keep you warm but also is cute. She settled on light denim jeans and a football sweatshirt that she knows is Beau’s. 

“I can’t wear this.” 

“Yes you can, and you will.” Her phone dings and she looks at the notification. “Dean’s here, let’s go.” You grab your phone and put it into your pocket before she drags you out of the dorm and down to Dean’s car, where he’s waiting patiently on his phone. He greets the two of you, Allie with a forehead kiss and you with a pat on the head. 

“Let’s go watch some football ladies!!!” He says as he opens Allie’s door and you open yours, not fully ready for the day ahead. 

–

The field is packed, with Briar U students and the rival team’s fans alike. While you doubted it, Dean really was telling the truth when he said everyone was gonna be here. You’ve passed five people you know before you even got into the stadium, and there’s plenty more people you know where you’re sitting. 

The game hasn’t started yet and you’re already filled with insane nerves. Garrett, Hannah, Tucker and Logan are all sitting with you guys, and they all chat as the players warm up. While they talk, you can’t help but stare at number 65 on the field as he warms up with his team, throwing balls, stretching, the whole shabang. Said man looks up, and you can tell that you’re making eye contact with him, and while you’re not far from the field, you doubted if you could. But you are. And neither of you are looking away. Until Beau is patted on the shoulder, and told to grab his helmet. He breaks eye contact first, but you keep your eyes on him as he does as told, and runs to the tunnel. But before he disappears, he catches your eyes again, a small smile on his face and a wave coming your way. 

You yourself let a small smile make its way on your face and wave back, waving your fingers at him. His smile burns brighter before he disappears fully into the tunnel. 

–

The game went really well. Briar U won, 41-20, and it was crazy. You laughed as you watched all of the players chest bump and celebrate with each other before disappearing to the showers. Garrett and Hannah both leave, and you go to follow, but Allie catches your wrist. “We’re gonna stay and chat with Logan and Tuck first.” You nod your head, crossing your arms and listening to the conversations. 

As you talk with your friends, the stadium slowly empties out, and before you know it, you five are the only ones left in the bleachers. Tucker makes a joke that causes you to laugh out loud, and you realize it feels good to laugh. You haven’t in a long time. 

You go to reply, but a piano comes over the speakers before you can. You whip around to the press box, and from your seat in the bleachers, you can see Hannah and Garrett standing there. Garrett is sitting in one of the seats, and Hannah is playing the piano. Your eyebrows furrow in confusion. It’s just instrumental for a while before Hannah starts to sing. “When the rain is blowing in your face.” What. The. Freak. Why is Hannah playing Adele in the stadium right now? “And the whole world is on your case.” You turn to look at Allie and Dean, who both have huge smiles on your face. Your eyes flit to Logan and Tucker, both sharing the same smirk. “I can offer you a warm embrace, to make you feel my love.” Allie points to the field and there in the middle stands Beau, holding a bouquet of your favorite flowers and a sheepish smile on his face. You stand there frozen for a second, music still playing through the speakers, and the tears falling from your eyes are falling freely. You don’t bother stopping them. Allie pushes you forward and you take that as a wake up call, running down the bleachers towards the field. 

Your eyes are on Beau the whole time you make your way down to the field, and when you get to the barrier between the bleachers and the field, you jump it, but not without whoops and hollers from your friends. You slow once you’re on the field, making your way to Beau, who has his own tears in his eyes. Hannah is still singing through the speaker, but you can barely hear it over your breath. Neither of you say anything for a few moments. Beau is the first to break the silence. “I’m miserable without you, baby.” The admittance causes more tears to fall. “This past month or two has been the worst time of my life.” You nod your head agreeing with him. “I’m sure you’ve heard, I’ve had the worst experience ever.” You can’t help but nod your head again. 

Hannah finishes out the song. “Nothing that I wouldn’t do. Go to the ends of the earth for you. To make you feel my love. To make you feel my love.” 

“I know that you’re not the biggest fan of grand gestures, that’s why I made sure that everyone else had left so that I could do this.” Beau takes a step closer, leaning down and putting the bouquet on the ground. “I can’t do this without you, baby. I’ve been thinking about what I said that night, and I realize that I want you by my side for the rest of my life, especially in this next season that’s coming up. You wouldn’t be holding me back, you would be pushing me forward.” There’s a pause and you can’t help the small smile on your face. “And I would be taking you with me the whole way.” 

You can’t help it, you reach up and grab his face in your hands, bringing him down to your lips. Cheers are heard from your friends spot on the bleachers, and claps are heard from the press box, but it doesn’t matter to you. All that matters is Beau’s lips on yours and his hands on your hips. When the two of you break apart, it’s your turn to admit. “I’m so sorry, Beau. I never meant to hurt you in any way. Some of the things I said were awful, and I don’t care about what team you get drafted to, or what place in the draft you are, I just care that wherever you go next, that I’m right next to you. And that you feel my love for you, and I care that you know that I will be there for you. For everything.” 

“I’m sorry too, baby. I love you so much, I love you more than football, and draft picks, and everything. I never want to be without you ever again.” 

“Me too.” He smiles before leaning down and kisses you again, both of you barely able to kiss due to the clashing of smiling teeth. 

Nothing’s wrong with you when he holds you like this. 

Oliver’s place was too loud for a night that wasn’t supposed to be anything serious. Fraser should’ve known that before he even stepped inside. It didn’t really matter what the plan was; it always ended the same way. Too many voices stacked on top of each other, too much energy in a space that wasn’t quite built to hold it. 

It came with the job, he guessed. After all, he was in a team full of players and personnel who did not know how to keep the volume down—even for a simple night gathered around the PlayStation and a couple of cases of beer. 

Fraser had been ready to leave an hour ago.

He sat stretched out at the end of the couch, one ankle hooked over the opposite knee, a soda can resting loosely in his hand. The condensation had long since dried, the drink inside gone warm and flat, but he hadn’t bothered to replace it. Or even finish it.

Across the room, someone shouted over a missed play from last week’s preseason game against Philadelphia, already halfway into a reenactment no one had asked for. A controller clattered to the floor. Laughter followed, loud and effortless.

Fraser didn’t really look.

He shifted in his seat slightly, letting his gaze drift instead of fixing on anything in particular. It was a habit he never quite turned off—the constant, quiet awareness. Who was moving. Who was too close to knocking something over. Which conversation was about to turn into something louder than it needed to be. Or maybe even an argument. 

Hockey brain. That’s what Oliver called it at least—their assistant strength and conditioning coach. How some players always watched and anticipated people’s moves. It probably made Fraser better at what he did, but it also made it awfully difficult to relax in rooms like this. He couldn’t be in the noise without absorbing it. 

Tonight, it simply felt like too much.

His thumb traced absently along the rim of the can as he mused, already thinking about the quiet of his apartment. The dark. The feeling of being completely alone in a space where he felt comfortable. 

The sound of gentle steps coming down the stairs cut through his thoughts.

Miriam appeared at the top of the stairs, one hand trailing lightly along the railing as she made her way down slowly, like testing her patience before fully committing to being in the chaos of the living room.

Fraser hadn’t even known she was home. He found himself wondering how long she’d been upstairs.

She reached the bottom step and paused there briefly, scanning the room. 

She had one of Oliver’s hoodies pulled over her, sleeves swallowing her hands, the fabric hanging loose around her frame. There was a flush high on her cheeks that had nothing to do with the lighting, and even from across the room, Fraser could see the faint sheen at her temples. 

She looked sick. Like, not in a cool way, but actually ill. 

Oliver noticed her at the exact same time. He was on his feet before she’d taken another step, his entire focus shifting like someone had flipped a switch.

“How’s the fever, babe?” His voice dropped without him thinking about it, a soft and gentle tone very unlike his usual high-pitched laughter. 

Fraser had seen it before.

Oliver was loud and easygoing, the kind of guy who filled a room without trying—but when it came to Miriam, everything narrowed. The rest of the world dimmed around her, at least for Oliver. 

The team had given him hell for it at first. Endless chirping, disbelief that Oliver—who couldn’t keep a girl around for more than a few weeks—had somehow ended up completely, undeniably gone for someone. Once they had gotten to know Miriam, though, it just sort of made sense that it would be her he fell for. 

Miriam gave a small shrug, the movement slow, like it took more effort than it should have. “Still a fever, I think.”

Fraser found himself sitting a little straighter without meaning to, his attention locking in. Had Oliver really invited all the boys over while his girlfriend was sick? Maybe he was worse of a boyfriend than he got credit for. 

“We weren’t too loud, right?” Oliver added quickly, glancing toward the living room like he was only just now registering the volume.

“No, no. It’s fine.” Miriam shook her head. “I just need some of the guys to move their cars so I can get mine out.”

There was a beat of silence—just enough for Oliver to turn confused. He blinked at her. “I’m not letting you drive when you’re sick.”

“But Y/N called,” she said, pushing a hand through her hair before tugging the sleeve back down over her fingers. “I need to pick her up from Club Satine. She’s, like, drunk and sad and other totally reasonable emotions.”

“Star is drunk? I’d pay to see that,” Oliver said, a grin pulling at his mouth.

“Don’t laugh at her, Oliver,” Miriam sighed. “She’s having a hard time, and you know that.” 

Oliver held up his hands in surrender, his grin easing into something gentler. “Still don’t think you should drive with a fever, sweetheart.” 

Miriam exhaled, a frustrated sound, already reaching for her phone like she was about to solve the problem herself if no one else would.

Fraser watched her for a second longer than he meant to. The slight shift in her stance made it like her balance wasn’t quite steady. The way she pressed her lips together, holding back either an argument or another sigh.

He didn’t know who this Star was. Just a nickname he’d heard a few times before. But she was someone Miriam cared about enough to leave home, like this, while she was sick, just to make sure she got home safe. That kind of told him enough.

“I can probably drive her home, if you want,” Fraser heard himself say. 

“You’d do that?” Miriam lit up. 

Fraser shrugged, setting the can down on the table with a quiet click as he pushed himself to his feet. “Yeah. I mean, I was thinking of calling it a night, and Satine is practically on my way.”

It wasn’t really. 

But it was close enough for it to sound reasonable. And more importantly, it sounded easy. Like it wasn’t a big deal. Like he wasn’t already reaching for his keys and had been desperate for an excuse to leave anyway. Might as well make it useful.

“Oh, Frase. You’re a lifesaver. I owe you one. Big time.” 

He huffed out a quiet laugh, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck as he stepped around the coffee table. “Big time? Am I going to regret this?”

“No, no,” she said quickly, shaking her head. “She’s my little cousin and a total saint. And you can invoice Oliver if she makes a mess of your car.”

“Hey—” Oliver cut in, but there was no real protest behind it.

Fraser’s mouth twitched as he fished out his car keys from his front pocket, turning them once between his fingers. 

“I’ll text her you’re coming,” Miriam added, thumbs already moving over her screen. “And that you’re a trusted adult.”

“A trusted adult,” Fraser repeated, glancing back at her, one brow lifting slightly. “That’s a new one.”

Miriam smiled at him—tired and a little crookedly. “You have a kind face. It makes you trustworthy.”

Fraser let out a quiet breath of amusement through his nose. He’d heard that before. Usually right before someone asked him for something.

He nodded toward her phone. “Wait. What does she look like?”

Miriam’s gaze flicked up from the screen, something almost knowing settling into her expression despite the fever, like she was in on a joke he hadn’t heard yet.

“I think you’ll know when you see her.” 

⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚ ⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚ ⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚ ⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚

The line outside Club Satine was thin by the time Fraser pulled up.

A few groups lingered near the entrance, either smoking or slowly filtering toward waiting Ubers. Despite the October cold, there were bare legs and open jackets everywhere, as though enough alcohol could convince a person they were immune to the temperature. The neon sign above the club washed the sidewalk in pink, turning everything beneath it soft around the edges—artificial, almost dreamlike.

Fraser shifted the car into park and looked up at the building.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been to Satine. Probably just a few months after being traded to Boston, back when he’d agreed to just about anything his new teammates suggested because forcing himself to fit in seemed easier than surviving another Toronto.

He definitely hadn’t enjoyed his experience here, though. That much he remembered. Satine was the sort of place people came to get absolutely shitfaced without anyone batting an eye, and that wasn’t exactly what Fraser looked for in life.

His phone lit up on the center console. Miriam’s latest text still sat at the top of the screen.

She’s waiting outside. White dress. 

That was all she’d sent. Extremely helpful. 

Fraser scanned the sidewalk from the driver seat. It didn’t take him long to find you. Not because Miriam had described you—she stubbornly hadn’t—but because there was no one else it could’ve been.

A girl his own age sat alone on the curb a little ways down from the entrance, separated from the clusters of people spilling in and out of the club. Bare legs and feet tucked awkwardly to one side, elbows resting on your knees. Your head was tilted toward the sky like you were searching for something above the city lights and tall buildings. 

From where he sat, he couldn’t make out your face. Just the stark white dress. Lace caught every flicker of neon, almost glowing against the darkness. It hugged your frame before flaring softly at your hips, bright enough to pull the eye from everything else around you.

Was that a freaking wedding dress? 

Fraser frowned faintly, leaning forward over the steering wheel as if that would somehow help him make more sense of it. It wasn’t full-length like wedding dresses traditionally were, but it was his first honest thought. Who wore white lace to a night club? Had you been to a bachelorette party? Some kind of bridal event?

He exhaled slowly through his nose, already reaching for the door handle.

Yeah. That had to be you.

The music from inside the club thudded faintly as he stepped out, the cold hitting him immediately, sharp and clean compared to the warmth of the car. He barely had time to notice it because his attention was already locked on you.

As he walked closer, the details of you sharpened.

You looked heartbreakingly out of place—a true juxtaposition to Club Satine—like a fictional character that had somehow wandered into the wrong story.

There was mascara smudged beneath your eyes, dark streaks following faintly down your cheeks, like you’d tried to wipe tears away at some point and only made it worse. Your lipstick had long since faded too, uneven around the edges, the kind of wear that came from talking too much or drinking too much.

It was probably both.

Your fingers idly twisted the edge of your dress, over and over, like they needed something to do.

Fraser slowed as he approached, something unexpectedly tightening in his chest. It wasn’t pity, but everyone knew what it looked like when somebody was trying very hard to keep themselves together. You looked like you’d lost that fight hours ago.

Your head lifted as his shadow stretched across the pavement, swallowing the pink glow around you.

Up close, your eyes still shimmered with the remains of fresh tears. Your breathing hitched every so often, tiny uneven breaths that sounded almost like hiccups. When you saw him, your shoulders sagged another inch, as though simply recognizing the ride Miriam had promised finally gave you permission to relax. 

“Are you the trusted adult Miriam sent?” 

The question caught him so off guard he almost laughed, even if it was exactly how Miriam had described him earlier. 

“Yeah,” he said, the corner of his mouth tugging upward. “I think so. I’m Fraser.”

Your expression softened a little, but it wasn’t quite a smile. Then, with complete sincerity, you held out a hand. 

“Hi,” you said with perfect politeness. “Y/N. Nice to meet you.”

Fraser stared at your hand for half a second before shaking it. Because apparently you were introducing yourself like this was a networking event instead of midnight, barefoot, on a curb outside a nightclub.

“Nice to meet you, too.”

Your hand was surprisingly warm—warmer than he thought it should’ve been in the cold. His grip lingered for a little too long before he let go, his eyes catching on an angry red patch across the back of your hand. The skin looked raw, almost polished from being so irritated. 

He frowned almost imperceptibly. 

Had you done that to yourself?

Without thinking, his gaze drifted over the rest of you. No jacket, bare legs, and only a thin lace dress on. You were shivering. The movement subtle enough that he might have missed it if he weren’t already looking.

“Here, let me—”

Fraser shrugged out of his hoodie before he could second-guess himself and held it out.

Your eyes followed the movement.

“I had a jacket,” you said, sounding genuinely apologetic about the fact. “But I think I left it at Cara’s place.”

You sounded disappointed in yourself, like misplacing your jacket at a friend’s house was an unsolvable problem. 

“That’s okay,” Fraser said easily. “So take my hoodie.”

You accepted it without hesitation, which surprised him. Somehow he’d expected you to insist you were fine.

You tugged it on a little clumsily, the fabric swallowing your hands the same way Miriam’s stolen hoodie from Oliver had earlier. The hood bunched awkwardly at the back of your neck, a little too big on you. You instinctively tucked your hands into the pockets, curling into the warmth, probably without realizing you were doing it.

For reasons Fraser couldn’t quite explain, he looked away.

The club door swung open behind him. Music flooded onto the sidewalk for a heartbeat before the door shut again, leaving only the distant bass vibrating through the walls.

When he looked back, you were already staring at him, brows knitted together.

“I think I recognize you.” 

A small sense of dread settled in Fraser’s stomach.

Usually, when people recognized him, one of two things happened. They either wanted tickets—which he couldn't magically produce no matter how many people seemed convinced otherwise—or they wanted to explain exactly what he’d done wrong in last week’s game.

“You’re, uh…” You gestured vaguely toward him, your hand lingering in the air as though the rest of the sentence might simply drift into it. “A player on Oliver’s team, right?”

Fraser huffed out a quiet breath, something like a laugh. “On his team? He doesn’t even play.”

“I know, I know.” You waved a hand, dismissing your own wording. “It’s the Boston Bruins, blah blah blah. I don’t give a shit about hockey, but I do happen to care about Oliver, okay?”

The words tumbled out without a filter, softened around the edges by alcohol. Fraser couldn’t help the smile threatening to form at the corner of his mouth. He saw a little spark in your eyes as you talked about it, or about Oliver, he guessed. Just simple, matter-of-fact loyalty because you cared about him. He found, rather unexpectedly, that he couldn’t even be offended on hockey’s behalf because of it. 

“Okay,” he said. “And yes, I play hockey.”

You studied him for a long second, your head tilting thoughtfully to one side. You were evaluating the information rather than admiring it. It was strangely refreshing. Most people either knew exactly who he was or didn’t know him at all. You seemed to be stuck in the middle. 

“You any good?” you asked. 

That almost got a real laugh out of him. Fraser folded his arms loosely against the cold.

“I guess we’ll see in April.” 

You held his gaze for another beat before giving a slow nod, as if that answered the question perfectly. Like professional athletes should only be judged by what happened in the playoffs.

“Shit,” you murmured. “Fair enough.”

Fraser found himself entertained by your frankness.

You were still looking at him, though. Halfway between present and somewhere else entirely. Once you realized you were staring, almost sheepishly, your eyes dropped toward the pavement.

His followed.

Right. You were barefoot for some reason. 

He glanced around, scanning the immediate area—the sidewalk, the edge of the street, the cluster of people lingering outside the club. Nothing obvious. No abandoned heels kicked off to the side, no sign of anything that belonged to you, really. He was at least happy to see that you were holding a purse. He was choosing to assume it belonged to you, anyway. 

“You got shoes?” he asked, already pretty sure he knew the answer.

You looked at your feet like you were seeing them for the first time, eyebrows raised. 

“I used to,” you mumbled. 

Fraser huffed another quiet breath through his nose. “Okay,” he said, more to himself than to you. “Let’s get you in the car first.”

He offered his hand to you, chivalrous without really meaning to, but he also suspected your balance wouldn’t be perfect right now. 

Your grip was still warm and a little unsteady as you pushed yourself up. You swayed almost immediately, the motion pulling you off balance before you could correct for it. Fraser reacted without thinking, catching your elbow with his free hand before gravity could finish the job.

“Easy.”

“I’m fine,” you insisted. 

“Yeah,” he murmured. “I can see that.”

To his surprise, you didn’t argue again. Fraser kept his pace slow, matching yours step for step while you glanced down at your bare feet to see where you placed them. 

By the time you reached his car, you were looking at it with open suspicion.

“Alright,” he said, opening the passenger door. “In you go.”

You suddenly stopped dead.

“This is a really nice truck,” you said, as if that were an issue.

Fraser blinked. “Thank you?”

You pointed at the open door, then at yourself, then vaguely at the sidewalk behind you. “I just sat on a dirty curb. I can’t sit in your—” You squinted at the badge on the side of the truck. “Is it a Chevrolet? I don’t know that many car brands.”

“It is,” Fraser admitted, unable to hide his amusement. “And yes, you can.”

You looked unconvinced in the way only a very drunk person could manage—completely earnest, entirely unreasonable.

“No,” you said with conviction. “I can’t. That would be disrespectful.”

Fraser scoffed. “Disrespectful? How?”

“Yes.” You nodded once. “To the truck.”

He laughed then, short and surprised, because you were standing there barefoot in his hoodie, refusing to get into his car on principle, like the truck had feelings that might be hurt by some dirt on your dress. 

Fraser couldn’t care less about that. 

“It’ll survive,” he said.

You still looked a little unconvinced, but eventually Fraser’s determination won out. You climbed into the passenger seat slowly, with the kind of intense concentration usually reserved for complicated puzzles.

Fraser leaned in to guide the seatbelt across you, pausing just long enough to make sure you didn’t tip forward or get tangled in the process. For a second he caught the faint scent of your perfume beneath the smell of alcohol.

Vanilla. Or maybe it was some sort of wood. Before he could place it, the moment passed.

“Stay here and I’ll see if I can find your shoes,” he said.

You made a small, noncommittal sound in response as he gently shut the door and turned back toward the club. 

Fraser had barely taken three steps toward the entrance before the club door swung open again. A girl stepped out, pausing just beyond the threshold like she needed a second to adjust to the cold. She had a pair of heels dangling from her fingers while already wearing another pair on her feet.

White. The heels in her hands were white. 

He could thank his hockey brain for being so annoyingly observant.

The girl noticed him a moment later.

“Do you know Y/N?” she asked, her tone quick and practical. “They’re—um—” She glanced past him, scanning the street. “She went out for a breather. Girl in a lace dress?”

“Yeah,” Fraser said, nodding toward the truck parked a little farther down the curb. “I’m driving her home.” 

She looked him up and down in one swift, assessing sweep. Not curious, exactly. More like she was deciding whether he looked like someone she’d trust alone with a drunk girl. Then her eyes narrowed.

Fraser stood up straighter without meaning to.

“You’re not Kevin, are you?” she asked. 

He blinked, thrown just enough to show it. “No, I’m—” 

“‘Cause I’ll beat your ass if you are,” she cut in, dead serious.

That pulled a short, surprised laugh out of him before he could stop it. “I’m Fraser,” he said, lifting a hand slightly in something like surrender. “Just a friend picking her up.”

Friend wasn’t quite the right word, but it was the easiest one to reach for. It was simpler than trying to name whatever this was—the immediate, unthinking concern that had settled in his chest the second Miriam had mentioned you. The way he’d already started solving problems before he’d even met you. Something about the whole thing had hooked into him. 

The girl’s expression softened only a fraction, though she kept hold of the shoes for another beat. Fraser got the distinct impression she wasn’t hesitating because she cared about the shoes.

She was deciding whether she believed him.

“Take care of her, okay?” she said, pointing the heels in his direction. “Or I’ll find a way to beat your ass tomorrow.”

“I will. I promise,” he answered without hesitation, and the steadiness in his own voice almost surprised him. It was an easy promise to make, somehow.

Apparently satisfied, she handed over the shoes, giving him a small nod before turning back toward the door, disappearing inside without another word.

Fraser stood there for a moment with your heels hanging from his fingers.

Who the fuck was Kevin? 

That was twice now he’d heard concern where there should’ve been annoyance in regard to you. First Miriam, and now this random girl. Neither of them had rolled their eyes about having to deal with a drunk friend. Instead, they'd spoken about you with the same quiet concern, like they were sending something precious out into the world and hoping it came back in one piece.

It sat a little oddly with him. People didn't usually react like that unless they’d already watched someone get hurt.

He glanced back toward the car. You were visible through the passenger window, head resting against it, your eyes softly shut. 

Fraser tightened his grip around the white heels. Despite knowing almost nothing about you, he found himself wondering what kind of idiot Kevin must’ve been.

He hurried around to the driver’s side, pulling the door open, his mind already assembling a list of what needed to happen next. Get out of downtown. Ask where you lived. Put the address into the GPS. Get you home before Miriam had time to worry and start harassing him over the phone about it.

Simple, in theory, but when he looked over at the passenger side, you were asleep.

Knocked out cold, just like that.

Curled into the passenger seat as though you’d been there for hours instead of barely a minute. His hoodie hugged your frame, one sleeve twisted between your fingers like you’d instinctively reached for something to hold onto. Your cheek rested lightly against the window, breath fogging a small patch of glass every few seconds.

Somewhere between him retrieving your shoes and walking back to the car, you’d apparently decided you’d had enough of being awake.

Fraser stood frozen for a beat.

Well. This complicated things.

He climbed into the driver’s seat as quietly as possible, setting your heels carefully on the floorboard behind you. They landed with a dull thud, but you didn’t so much as flinch.

For a moment, he simply sat there, one hand resting on the steering wheel, looking straight ahead while his brain refused to commit to a decision. Then he moved purely on instinct—pulling away from the curb, merging into traffic, putting distance between you and the noise of the club just to get away from there. 

But you didn’t stir. Not when the engine started. Not when he turned onto the main road. Not even when he hit a red light a little too hard and the car dipped forward with a soft jolt.

Fraser glanced over at you every so often.

Your head had tilted slightly farther against the glass, and a loose strand of hair had fallen across your face. Other than that, he didn’t know how to describe you. Not in any way that felt fair to whatever drunk and strange half-formed impression you were making on him, anyway. 

The tension he’d noticed outside the club had disappeared from your face. Whatever grief had followed you onto that curb seemed, at least temporarily, to have loosened its grip.

You also looked less sad.

That thought arrived before Fraser could stop himself. And then, because his brain apparently refused to leave well enough alone, he found himself noticing other things too.

The way your lashes fluttered against your cheeks. The small, unconscious parting of your lips as you breathed. The fact that your expression, stripped of all the effort it took to keep it composed, was so much softer than he’d expected. Not prettier, but maybe like sleep had finally convinced your mind to stop fighting itself for a little while.

Fraser sighed, looking back at the road.

Okay. What were his options?

He could just wake you up. That was the obvious choice. But beside him, you shifted slightly in your sleep, brow furrowing for just a second before smoothing out again, your grip tightening unconsciously on the sleeve of his hoodie. 

You looked so comfortable that interrupting it actually felt cruel.

Option two. He could turn around and head back to Oliver’s place. Drop you off there and let Miriam deal with it.

He exhaled again, longer this time. That option was also a no.

The idea of carrying you back into that crowded house—still half-asleep, still wrapped in his hoodie, mascara smudged and dress wrinkled—and handing you off like a problem he’d offered to take care of but now didn’t feel like solving anymore, especially to Miriam with her fever, sat very wrong with him.

Which left this, apparently. Just driving you around for no reason, like some kind of idiot. Or creep. Was he being creepy right now? 

The streets blurred together beneath pools of amber streetlights. Familiar intersections gave way to unfamiliar ones before looping back again. He passed the same convenience store twice, a twenty-four-hour diner with a flickering neon sign, and a gas station that looked as though it hadn’t been renovated since the eighties.

At one point Fraser became fairly certain he’d driven in a circle. You continued sleeping through all of it, which was honestly impressive considering how he was driving. 

He wondered, briefly, if this qualified as kidnapping.

No. Definitely not. You had, technically, asked for a ride. Fraser just didn’t know where to drive you. Still, if you woke up now, how exactly was he supposed to explain this?

Sorry, you looked peaceful, and I didn’t want to bother you, so I've been aimlessly touring Greater Boston for the last thirty minutes?

He closed his eyes for half a second at a red light. He was being unbelievably pathetic right now. 

Eventually, though, movement in his periphery caught his attention. A small sound escaped you, a gentle groan mixed with a yawn. 

Fraser glanced over.

Your eyes blinked open slowly, unfocused at first. You looked around the car as though trying to remember where you were, then your memory seemed to return all at once.

“Oh my god.” You jerked upright so fast your shoulder hit the car window. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep. I’m sorry.” 

Fraser kept one hand on the wheel, driving slowly while looking over just long enough to see the full horror of your expression. 

“It’s okay.”

“No, it's not. Did I snore?” You pressed a hand to your face, covering up. “Please tell me I didn't snore.”

“You didn’t.” 

“This is so embarrassing.”

“You didn’t snore,” Fraser repeated, unable to stop the faint smile tugging at one corner of his mouth. “I promise.”

The silence that followed gave Fraser exactly enough room for every unanswered question to come rushing back. He had spent the better part of half an hour collecting them, after all. It wasn’t every day he had to take care of a drunk stranger. 

“Can I ask you a couple questions?” he said.

“Yeah,” you answered, shifting in your seat, still sounding mortified.

Fraser glanced at you, then back at the road. You were half-curled into the seat, your embarrassment so immediate and earnest it almost made him feel bad for asking anything at all. But he had to know. 

“Are you wearing a wedding dress?” 

The question came out more carefully than he intended, because he realized too late that he was asking it for reasons that had very little to do with the dress itself. He just needed to know what kind of night this had been. What kind of person got left on a sidewalk in white lace with tears in their eyes? 

“Nope.” You shook your head, popping the “p” as you said it. “Okay. Well. I guess any dress could be a wedding dress, but if you mean ‘have I gotten married in this dress?’ then the answer is no.”

Fraser let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.

Ridiculously relieved, if he were being honest with himself. Not because the alternative had been likely, exactly, but because for one brief second he’d pictured some absurdly complicated version of your evening that involved vows and a runaway bride and a whole different kind of disaster.

You shifted in your seat again, tucking your legs up, making yourself smaller on the passenger side as though you were trying to take up less space. 

“I was at a bachelorette party,” you went on. “We had to wear white. Which is—” you waved a hand vaguely, “—ironic, because I am statistically the least likely person there to get married anytime soon.”

That was a strange little joke with something bruised underneath it. Fraser felt the weight of it, but he let it pass without asking. He didn’t know you well enough to ask. 

“Second question,” he said instead, because if he didn’t keep moving, he was going to start thinking too hard about the sadness in your tone, and he had already done enough of that tonight. His eyes flicked briefly to your hand; the mark on it had irked him since he first noticed. Probably because it looked like it hurt. “What’s that red mark on your hand?”

You looked down at it like you’d forgotten it was there.

“Oh.” You turned your hand over. “Some guy put a cigarette out on my hand.”

Fraser’s entire body went rigid. “What?”

He didn't know where it came from, but the word came out sharper than he intended, clipped with a flash of anger. His grip tightened on the steering wheel before he could stop it, knuckles whitening against the leather.

“Not, like, on purpose, of course,” you said quickly, shrugging. “It was just very crowded outside, and it grazed me. Didn’t even hurt.”

Fraser looked at you then, and the burn on your hand suddenly seemed much too small for the reaction it had managed to get out of him. 

“But you have a burn mark on your hand.”

It sounded stupidly obvious when he said it out loud, but he couldn’t seem to help himself. The whole thing sat wrong with him. The way you were saying it like it was a minor inconvenience, like it belonged in the same category as spilled drinks or a lost earring.

“A nice girl in the bathroom put ice on it,” you added, as though that was the important part. “She said she was in med school.”

He cleared his throat, suddenly aware of the tightness in it. “You’re serious?”

You nodded, completely unbothered. “Mm-hm.”

Fraser looked back at the road, but the city had gone a little blurry around the edges. Not from the lights. From the effort of not turning around and asking who had done it, who had been careless enough to leave a mark on your skin and walk away from it like nothing had happened. He didn’t know why that bothered him so much.

For a second he just drove, jaw set, trying to gather himself and failing a little.

“Okay, uh—” He hesitated, then decided to just say it. “What’s your address? So I can stop driving aimlessly.”

“…Aimlessly?”

Damn it. Fraser immediately regretted his wording. 

You sat up a little straighter. “Have you just been driving around? How long was I asleep for?”

“Just like, five minutes,” Fraser lied. “See? We’re still in the same area.” 

You looked out the window, then back at him. By pure coincidence, Fraser happened to be driving past Club Satine right at that moment.

“So, your address?” he prompted again, mostly to save himself the embarrassment.

“Actually, uhm—” your voice faltered. 

Fraser waited.

“—Would it be, like, a huge, massive inconvenience if we stopped for food?” you asked, your voice turning tentative. “I’m starving.”

You were watching him now, a little tentative and a little hopeful. You didn’t seem entirely sure if you were allowed to ask for that, like hunger itself was something you ought to apologize for.

For a second, Fraser considered all the reasons he should probably take you home.

It was after midnight. You were still noticeably drunk. You barely knew each other. This entire evening had already become significantly more complicated than intended.

Then your stomach growled loud enough for the both of you to hear it. Your eyes widened in horror.

Fraser looked back at the road before you could see the smile threatening to appear.

“Yeah,” he said, turning onto the next street. “Yeah, we can get food.”

⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚ ⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚ ⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚ ⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚

Fraser had never seen someone so enthusiastic about a McDonald’s cheeseburger in his life as you were right now. 

You looked almost reverent about it, as if the thing in your hands were a sacred object and not something sloppily assembled by a teenager earning minimum wage. The wrapper crackled as you tore it open with alarming urgency. Before Fraser had even managed to get the door for you, you’d already taken a bite that took nearly half the burger with it. Your nails pressed into the bun, ketchup immediately escaping to smear the corner of your mouth.

You didn’t really seem to care, though. Or maybe you did and simply didn’t care. Either way, you looked absurdly content. It was, Fraser decided, a little adorable. Almost in the same way a toddler was adorable right before it smeared applesauce into the upholstery.

“You always eat like that?” he asked. 

You paused mid-chew. “Like what?”

“Like someone’s going to take it from you.”

“Shut up.” You swallowed, then pushed your bottom lip out in a small, offended pout. “I’m hungry.”

Fraser’s mouth twitched into a smile.

There wasn't a trace of embarrassment in your voice. Just a simple statement of fact, as though being starving was a perfectly reasonable explanation for inhaling an entire cheeseburger before you’d even crossed the parking lot.

Honestly, it probably was.

With your heels now back on, you wandered through the parking lot toward his car, still working determinedly on the burger. The alcohol hadn’t made you incapable of walking, exactly. It had simply convinced your balance that straight lines weren’t necessary. 

Fraser found himself lingering a step behind. Just close enough that if your ankles gave out, he wouldn’t have to sprint to catch you. 

The parking lot was nearly empty, washed in the soft yellow glow of aging streetlights. Beyond it, Boston settled into that strange middle ground between night and morning, where the city had gone quiet but never quite asleep. A few cars hissed past on the road beyond, their headlights sliding over the asphalt and disappearing again.

Fraser was fishing his keys from his pocket when he realized your footsteps had stopped. The uneven click of your heels against the pavement vanished.

He looked up to see you staring at the sky. 

There was something almost childlike about the complete absorption on your face, as though the stars had managed to interrupt the concentration you had on your burger a second earlier.

Before Fraser could ask what had caught your attention, you drifted toward one of the concrete foundations anchoring a light pole.

Then, without hesitation, stepped onto it.

His stomach dropped. “Oh, holy shi— please don’t fall down!”

For one horrifying second Fraser saw the whole thing in brutal, cinematic detail: your heel slipping, your ankle folding, your head striking the concrete with a cracking sound he would hear in his nightmares for the rest of his life. Oliver asking how, exactly, he had managed to kill Miriam’s favorite cousin in a McDonald’s parking lot.

An impressively terrible story all around.

He was moving before the thought had even finished, covering the remaining distance to you in quick strides. Some protective instinct taking over before embarrassment had a chance to object. One of his hands found the back of your knee, steadying your leg before it had the chance to wobble. The other wrapped carefully around your calf.

Warm. 

Your skin was warm beneath his palm again even though it shouldn’t be and softer than he’d expected, the curve of your leg settling into his hand with disarming ease. Fraser became very aware, very quickly, that he was holding your bare leg after only knowing you for about an hour. 

The breeze swept through the lot then, tugging lazily at the hem of your dress and lifting the fabric around your legs enough for Fraser to see a little too much. 

His eyes reacted before the rest of him did.

Absolutely not. Don’t you dare look up her dress, Fraser. 

His gaze shot somewhere else completely, locking determinedly onto the glowing golden arches across the lot. 

“I wanted to be closer to the stars,” you said, with the solemn certainty of a child and the loose, dreamy logic of someone who’d had a little too much to drink.

Fraser let out a slow breath through his nose.

He glanced up at you, then down at the concrete block beneath your feet. Generously speaking, you’d gained another twenty inches of elevation, which didn’t seem like it would help much. Apparently it mattered to you, though.

“Is that the Big or Little Dipper?” you asked. 

Fraser squinted at the patch of sky you were pointing toward, still holding half a cheeseburger in your hand like a tiny, greasy trophy.

“I don’t think it’s either.”

You kept looking up, brow furrowed in concentration. “What do you mean?” you asked. “It’s sort of shaped like a shopping cart.”

Fraser glanced between your face and the stars, then tipped his chin upward again. “I think it’s Orion.”

That made you look at him, then back at the sky.

“See those three stars forming a line?” he said, pointing up. Your eyes followed his finger. “That’s Orion’s belt.”

He let his hand fall back to hold your leg again, shrugging. 

“I have absolutely no idea if I’m right, by the way.”

“I think you are,” you murmured. 

You were still looking up, and Fraser noticed you smiling at the sky. Not a tired smile, or a polite one, or the kind people wear when they’re trying to be agreeable. This one was bigger. Much softer. It reached your eyes and lit your whole face from the inside out.

Fraser found himself staring at you for a long moment, awkwardly sideways, still holding your leg so you wouldn’t topple off your improvised pedestal like a tipsy little saint. He looked long enough to realize, with a quiet jolt, that he liked seeing you smile like this.

He held a hand out toward you.

“Come on.”

You looked down at it for a moment before taking it. 

Your fingers slipped easily into his palm. Fraser steadied you as you stepped carefully off the concrete foundation, his other hand hovering instinctively near your elbow until both of your heels found the ground again.

He didn’t know why he expected you to politely start walking back to the car next so he could get you both home. Perhaps because that would have been the sensible thing to do. The sort of thing Fraser preferred. Instead, you immediately sat down on the edge of the concrete block you’d just climbed off, smoothing your dress beneath you before taking another unapologetically enormous bite of your cheeseburger.

You looked up at him, still chewing, before patting the concrete beside you for him to sit down too. With a quiet sigh that suggested resignation more than annoyance, he obeyed. 

“We're sitting here now?”

You shrugged one shoulder. “I like it here.”

Fraser followed your gaze back up to the stars as the night settled comfortably around the two of you. Traffic murmured somewhere beyond the lot. The restaurant door opened and shut behind them with a burst of warm noise and the smell of fries. Overhead, the sky stretched clear and dark, interrupted only by the amber halo of the streetlight above you.

You didn’t seem to notice any of it. 

Your eyes remained fixed on everything beyond it.

Fraser watched you, trying and failing to decide what exactly it was about the sight that held him so still. Maybe it was the way you looked when you were quiet, and so very focused. Maybe it was the fact that, for all your drunken wobbling and burger enthusiasm, you seemed to have found something in the sky that mattered more than the rest of the world combined.

Eventually, he asked the question that had been sitting in the back of his mind ever since he’d heard your nickname.

“Do you like space?” 

You looked over.

“I mean,” he added, nodding toward you, “I heard Miriam and Oliver call you Star, for some reason.”

You swallowed down the final bite of your burger and crinkled the paper wrapper into a little ball in your fist. “It’s just a silly nickname my dad gave me as a kid,” you said.

There was enough fondness in your voice that Fraser suspected it wasn’t silly at all.

You tipped your head back again, eyes returning to the sky.

“I’m actually kind of scared of space.”

Fraser looked at you in confusion, brows drawing together.

“It's beautiful up there but also so very…” You searched for the word, your free hand lifting vaguely toward the endless stretch of stars overhead. “…vast.” 

The word seemed insufficient somehow. Fraser understood that immediately, though he would have struggled to explain why. Language wasn’t really built to describe something that refused to end.

“Gives me vertigo almost,” you went on, frowning thoughtfully. “Or maybe that’s the alcohol.”

“It gives you vertigo?” Fraser repeated, because he couldn’t quite tell whether you were joking or not.

“I mean, there’s like hundreds of billions stars in just the Milky Way alone. And then there’s even more billions of galaxies just as big as ours. Ones we can’t even observe.” You shook your head, still staring upward as though the sheer scale of it offended you personally. “That’s crazy, right?”

“A little bit,” he admitted. 

He said it lightly, but he meant it. Fraser had spent enough nights under the same sky to know it was beautiful. He’d also spent enough of his life trying to keep things manageable to appreciate the comfort of limits. A broken fence could be fixed. A flat tire could be changed. A problem could be solved. The universe could not.

“And no one knows why it exists. Like sure, evolution makes sense and all that. But that’s just Earth.” You looked over at him then, genuinely perplexed. “Like why the fuck does the universe exist?”

“Great question,” Fraser said dryly.

“Even Google can’t answer it. Believe me, I’ve tried.”

Fraser turned his head. “You googled why the universe exists?”

“Repeatedly.”

He couldn’t help the laugh that escaped him. 

“Seriously,” you continued, apparently encouraged by his laughter. “Scientists can explain how it formed through, like, the Big Bang and quantum physics. But if you ask why, it’s all philosophical bullshit.”

The sheer irritation in your voice made him laugh again. “You think philosophy is bullshit?” 

“Only when I’m after a definite answer.” You shrugged. “So yeah, I get a little dizzy thinking about everything up there. I like sci-fi movies, though. They can make up definite answers.”

Fraser looked up at the sky himself. 

He’d never thought of it in this way, even though he lived beneath it and saw it every night. Driving home after late games. Standing outside bars he didn’t really want to be at. Waiting for the team bus that was always either too early or too late. He’d looked at the sky often enough to know its shape, its color, the way it changed with the seasons.

But he’d never once asked why it was there.

That wasn’t how his mind worked. Fraser was a how-person. How do you fix this? How do you get there? How do you make sure no one gets hurt? How do you keep moving when the answer isn’t obvious? He was practical like that. He trusted things that could be measured, repaired, or at least understood well enough to be useful.

Why was a much more dangerous question.

Why could go on forever.

Why could swallow a person whole if they let it.

Fraser didn’t like why. He didn’t know what to do with questions like that.

But he liked that you asked them.

He glanced back at you, still sitting on the concrete block, fidgeting with your burger wrapper in your hands. But your smile had disappeared—that shameless smile you’d stared at the stars with, mesmerized by their existence alone.

Your sadness was back. Subtle and lurking around the edges. Your bottom lip jutting out, almost quivering in your effort to hold back tears. Some thought in your head must’ve suddenly taken a wrong turn.

“You okay?” he asked. 

You let out a quiet breath. “Define okay.”

Fraser kept his eyes on your face. “Did you have a fun night?” he tried. 

“I think I tried to.” You laughed softly through your nose. “It was just… a really bad bachelorette.” 

Fraser didn’t interrupt. He didn’t know enough about how girls hung out in groups to question it, and you sounded like you were at the beginning of a rant anyway. 

“I try not to talk badly about other women because I’m a feminist, and I believe it does more harm to us as a group than any good, but—” You stopped yourself, chewing lightly on the inside of your cheek. “But it becomes very difficult to uphold those principles when girls can be so fucking cruel to each other.” 

The laugh you let out wasn’t really a laugh this time.

“They were all…” You gestured vaguely into the air, searching for a word that never quite came. “Very together. Like, aggressively together. And I was just… there.”

Fraser could picture it immediately, even if you hadn’t described it particularly well. The feeling of standing in a room full of people you were supposed to fit in with and somehow still being on the outside of it, watching everyone else laugh like they’d been handed the same script.

He knew that one too well from locker rooms full of guys who actually had nothing in common with him if you erased hockey from the equation.

“Then why did you go?” 

“Because the bride is my cousin,” you said as a matter-of-fact.  

Fair enough, Fraser thought to himself. 

He found himself wondering which side of the family this cousin belonged to. Maybe Miriam had gotten lucky, fever and all. Or maybe this bride was a cousin on the other side of your family.

He wasn’t about to ask, though. 

Your heel nudged absentmindedly against the edge of the concrete.

“Kinda felt like her friends were laughing at me the entire time, and I don’t know if I did something to them to deserve that.” 

The words came out almost apologetically, like you were worried you might be accusing people unfairly. Fraser had the absurd thought that you probably would’ve apologized to a mugger if you thought you’d inconvenienced him. That was how you came across. 

“I hope I didn’t, because that would suck. I try very hard to be kind.” 

Fraser believed you immediately. Not just kind. You were criminally kind. The sort of person who sounded genuinely distressed even when talking badly about women who’d spent the night making you feel like shit.

“But if they were laughing for the reason I suspect, then I really hate those bi—” You stopped yourself with a tiny wince. “No, sorry. Shouldn’t use that word.” 

Fraser almost laughed. “You can say it.” 

“But it’s not nice,” you argued. 

“Just say it.” 

You let out a long breath, as if you were preparing to commit a felony. “They’re… bitches.”

Fraser snorted. “Felt good, didn’t it?” he asked, amused.

You seemed to think about it like a moral dilemma. “I don’t know. Maybe.” 

He shook his head, smiling despite himself. You were a little unbelievable. Apparently even your anger came with a warning label.

Even you let out a shy little laugh, hand coming up to cover your mouth, before silence settled between you again. Fraser looked down at the wrapper in your hands, then back at your face, trying to decide where to start. He could ask more about the bride, about the girls, about the night in general—but the answer was already sitting there, half-hidden in everything you’d said.

“Is this all about some guy named Kevin?”

You looked over immediately. “Did Miriam tell you?” 

He shook his head. “No, the girl who had your heels kind of did. Said she’d beat my ass if I were Kevin.” 

Your eyebrows shot up. “Really? Oh my god, she was so nice to me for no apparent reason. I don’t even remember her name! That’s so bad from me.” 

Fraser smiled to himself. Somehow, forgetting the name of the woman who’d defended your honor seemed like exactly the kind of thing you’d feel guilty about. To remember kindness and punish yourself for not returning it properly.

“So what happened with Kevin?” he asked after a beat.

You stared down at the wrapper in your hands, turning it over once, then again, as if the answer might be printed on the grease-stained paper.

“Je suis… dumped, I guess. By Kevin.”

He could’ve almost guessed it, but what he didn’t understand was why. A darn why-question bothering him again. 

“And he’s friends with the groom,” you continued. “So I think all the girls took his side or something. I don’t want to know the story he’s been telling them.” 

Fraser kept quiet. He had the distinct impression that listening worked better than sympathy with you. You would simply unfold if he gave you the time. 

“I didn’t even notice anything was off in our relationship until he said I was too boring to be his girlfriend. After four years together, that’s the only explanation I got.”  

Your fingers tightened around the wrapper.

Fraser frowned. “What does that even mean?”

“I don’t know.”

He looked at you for a second, and your eyes were totally empty. Carefully holding things together to not fall apart. It was hard to reconcile that with the girl who’d turned his whole night into an adventure. Harder still to imagine Kevin looking at you and deciding boring was the word to best describe you with.

“Do I look boring?” you asked. “Or act it?” 

“No, you don’t.” Fraser didn’t even have to think about it. “I think Kevin sounds like an idiot.” 

You nodded with complete seriousness. “He was tall, though.”

Fraser barked out a laugh. “That doesn’t help his case.”

“It did for a while,” you admitted, then immediately frowned like you weren’t sure why you’d said that out loud. “Holy fuck, that’s so pathetic.” 

Fraser’s smile faded. Some people might have pitied you—you seemed to be doing enough of that yourself—but Fraser couldn’t manage pity. What he felt instead was a slow, rising disbelief, sharp enough to sting. He couldn’t understand how anyone could have looked at you for four years and reduced you to something so small. 

“I’m not thinking about him,” you admitted weakly, and when a tear slipped free, you wiped it away with the heel of your hand. “I’m thinking about what it says about me.”

It wasn’t about Kevin himself, Fraser realized, although it seemed impossible to somehow be your fault. It was the question he'd left behind. The one you'd been carrying around ever since, one that had rooted itself somewhere so deep even strangers could hear it if they listened closely enough.

Why weren’t you enough for him?

“It really looks like I had fun, right?” you said, smiling in a way that was almost cruel to yourself, as if you were trying to make a joke out of your own humiliation. You wiped at your face again, harder this time, dragging away more tears. “That’s what I get for trying not to be boring for one night.”

Before Fraser could think better of it, before he could remind himself that he barely knew you, that he had no business touching you like this, his hand lifted.

His thumb brushed beneath your eye, gentle as a breath, and caught the tears there along with the dark smear of mascara that had already begun to dry against your cheek. His touch was so careful it almost felt like an apology. Only after he’d done it did he realize how forward it might have been.

How intimate.

How much he wanted to keep doing it.

“Wow.”

Fraser frowned. “What?”

Your gaze had dropped to his hand, still resting, barely, against your cheek.

“Your hands are fucking huge.”

You looked up at him then, wide-eyed and shining in the pale wash of moonlight, your expression so open in the wait of a reaction from him. For one sudden, traitorous second, half-delirious with the closeness of it, Fraser had the absurd urge to part your lips with his thumb and see what you’d do. Whether you’d let him. Whether you’d take it into your mouth or not.

The thought came without warning. Just as quickly, he wanted to rip it out of his own head.

Jesus Christ. Really? Now? When she’s crying?

“It’s a hockey thing, I-I think,” Fraser stuttered out. 

For one suspended second, you only stared at him. 

Then you laughed so hard you doubled over.

⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚ ⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚ ⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚ ⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚

Fraser wasn’t entirely sure how he’d managed it, but a little while later you were back in the car, buckled safely into the passenger seat with a paper bag full of his leftover fries resting in your lap.

He suspected the fries had played a significant role in your cooperation.

The heater hummed quietly, warm air slowly chasing away the cold that had settled into both of you outside. He reversed out of the parking spot, hand on your seat to twist back and see. The lingering smell of fried food mixed with the faint perfume still clinging to you, and for a few peaceful moments neither of you spoke.

It wasn’t an uncomfortable silence anymore. Somewhere along the way, you’d moved past that. He couldn’t believe how nervous he’d been when you’d fallen asleep earlier. Now he wouldn’t have thought twice about waking you up if it happened again. 

“You can connect your phone, if you want to,” Fraser said absently, pulling into traffic. 

He also finally had your address now! 

You turned so quickly he almost laughed. “I can?” 

A smug, ingenious little smile crept across your mouth. Your excitement was entirely disproportionate to the privilege of controlling someone’s car stereo. 

“Oh no,” Fraser mumbled under his breath.

You either didn’t hear him or chose not to. After some fiddling with your phone, the opening guitar riff of a song that sounded older than both of you burst through the speakers.

Fraser frowned instinctively, reading the title of the display. Anything, anything by some band called Dramarama. Not that he considered himself to have any sort of musical authority, but that had to be one of the worst band names he’d ever heard.

“What even is this?” he huffed. 

“Don’t laugh at my music taste.” You gasped dramatically, one hand flying to your chest. “This was on the soundtrack to Nightmare on Elm Street 4.”  

“Four?” Fraser smiled, glancing over at you briefly before returning his attention to the road. “Oh, I’m sure that’s significantly better than the first three.” 

“I like stuff from the eighties. Sue me.” 

You stuck your tongue out at him.

It was so unexpectedly childish that Fraser laughed—a little more loudly and unguarded than he’d planned to—so his hand immediately came up to cover his mouth as he did. A habit that had settled in years ago, somewhere around the awkward stretch between childhood and adulthood, and he’d never quite managed to shake it.

You noticed immediately, tilting your head at him. “Do you always cover your face when you laugh?” 

Fraser lowered his hand. “No, I just—”  

“I do the same thing, but I used to have fucked-up teeth,” you cut him off, shrugging like it was nothing. “Had braces to fix most of it, but I still have a gap right—” You leaned closer across the center console, pointing dramatically. “—here.” 

Fraser looked briefly where you were pointing, your finger perched on your bottom lip as you showed the most minuscule little gap between two upper incisors. 

Fuck. You were stupidly cute.

“I used to be able to fit a straw between them,” you continued thoughtfully. “Maybe I still can, but it’s not as easy with freaking paper straws.”

Fraser smiled, shaking his head. “But think of all the turtles we’re saving.” 

“I don’t think straws alone are doing squat, Fraser.” 

He laughed at your wording, again just as unguarded and loud as before. His hand practically itched to lift and cover his mouth, but for some reason—a sudden ounce of added willpower—he didn’t. You noticed. He saw the tiny smile beginning to tug at the corner of your mouth. But, thankfully, you didn’t point it out.

Fraser would’ve been embarrassed if you did. 

Instead, you simply reached over and turned the music up a little. The obnoxious rock song eventually faded into something slower. Then another. Your playlist seemed perpetually stuck in 1987. 

Soon the car filled with soft synthesizers and warm guitar tones, the sort of music that sounded strangely comforting despite Fraser recognizing almost none of it. The roads had emptied considerably by now, streetlights sliding across the windshield in long ribbons of gold as the city drifted quietly around them.

Somewhere between one song and the next, the conversation wandered.

He found out you worked at a library.

Well—

“A library assistant,” you corrected.

Because apparently there was a major difference between librarians and library assistants. You couldn’t quite explain it to him, though, beyond the fact that librarians had master’s degrees and better paychecks. The workload seemed about the same.

Still, you were getting your master’s, and you were insistent on that. You talked shyly about hopefully starting sometime next year. You didn’t know if you’d get in, or if you did, whether you’d be able to handle the pressure. But you seemed determined, like you’d already decided that was where your life was headed and were simply waiting for everything else to catch up.

When Fraser told you he had no doubts about you succeeding, you argued that he knew nothing.

“No, I don’t,” he admitted. “But you seem like someone who finishes what she starts.”

For a second, you didn’t say anything. Just looked at him with an expression he couldn’t quite read before your attention drifted back out the window.

“My dad always says that too.”

The sentence was so soft Fraser almost missed it. He smiled to himself as he turned onto your street. 

It was well after one in the morning now. The streets of this suburban neighborhood lay completely empty, settling into that strange middle ground between night and morning, where every porch light seemed brighter than it should’ve and every parked car looked abandoned.

“This one,” you murmured eventually, pointing lazily through the windshield.

Fraser slowed, pulling alongside a modest redbrick house near the end of the block.

It wasn’t hard for him to put the pieces together.

The truck parked in the driveway carried the faded logo of what looked like a plumbing company. Flower boxes sat beneath the front windows, empty now except for dark soil waiting for spring. A wind chime made from seashells hung beside the porch, gently clicking together in the breeze.

This was your parents’ place. 

He wondered if this was the house you’d grown up in. Wondered how long ago you’d moved back. Wondered if packing up four years of a shared life with Kevin had happened all at once or little by little. He wondered far too many things about someone he’d met less than three hours ago.

The engine clicked softly as it cooled.

You were quick to undo your belt, and Fraser followed swiftly. By the time he rounded the hood of the car, you were standing on the sidewalk waiting for him, swaying ever so slightly in your heels, as if your body still hadn’t quite decided which way was up.

“You sure you’re okay getting inside?” he asked. 

“Fine and dandy,” you smiled. 

He believed exactly half of that.

Fraser followed behind you toward the front porch anyway, close enough to catch you if your balance betrayed you again, but far enough back that it wouldn’t feel like he was hovering. The porch light flickered on automatically as you reached it. 

For a moment everything felt strangely quiet.

The conversation had finally run out. The night, which had stretched far longer than Fraser expected, seemed to be gently arriving at its natural ending. And he had no words for it. 

He wasn’t good at endings. Never really had been.

“Good night—” Fraser tried to say, but he was cut off by you turning around on the porch, saying something at the exact same time, your words tangling together.

“Do you want to have sex with me?” 

The question hit him like an eighteen-wheeler going flat out over his body, even if he only heard the last end of it. He stared at you, mouth slightly open, while every coherent thought in his head scattered in different directions like startled birds.

He was aware, dimly, of the porch light buzzing overhead. Of the cool night air against his face. Of the fact that you were standing there in his hoodie, looking at him innocently for some reason. He hoped deeply that whatever he was feeling internally didn’t show externally to you.

“W-what?” was all that he could manage. 

You blinked at him, perfectly serious.

“Do you want to come inside and fuck me?” 

“What?” he repeated, continuing to stare at you. Of all the things he’d expected you to say, that would’ve never made the list. “Now?” 

“No, in three weeks.” You looked at him like he was the ridiculous one. “Of course I meant now.”

For one dangerous heartbeat, his imagination tried to answer the question before his brain could stop it. What would happen if he said yes? If he stepped inside with you, if he let the night tip over into something neither of you could take back? The thought was gone almost as quickly as it’d appeared, buried under something much stronger. You were drunk. Definitely still heartbroken. You’d spent half the night crying over another man, for Christ’s sake. 

“I can’t—” 

The words barely left his mouth before your expression changed, sobering up. 

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry—” 

You physically recoiled from yourself, as if the words had come out of someone else’s mouth and you were only now realizing what they meant. Both hands flew to your face, fingers splaying over your cheeks, and your shoulders curled inward so sharply Fraser could almost see you trying to fold yourself out of existence.

He took an instinctive step forward.

“No, no. I meant because you’re drunk and I’m not,” he explained quickly, keeping his voice gentle even as his own pulse kicked hard against his ribs. “I don’t think you know what you want right now.”

You slowly lowered your hands, letting them dangle awkwardly at your sides. “Oh, you’re being sweet, aren’t you? Fuck, that’s— You’ve been too nice to me all night. You don’t even know me—” 

Seeing you spiral in front of him was almost adorable.

He only watched you for a moment—the way your eyes darted quickly around in horror, refusing to settle on him for more than a second. The way your shoulders had gone tight with embarrassment. The way your hands wouldn’t stop fidgeting with the sleeves of his hoodie as apology after apology kept tumbling out, each one somehow creating the need for another.

It would’ve been funny if you hadn’t looked so genuinely mortified.

Fraser swallowed, forcing himself to stay where he was instead of stepping closer, instead of doing the stupid, instinctive thing and trying to fix it for you. He wanted to hug you. But he couldn’t crowd you. He didn’t want to make this worse by making you feel cornered, or worse still, like he was taking advantage of how badly you were floundering.

He didn’t know you.

He knew your laugh, and the way you talked with your hands when you were trying to make a point. He knew you got quiet when you were sad and a little reckless when you were trying not to be. He knew you’d cried over a man who didn’t deserve it, and then somehow still managed to ask him to come inside like it was the most natural thing in the world. He knew enough to understand that you were hurting, and drunk, and probably lonely in a way that had nothing to do with sex at all, but you somehow thought it did. 

And he especially knew that you deserved better than what you were drunkenly asking for. He refused to be something you woke up to tomorrow morning and regretted. 

So he kept his voice soft when he spoke again.

“Hey,” he said, careful and steady. “It’s okay. You don’t have to be embarrassed.”

Because you were embarrassed enough for both of you. And because, despite everything, he could still feel the ridiculous pull of wanting to make you feel better.

“I just propositioned a stranger outside my parents’ house.” You gestured weakly toward the front door, squeezing your eyes shut. “Like, they’re literally inside. What the actual fuck was I thinking?” 

You looked so sincerely devastated by your own behavior, Fraser had to bite the inside of his cheek to stop himself from laughing. Not at you, but at the sheer, impossible what-the-fuck of it all.

“I’m gonna go inside now,” you said, voice still a little strained with embarrassment, but determined. “Thank you for driving me, Fraser.”

“It was nothing, really,” he said softly.

You climbed the porch steps again, this time without turning around.

Fraser waited until you disappeared inside before finally letting out the breath he’d been holding. The front door clicked shut behind you. The porch light stayed on, spilling a pale yellow glow across the steps and the little patch of front yard beyond him.

He should’ve gone then. He knew that. Instead, he stood there for another moment, hands shoved into his pockets, staring up at the dark sky as if it might offer him some kind of explanation.

He thought about the stars. About the way you’d looked at the universe like it was simultaneously the most beautiful and most terrifying thing you’d ever encountered. 

And cheeseburgers.

About paper straws and the gap between your front teeth, for some reason. 

And impossible questions asked outside your parents' house at one-thirty in the morning: whether or not he wanted to come inside and sleep with you.

And he was slowly realizing, with growing annoyance, that he was probably going to be thinking about you for quite a while.

He rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. How exactly was he supposed to wake up tomorrow and carry on with life like this had been a normal evening? Because absolutely nothing about tonight had been normal.

He looked once more toward the front door.

This Kevin dude had been so wrong. Whatever else you were, you certainly weren’t boring.

Suddenly, the front door swung open again. Fraser looked just in time to see you hurry back onto the porch, barefoot now with his hoodie clutched in your hands.

“I still have your hoodie—”

“Keep it,” he said immediately.

Your eyebrows lifted.

“Seriously keep it, Star.”

You looked down at the hoodie for a moment, fingers tightening around the fabric, before a quiet smile spread across your face. Then you disappeared back through the front door a few seconds later.

“Good night, Fraser.”

Thank you for reading ◡̈ Please tell me what you think My ask box is always open!

"Fuck" Brock groans as you take his cock into your mouth. Matt groans as you fondle his balls, "Good girl."

You had been friends with Quinn for a long time, you were also a Devils fan and had made a bet with Brock and Matt before the game, which the Devils lost, which meant that they were getting to fuck you.

Brock looks down as you begin bobbing your head at a fast pace, "you friends with Jack and Luke too?"

You pull off his cock, "Yeah why?" You ask before Brock grabs a fistful of your hair and pulls you back towards his cock.

Matt groans as he realizes what Brock's thinking, "He wants to take a picture and send it to all three."

You moan around Brock as he begins fucking your throat, Matt groans as you start stroking him. Brock grabs his phone before taking a couple pics making sure to get the perfect angle, Brock groans as he pulls out and you stroke his cock till he cums all over your face. Brock takes a picture before you wipe some of it off and lick your fingers clean, Matt groans before your sucking on his tip till he's cumming down your throat, you swallow before sticking your tongue out to show that you swallowed.

"Good girl" Matt says, "you think you can take both of us at the same time."

"Yeah I do" you say.

Matt climbs on the bed and motions for you to come join him, you straddle him and line up with his cock before sinking down slowly causing you both to moan.

"Fuck so tight" Matt says, he smacks your ass before helping you move forward so Brock can enter you two.

Brock lines up with your entrance and enters you slowly, "Breathe baby" he says as he and Matt wait for you to adjust to their size. Brock smacks your ass before he and Matt begin moving in tandem, Matt reaches down and smacks your clit which causes you to moan loudly. Brock grabs your throat and tilts your head back so he can spit in your mouth, "Swallow."

You do as he commands and Brock feels your throat working as you swallow his spit, you moan as Matt starts circling your clit in tandem with their thrusts.

"You close baby?" Brock asks

"Yes daddy" you reply as your pleasure increases.

Brock and Matt both groan, "Yeah that's right who's making you feel this good?"

"You daddy" you say.

"You going to let us breed this tight pussy?" Matt asks.

"Yes daddy fuck please" you beg.

"Cum for us" Brock says, "Cum for your daddies and let us breed you baby."

You moan as you cum all over their cocks, Brock groans before he's cumming filling you up. Matt groans before he's cumming filling you up.

Brock pulls out and helps you off Matt before fingering their cum back into you and plugging you.

"Gotta make sure it takes" Brock says, even though he knows your on birth control.

📍 Ann Arbour, Michigan

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yourusername first week of junior year and im going crazy already

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yourbff i still cant belive we're juniors

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yourusername close friends stories

22 hours ago. 18 hours ago 3 hours ago

You arrived at the study room fifteen minutes early, It was not because you were nervous. At least, that was what you told yourself while arranging ten printed packets around the table, lining up spare pencils and checking the whiteboard markers twice.

You simply preferred being prepared, Matty had sent you enough scattered information over the previous few days to convince you that preparation was going to be necessary.

The course outline he provided had been incomplete, half of the photographs of their notes were blurry, one of the pages Luke sent contained more drawings in the margins than actual information. Erik had sent a picture of a notebook page with the message I think this is from the right chapter.

It had not been, Kent had been the only one to send everything you requested in one organized message, his notes were not particularly useful, but at least they were legible. You had responded with a simple thank-you.

Kent had reacted to the message with a heart before quickly removing it and replacing it with a thumbs-up. You had pretended not to notice. At exactly six minutes before the session, loud voices filled the hallway.

You looked toward the closed door, there were several overlapping conversations, a laugh that was probably Matty’s and someone insisting that they had brought the correct textbook. The door opened, Matty walked in first, Owen followed behind him, ducking slightly under the doorframe. Owen carried a notebook and two pens, which already made him look more prepared than you had expected “You’re here,” Matty said.

You looked at the clock on the wall “So are you.”

“We’re early.”

“You’re on time.”

“It hasn’t started yet.”

“That is generally what early means.” Owen looked between the two of you “She’s right.” Matty frowned at him “You don’t have to take her side immediately.”

“I’m taking the side that makes sense.” You gestured toward the chairs “Sit down.” Matty looked impressed “You sound like our coach.”

“That is not a compliment.”

Owen laughed as he sat, the others arrived in smaller groups, Luke entered with Mark Estapa and Jacob Truscott. Luke immediately stopped when he saw the packets “All of that is for us?”

“No,” you replied. “I’m hosting another ten-person tutoring session immediately after this one.” Mark laughed, Luke looked at you for a second before nodding “Okay. That was fair.” Ethan Edwards and Mackie Samoskevich arrived next, Mackie was carrying food, you looked at the bag in his hand “You’re not eating that over the worksheets.”

“I’ll be careful.”

“That is not the same as agreeing.”

Mackie reluctantly placed the bag on the windowsill, Philippe Lapointe came in behind Erik Portillo, both of them arguing over whether a goalie should be expected to understand the same course material as everyone else “I’m just saying,” Erik said as he entered, “my responsibilities are already different.”

“Academically?” you asked.

Erik stopped “No.”

“Then sit down.”

Philippe laughed and took the chair beside him, Kent arrived last, he was not late, he stepped into the room with a notebook tucked under one arm and looked around at the remaining chairs. His eyes found you before he sat, he smiled, it was a small smile, softer than Matty’s confident grin or Luke’s amused expression, you looked away first and began passing out the final materials “Is everyone here?” you asked.

Matty counted around the table, you stared at him “You had to count?”

“I wanted to make sure.”

“You created the group chat.”

“There are a lot of people.”

“That is your fault.”

Kent looked down, hiding a smile, you noticed anyway, once everyone had settled, you stood at the front of the room and looked around the table “Before we start, I need to make something clear.” Several side conversations continued, you waited, they gradually quieted “I am here to explain the course material. I will answer questions, help you study and make practice exercises. I will not do anyone’s assignments.”

“No one expects you to,” Ethan said.

“Good.”

“I might have hoped a little,” Mackie admitted. Ethan turned toward him. “She literally said she wouldn’t in the group chat.”

“I know. I said hoped.”

You pointed at Mackie “You are already becoming a concern.”

“I’ve been here for less than three minutes.”

“That is also concerning.” Mark laughed, Matty leaned back in his chair as though he had personally created a successful educational environment. You looked toward him “Don’t look proud.”

“I organized this.”

“You contacted me.”

“That’s organization.”

“You sent me three incomplete files and one screenshot of a chapter title.”

“Still counts.”

Owen opened his notebook “Can we start before this becomes another argument?” you nodded “Yes. Thank you, Owen.”

Matty looked offended “Why is she thanking you?”

“Because I’m being helpful.”

“Teacher’s favorite already,” Luke muttered “There are no favorites,” you said, Kent glanced at you “Not yet?”

You looked directly at him, Kent’s mouth curved into a smile “Just asking.”

“There will not be favorites.”

“Okay.”

He sounded far too pleased for someone who had just been corrected, you moved toward the whiteboard “I need to know exactly what you understand.” Silence, you waited, no one volunteered anything, you looked toward Matty “You’re the one who contacted me.”

“I know.”

“So answer.”

“We understand some of it.”

“How much?”

Matty looked around the table for help, Owen suddenly became very interested in opening his textbook, Luke leaned back, Mark looked toward Jacob, Jacob shook his head. You crossed your arms “Nothing?”

“We know things,” Luke said.

“Which things?”

Luke glanced at the packet “The name of the chapter.” Kent laughed, he tried to disguise it as a cough, you looked at him, “Something funny?”

Kent straightened “No.”

“Then why are you laughing?”

“Because that was a bad answer.”

“It was honest,” Luke said.

“It was still bad.”

You turned back toward the board “We’re starting from the beginning.”

The first fifteen minutes were difficult, not because they could not understand the material, because they struggled to remain quiet long enough for you to explain it. Matty interrupted with a question before you had finished your second sentence. Luke tried to answer it despite clearly not knowing the answer. Erik whispered something to Philippe, causing both of them to laugh.

Mackie reached toward the food bag on the windowsill, you looked at him, he slowly lowered his hand “I was just checking it.”

“It hasn’t gone anywhere.”

“You never know.”

“I know.”

Jacob was taking notes, Ethan appeared to be genuinely listening, Owen was attempting to follow the explanation while occasionally glancing toward Matty’s page, probably checking whether he was writing anything useful, Kent watched you, at first, you thought he was simply attentive.

His eyes followed you whenever you moved across the front of the room. He nodded occasionally, and he looked more focused than several of his teammates, then you noticed his notebook.

It contained three lines, you had been speaking for almost ten minutes.“Kent.”

He blinked “Yeah?”

“What did I just say?”

Every person at the table turned toward him, Kent looked at the board.

Then at his page “That the two concepts are connected.” you crossed your arms “That is impressively vague.” Matty started laughing, Kent’s cheeks turned pink “I was listening.”

“You were staring.”

“I have to look at someone when they talk.”

“You weren’t looking at Matty when he spoke.”

“Matty isn’t teaching.”

The table erupted, Luke slapped his hand against the table, Philippe leaned back, laughing. Even Owen smiled, Kent looked down, but he was smiling too.

You pressed your lips together, you were not going to laugh, then Kent glanced up and caught the small smile you had failed to hide, his own widened, that immediately made you serious again “Write this down.”

Kent picked up his pen “Yes, ma’am.”

The laughter started again, you narrowed your eyes, Kent lowered his head, his smile remained. Once you forced them to stop pretending they knew more than they did, the session became easier.

The problem was not intelligence, they were all smart enough to understand the course, they had simply missed too much of the foundation, travel, practice and overconfidence had allowed several small gaps to become one large problem.

You slowed the material down, you explained each concept separately before showing them how everything connected, when you asked questions, you made them answer in their own words.

The first few responses were painful, Matty used several technical words without placing them in an order that made sense, Luke gave an answer confidently enough that half the table believed him. He was wrong, Jacob corrected him, Luke stared at him “Whose side are you on?”

“The side of passing.”

“That is becoming a very popular answer,” Owen said.

You divided them into pairs for a practice exercise, Owen worked with Luke, Ethan sat with Jacob, Erik and Philippe formed one pair, Mackie joined Mark, Kent ended up beside Matty. That arrangement lasted less than five minutes before they began arguing.

“That says seven,” Kent said.

“It says one,” Matty replied.

“That is not a one.”

“I wrote it. I know what it says.”

“You shouldn’t.”

You walked toward them “What is happening?”

“His handwriting is impossible,” Kent said, Matty turned the paper toward you “Tell him this is a one.” You studied it, the mark looked like a box with a line through it “It looks like a chair.”

Kent burst out laughing, Owen looked over from the other side of the table “What happened?”

“She says Matty writes in furniture,” Kent said.

“That is not exactly what I said.”

“It was close.”

Matty looked at you “You’re supposed to help.”

“I am helping. Rewrite it.” you moved on to the next pair. Erik and Philippe had managed to reach an answer, though neither could explain how “Did you guess?” you asked “No,” Erik said “Yes,” Philippe said at the same time, Erik turned toward him “You were not supposed to say that.”

“She asked.”

“That doesn’t mean you answer.” You stared at both of them “Try again.”

Mackie and Mark had stopped working entirely because Mackie was attempting to convince Mark that the food on the windowsill was becoming cold “It was already cold when you brought it,” Mark said.

“That isn’t the point.” You tapped the worksheet “The point is here.” Mackie looked at the problem “Can I eat after this question?”

“You can eat when the session ends.”

He looked at the clock “How long is that?”

“Longer every time you ask.”

Mackie returned to the worksheet immediately, the competitiveness became useful, the moment Ethan answered one question correctly, Luke wanted the next one. When Owen solved a practice problem before Matty, Matty insisted the question had been easier.

“It was the same question,” Owen said.

“Different numbers.”

“That doesn’t make it easier.”

“It felt easier.”

“That isn’t academic evidence,” you said, Luke looked toward you “Do we get points?”

“This isn’t a game.”

“That sounds like no.”

“No.”

“What if we keep score ourselves?” Kent asked.

“You can do whatever motivates you to learn.”

Matty immediately drew a scoreboard on the top of his paper, you regretted the answer almost instantly, for the next twenty minutes, the room became unusually focused.

Not quiet, but focused, every correct answer earned a mark, Luke accused Owen of receiving an easier question. Jacob insisted Matty had counted one of Kent’s answers as his own. Philippe attempted to claim half a point for being “conceptually close.”

You denied it, Kent answered several questions correctly, each time, he looked toward you before writing down his point, you tried not to encourage him more than the others. Still, when he explained one of the more difficult concepts properly, you smiled. “Good.”

One word, that was all, Kent looked as though you had handed him a trophy, Luke noticed “Why does he get that face when she says he’s right?”

Kent turned toward him.

“What face?”

“That one.”

“I don’t have a face.”

“You definitely have a face,” Mark said.

“Everyone has a face,” Ethan added.

“You know what I mean.”

You tapped the whiteboard marker against the table “Can everyone return to the actual subject?”

Kent’s ears were red, he avoided looking at you for almost thirty seconds, then he started staring again, by the end of the scheduled two hours, the room looked different.

The food remained untouched, the packets were covered in notes, even Luke had stopped making jokes long enough to finish the final exercise, you reviewed the answers with them and discovered that most of the group had improved significantly, not enough to relax, but enough to prove the tutoring might work, Matty looked at his completed page “We’re geniuses.”

“You learned the basics.”

“Geniuses in progress.”

“You are still behind.”

“That sounds negative.”

“It is factual.”

Owen closed his notebook “When do we do this again?” you looked at your calendar “Saturday morning.” there was a collective pause, Luke frowned “This Saturday?”

“No, Luke. A random Saturday next year.”

Mark laughed, Luke looked unimpressed “What time?”

“Nine.”

Several expressions changed immediately, Mackie looked toward the others “In the morning?”

“Yes, Mackie. That is generally what nine means.”

“That’s early.”

“You have morning practices.”

“That’s different.”

“How?”

“We’re forced to attend those.” You stared at him, Mackie looked down.

“That came out badly.”

Matty waved away the concern “We’re athletes. Nine isn’t early.”

You looked toward him “You say that now.”

“We’ll all be there.”

“All ten?” Matty looked around the table, everyone nodded with varying degrees of confidence, Kent met your eyes “I’ll be there.” There was something about the certainty in his voice that made you hold his gaze.

“Good.”

Luke leaned back in his chair “There’s a party Friday.” You looked toward him “Then don’t stay late.”

“It’s supposed to be a big one.”

“That has nothing to do with me.”

Matty smiled “You should come.”

“I have work.”

“You can come after.”

“I also have to prepare for your tutoring session.”

“You already made the packet.”

“I need to make another one.” Owen looked at the amount of material in front of him “You make all of these yourself?”

“Yes.”

“That seems like a lot of work.”

“It is.”

The table became quieter for a moment, you hoped that meant they understood the effort involved, then Philippe looked toward Luke “Who’s hosting the party?”

You closed your eyes, the moment was gone, Luke mentioned a name, Mark asked whether everyone was going, Mackie said he had already planned to, Erik claimed he would only stay for an hour.

Jacob laughed at him “You have never stayed at a party for one hour.”

“This time will be different.”

“You said that last time.”

Kent looked toward you “Are you really not going?” you raised an eyebrow “Why?” He looked slightly embarrassed “No reason.”

Matty noticed immediately “You should come.”

“Matty.”

“What? She should.”

Kent kicked him under the table, Matty winced “Why did you do that?”

“I didn’t.”

“You absolutely did.”

You looked between them “What is happening?”

“Nothing,” Kent said quickly.

Matty leaned down to rub his leg “Apparently nothing has very sharp shoes.” Kent ignored him, you began collecting the extra packets “Whether I go or not is irrelevant. You have tutoring at nine the next morning.”

Luke stretched his arms above his head “We’ll be fine.”

“That sentence is rarely followed by good decisions.”

Owen began gathering his things “She’s probably right.”

“Why do you keep agreeing with her?” Matty asked.

“Because she keeps being right.”

“That’s fair,” Ethan said.

The session was officially finished, but no one seemed in a hurry to leave, Mackie finally retrieved his food, Luke and Mark continued talking about the party, Erik insisted he would be responsible, Jacob openly doubted him, Philippe asked whether there would be food, Matty was already describing the party as though it were an important team event.

You looked toward Kent, he had remained seated while everyone else packed, his notebook was open in front of him, filled with far more writing than it had been at the beginning “You improved,” you said.

Kent looked up “That almost sounded like a compliment.”

“It was an observation.”

“I’ll take it.”

He closed the notebook “You should come Friday.”

“You too?” Kent shrugged “You don’t have to stay long.”

“I have work.”

“You said that.”

“And you chose not to listen.”

“I listened. I’m just asking again.”

“You know asking repeatedly doesn’t change my schedule.”

“Sometimes schedules change.”

“Mine don’t.”

Kent smiled “You really like your planner.”

“My planner has never made me wait for anything.”

“That felt targeted.”

“It wasn’t.”

“Not yet?”

You gave him a look, Kent stood and helped you gather the remaining papers without asking “You don’t have to do that.”

“I know.”

“You say that often.”

“Because you tell me that often.” He carried the stack toward the door, you followed him into the hallway, where the others were still talking loudly about Friday night.

Matty turned “So you’re coming?”

You sighed “For half an hour.”

yourusername close friends stories

18 hours ago. 18 hours ago 1 hour ago

By Saturday afternoon, nearly every member of the group had found a way to apologize, you had expected messages, maybe a few excuses about alarms, headaches or losing track of time. You had expected them to send the money they owed and then avoid you until the embarrassment passed. You had not expected them to start appearing in person, Luke and Mark were the first.

They caught you outside your dorm not long after you returned from the study room. You were still carrying the folder of unused worksheets, and your mood had not improved after throwing away ten untouched coffees, Luke stood near the entrance with his hands pushed into his jacket pockets. Mark was beside him, looking unusually uncomfortable “Can we talk?” Mark asked.

“I think you’ve already sent enough messages.”

Luke winced “Yeah. We probably deserved that.” You tried to step around them, but Luke moved aside rather than blocking your path“We’re not asking you to tutor us again,” he said quickly. “We just wanted to apologize properly.”

You looked between them, Luke rarely appeared uncertain, but he could barely meet your eyes, Mark held out his hands “Will you walk with us?”

You agreed, though mostly because you needed to clear your head, the three of you walked around campus for nearly an hour. At first, neither of them knew what to say. Luke kicked at small stones along the path while Mark attempted to organize an apology that clearly sounded better in his head. Finally, Luke sighed “We were idiots.”

“That’s one way to describe it.”

“And you didn’t deserve that,” Mark added. “You did all that work for us, and we didn’t even answer.”

“You were all awake enough to read the messages.”

Luke grimaced “I know.”

“You promised you would be there.”

“I know.”

“And then you made me sit alone for forty-seven minutes.”

Luke looked toward you “You’re going to keep saying forty-seven instead of forty-five, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Fair.”

They did not try to blame the party. They listened while you explained exactly how humiliating it had felt to prepare everything and realize that not one of them considered your time important enough to send a warning.

By the time they walked you back to your dorm, you had not forgiven them, but your anger had softened enough that you no longer wanted to throw the folder at Luke’s head, Matty arrived shortly after, he insisted on taking you to lunch.

You refused twice before he announced that he was going to stand outside your dorm until you agreed. “You organized one failed study group, and now you think you can organize my afternoon?”

“I’m trying to repair the damage.”

“You could start by leaving.”

“Please?”

Matty looked so miserable that you eventually gave in, at lunch, he apologized before you had even looked at the menu “I promised you everyone would show up.”

“Yes.”

“And then I didn’t show up.”

“Also yes.”

“I know it looks bad.”

“It doesn’t look bad, Matty. It was bad.”

He nodded “You’re right.”

“You specifically told me nine wasn’t early.”

Matty covered his face with both hands “I know.”

“You said it more than once.”

“I was overconfident.”

“You were irresponsible.”

“That too.”

He admitted that he had been the one convincing everyone they could stay longer at the party. He had assumed someone would set an alarm, wake the others and make sure the group arrived, no one had “I shouldn’t have made promises for everybody,” he said.

“I told you that before I agreed.”

“I know.”

“You agreed to my conditions without even speaking to them.”

“I was desperate.”

“And now?”

“Now I’m desperate and ashamed.” You almost smiled, almost, Matty paid for lunch before you could reach for the bill, it did not earn him another tutoring session, but you accepted the gesture.

Owen took you to dinner that same evening, unlike Matty, he did not fill every silence, he walked beside you quietly, opened the restaurant door and waited until you were both seated before speaking “I’m sorry.”

You looked at him, Owen continued “Not because we still need help. I am sorry about that, obviously. But that’s not why I asked you to come.”

“Then why?”

“Because it was disrespectful.” His apology was simple, which made it more effective than the others “You prepared everything,” he said. “You stayed longer during the first session. You bought coffee. We treated your time like it didn’t matter.”

You looked down at the table “That’s what made me angry.”

“I know.”

“You all could have sent one message.”

“I know.” Owen did not offer excuses about the party or say that he had intended to wake up. He did not promise it would never happen again because he seemed to understand that you were not ready to trust another promise “I don’t expect you to tutor us again,” he said. “I just didn’t want you to think we weren’t sorry.”

That was the first apology that made you believe the person giving it had truly understood why you were hurt, on Sunday morning, Erik asked you to meet him for coffee, when you arrived, Dylan Duke was sitting beside him. You stopped near the table “Why is Dylan here?”

Erik looked slightly embarrassed “Moral support.” Dylan lifted his cup “He’s been rehearsing.”

“I have not.”

“You apologized to me three times in the car.”

“I was practicing.” You sat across from them, Erik apologized before you had even removed your jacket, then again after you ordered, then a third time when the coffee arrived.

“I understand,” you finally said.

“I just want to make sure.”

“You’ve made sure.”

“I feel terrible.”

Dylan nodded “He does. He barely spoke on the drive.” Erik looked at him “You’re not helping.”

“I’m confirming the remorse.” Despite yourself, you laughed, Erik looked relieved. It did not mean you had forgiven him completely, but it was the first time you had laughed since waiting alone in the study room, later that afternoon, Philippe and Jacob arrived directly at your dorm.

They brought a large bag filled with snacks, two drinks and a handwritten apology that looked as though Jacob had written it because Philippe’s handwriting was even less readable than Matty’s “We didn’t know what you liked,” Philippe said, handing you the bag.

“So we bought too much,” Jacob added, You looked inside, there were enough snacks for several people “This is excessive.”

“We panicked,” Philippe admitted, Jacob handed you an envelope containing their share of the missed session “We know this doesn’t fix anything.”

“And we’re not expecting you to come back,” Philippe said “We just wanted to show you that we’re actually sorry.”

You stepped aside and allowed them into the small common area outside your room, they stayed only a few minutes, perhaps understanding that you were exhausted by apologies, before leaving, Jacob glanced toward the folder on your desk “You made all of those for us?”

“Yes.”

Philippe looked guilty all over again “That somehow makes it worse.”

“It should.” They nodded and left without arguing, Ethan was the last one to reach you on Sunday, he asked whether you had eaten dinner.

When you said no, he told you to meet him downstairs, you expected somewhere casual. Instead, he took you to a steakhouse that was far too nice for two university students apologizing over a missed tutoring session. “This is excessive,” you said after sitting down.

“Probably.”

“You don’t need to buy me an expensive dinner.”

“I know.”

“Then why are we here?”

Ethan looked at you “Because you deserved better than ten people ignoring you.” He did not blame the party, he did not mention his alarms, he simply admitted that he had made a choice, and you had suffered the consequences of it.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I should’ve been there.”

You believed him, by sunday night, every one of them had reached out in some way, Luke and Mark had walked with you, Matty had taken you to lunch, Owen had taken you to dinner, Erik had apologized over coffee with Dylan Duke beside him, Philippe and Jacob had come to your dorm with snacks and payment, Ethan had taken you to a steakhouse, the only one who actually had a excuse was Mackie who wasnt at athe party because he was sick

Every one of them had found a way to face you, every one except Kent, you had received nothing from him, no message, no call, no apology.

Not even a payment notification, you checked your phone more often than you wanted to admit, every time it buzzed, some small part of you expected to see his name. It was never him, that silence hurt more than the excuses, Kent had been the one who looked directly at you at the party and promised he would arrive, he had been the one who made you believe that even if the others forgot, he might remember.

Now he was the only one who had not tried to make it right, by Sunday night, you had stopped being angry at the entire group, you were only angry at him.

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yourusername thanks to these guys i spent $0 on food this weekend, dont do it again

tagged: lukehughes_ mbeniers10 erikportillo dylanduke25 brendan.brisson edwards.73 markstapa owenpower_ plapointe_22 jacob.truscott20

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dylanduke25 i was only there for moral support

↳ yourusername: i appreciated

brendan.brisson i just have to say thanks matty for the free food

↳ mbeniers10: you're so funny brendan 😒

mackie.samo My wallet is grateful that I had gotten sick

↳ yourusername: you're a lucky guy

yourbff i still cant belive that some hockey guys spent more time with you than me this weekend :(

↳ yourusername: i'm so sorry :(

yourusername close friends stories

12 hours ago. 7 hours ago 30 minutes ago

You had been back in your dorm for ten minutes when someone knocked on the door. You assumed it was Ethan, maybe he had realized you had left something in his car, or perhaps he had returned because he felt the expensive dinner had not been enough of an apology.

You placed your bag on the desk, slipped off your shoes and crossed the small room, the second you opened the door, every thought disappeared.

Kent stood in the hallway, he wore a dark sweatshirt beneath his jacket, his hands buried inside the pockets. His hair was still damp from the cold outside, and the shadows under his eyes made it obvious that he had not slept well.

For a few seconds, neither of you spoke, you had spent the entire weekend expecting him, checking your phone, looking toward the entrance whenever someone approached, wondering why every other player had found enough courage to apologize while Kent remained silent.

Now that he was standing in front of you, the anger returned so quickly that it tightened your chest “What are you doing here?”

Kent swallowed “I came to see you.”

“It took you long enough.”

“I know.”

You waited for him to continue, he did not, he looked down the hallway, then back at you “Can you come with me?”

Your eyebrows lifted “No.” The answer seemed to surprise him, though it should not have “Please.”

“If you came to apologize, you can do it here.”

“I know.”

“Then do it.”

Kent’s hands shifted inside his pockets, he looked more nervous than he had during the tutoring session, more uncomfortable than when you caught him staring at you instead of taking notes “I want to talk to you somewhere else.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want to do this in the hallway.”

“You could come inside.” Kent looked past you toward the small dorm room, then shook his head “I think I need to walk first.” You stared at him “That sounds like your problem.”

“It is.” The immediate agreement weakened your anger slightly, Kent took a slow breath.

“I know I don’t deserve you coming anywhere with me. But could you please give me half an hour?”

You folded your arms “You had all weekend.”

“I know.”

“Everyone else managed to find me.”

“I know.”

“Luke and Mark came the same afternoon. Matty took me to lunch. Owen took me to dinner. Erik got coffee with me. Philippe and Jacob came here. Ethan just took me out.” Kent’s jaw tightened slightly when you mentioned Ethan, though he made no comment “And you,” you continued, “did nothing.”

“I know.”

“You keep saying that.”

“Because you’re right.” There was no excuse in his voice, no irritation, just shame, you looked at him for several seconds before reaching for your coat “Half an hour.”

Kent’s shoulders relaxed “Okay.”

“This does not mean I’ve forgiven you.”

“I know.”

“And if you take me to some ridiculous party—”

“I’m not.”

“Where are we going?”

“You’ll see.” You gave him a warning look, Kent opened his mouth, apparently realized how that sounded, and quickly added, “It’s a convenience store.”

You blinked “A convenience store?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s where you want to have this conversation?”

“It’s open.”

“That is usually a quality convenience stores have.”

Kent looked embarrassed “It’s quiet at night.” you stepped into the hallway and closed the door behind you “Your plan is terrible.”

“I know.”

Despite yourself, you almost smiled, you did not allow him to see it, Kent’s car was parked outside the dorm, the drive was quiet, he did not turn on music. He did not fill the silence with pointless conversation or ask about the steakhouse.

Both hands remained on the wheel, you watched the buildings pass outside the window and waited for him to speak. He did not, the convenience store sat near the edge of campus, its bright lights glowing against the dark parking lot.

There were only two other cars outside, Kent parked but did not immediately move, you looked toward him. “You brought me here to sit in your car?”

“No.” he unfastened his seat belt “I thought we could get something.”

“I already ate.”

“I know.”

Inside, the store was almost empty, a tired employee sat behind the register, looking down at his phone. Refrigerators hummed along the back wall, and the overhead lights were far too bright for how late it was.

Kent grabbed two drinks from a cooler, he hesitated before picking one for you, then he selected the exact one you usually bought. You noticed, you did not comment, he added a bag of your favorite candy and carried everything toward the register “You don’t need to buy me things.”

“I know.”

“That didn’t work for Matty either.”

“I’m not trying to buy forgiveness.”

“Then why are you buying those?”

Kent glanced at the candy “Because you like them.”

The answer was so simple that it irritated you for an entirely different reason, he paid, then led you toward a small counter near the windows where customers could sit. You took one of the stools, Kent sat beside you, leaving enough space that your knees did not touch.

For several moments, he stared at the unopened drink in his hands, you waited, finally, he spoke “I woke up at ten-fifty.”

You looked toward him “The session was at nine.”

“I know.”

“You read my messages.”

“Not until I woke up.”

“And then?”

Kent rubbed one thumb along the side of the bottle “I saw what you sent.”

“Obviously.”

“I started writing an apology.” You said nothing “I deleted it.”

“Why?”

“Because it sounded like an excuse.”

“What did it say?”

“That we stayed too late. That my phone died. That I didn’t hear my alarm.”

“Those are excuses.”

“I know.”

“So you decided saying nothing was better?”

“No.” his answer came quickly “I knew it was worse. I just kept thinking I had already made it worse, and every message I wrote sounded selfish.”

“You could’ve said sorry.”

“I wanted you to believe me.”

“You didn’t give me anything to believe.”

Kent looked down “I know.”

The anger returned “You were the one who promised me.”

“I know.”

“You looked directly at me.”

“I remember.”

“I told you I trusted you.”

His eyes closed for a second “I remember that too.”

“That’s what made it worse.”

Kent nodded slowly “I know.”

You pushed the unopened candy away “Stop saying that.”

His head lifted “Then tell me what to say.”

“I shouldn’t have to teach you how to apologize.”

“I’m not asking you to.”

“It sounds like you are.”

Kent looked toward the dark parking lot beyond the window, for a moment, he seemed unable to speak, then he faced you again “I’m sorry.”

You remained silent “Not because we need you to tutor us. Not because my grade is bad or because Coach is going to be angry.”

His fingers tightened around the bottle “I’m sorry because you prepared everything for us. You stayed late during the first session. You came to the party and reminded us. You asked me directly if I would be there, and I promised.”

Your throat tightened, Kent continued “And then I made you sit alone.”

The store suddenly felt too quiet “You bought coffee,” he said. “You made more worksheets. You trusted me, and I made you feel like your time didn’t matter.”

His voice had grown quieter “It does matter.”

You looked down at your hands “You didn’t act like it.”

“I know.” You gave him a sharp look, Kent corrected himself immediately “You’re right. I didn’t.”

He took a breath “I was embarrassed when I woke up. Then I was scared you wouldn’t speak to me. And the longer I waited, the harder it became to come here because every hour made me look like I cared less.”

“Did you?”

“No.”

The answer came without hesitation “I cared too much.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“I know it doesn’t.”

Kent leaned forward, forearms resting against his knees “I didn’t know how to explain why disappointing you felt worse than disappointing everyone else.” You became still, Kent looked at the floor. “The others were angry because we lost the tutor. I was angry because you looked at me at the party and believed me.”

He finally met your eyes “And I liked that you believed me.”

The confession shifted something between you, not enough to erase the weekend, but enough to make the anger less simple “Why didn’t you come yesterday?”

“I almost did.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“I saw Luke and Mark leaving your dorm.” You frowned “So?”

“I thought you were still angry.”

“I was.”

“Then Matty said he was taking you to lunch.”

“And?”

“And Owen said he had dinner with you.”

“You could have still contacted me.”

“I know.” You gave him another look “Sorry.” Kent ran one hand through his hair “It felt like everyone was doing a better job than I could. Then I thought showing up after them would make it seem like I was only apologizing because they did.”

“So instead you waited until I had seen every single one of them?”

“When you say it like that, it sounds worse.”

“It is worse.”

Kent nodded “Yes.”

Despite yourself, a small laugh escaped, it was not a happy one but it was enough for Kent’s expression to soften, he did not smile, he seemed to understand he had not earned that yet “You really are terrible at this,” you said.

“I’m usually better at talking.”

“You stared at me through most of the tutoring session.”

“I was distracted.”

“By what?” Kent looked at you, the answer was obvious before he said it “You.”

You glanced away “That isn’t relevant.”

“It is to me.”

“This conversation isn’t about whether you think I’m pretty.”

“I didn’t say pretty.”

“You didn’t have to.”

Kent’s ears turned pink, he looked down at the bottle again “You are, though.” You hated that the corner of your mouth threatened to move, Kent noticed, his own expression changed slightly, but he still did not smile “I’m still angry,” you said.

“You should be.”

“I’m not tutoring you again.”

“I know.”

“You don’t get to ask me every day until I change my mind.”

“I won’t.”

“And you still owe me for the missed session.” Kent immediately pulled out his phone, you stared at him “What are you doing?”

“Paying you.”

“Right now?”

“You said I owe you.”

“You could have done that yesterday.”

“I should have.” He sent the payment while sitting beside you, your phone buzzed inside your pocket, Kent put his phone away “I’m not asking you to forgive me tonight.”

“Good.”

“I just didn’t want you to think I didn’t care.”

You looked at him, Kent held your gaze, nervous but honest “You were the only one who didn’t contact me,” you said quietly.

“I know.”

This time you did not correct him “I kept checking.” his expression fell “You did?”

You regretted admitting it immediately “That isn’t the point.”

“No, I know.” Kent looked almost more ashamed than before “I’m sorry.”

You opened the drink he had bought you, Kent watched, as though the small action meant more than it should. “You have five minutes left,” you said.

His eyebrows lifted “Of the half hour?”

“Yes.”

“What happens after five minutes?”

“You take me back.”

“Can I ask one question first?”

“That depends.”

“Will you talk to me again?” You looked toward him, there was no teasing in his face, no confident smile, he genuinely did not know.

“Yes.” Kent exhaled “But I’m still angry.”

“I can work with that.”

“You’re not supposed to sound pleased.”

“I’m not pleased that you’re angry.”

“You look pleased.”

“I’m pleased you’re going to speak to me.”

You shook your head, Kent finally allowed himself a small smile, then he picked up the candy and placed it closer to you “You should take these.”

“I said I’m not forgiving you.”

“They’re not forgiveness candy.”

“What are they?”

“Regular candy.”

You stared at the bag, then took it, Kent’s smile widened “Don’t make that face.”

“What face?”

“The one that makes you look like you won.”

“I didn’t win.”

“Good.”

“I’m making progress.”

“You’re not.”

“You took the candy.”

You stood from the stool.

“Our five minutes are over.” Kent stood immediately, he followed you toward the exit, holding the door open, the cold air hit as soon as you stepped outside. You pulled your coat tighter, Kent walked beside you toward the car, his hand moved slightly, as though instinctively reaching for yours, he stopped himself before touching you.

You noticed, for some reason, that restraint affected you more than if he had taken your hand, when you reached the passenger door, Kent opened it. You looked at him before getting inside “You really waited two days because you couldn’t write a good apology?”

Kent looked embarrassed “Yes.”

“That might be the stupidest thing you’ve done.”

“I missed tutoring because I went to a party.”

“Second stupidest.”

“Fair.”

You sat inside, Kent closed the door gently, during the drive back, the silence felt different. When he stopped outside your dorm, you reached for the handle “Y/N.”

You looked back, Kent gripped the steering wheel “I really am sorry.”

“I know.”

The words left before you could reconsider them, Kent’s expression softened, you opened the door, before stepping out, you looked at him once more “Goodnight, Kent.”

“Goodnight.”

yourusername close friends stories

19 hours ago. 19 hours ago 13 minutes ago

Kent asked you out three days after the convenience-store apology, not immediately. He waited until you were speaking to him normally again, though “normally” still included reminding him that he had made you wait forty-seven minutes.

You were leaving class when you found him near the building entrance with two coffees, this time, yours was correct “No hazelnut,” you said after taking the first sip.

“I learn from my mistakes.”

“Eventually.”

Kent smiled, then looked suddenly nervous “Are you busy Friday?”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“On why you’re asking.”

He glanced down at his coffee “I want to take you to dinner.”

You looked at him “Like an apology dinner?”

“No.”

“A tutoring negotiation?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

Kent’s ears turned pink “A date.” you let him wait for a moment, Kent shifted his weight “You can say no.”

“I know.”

“That sounded like a no.”

“It wasn’t.”

His eyes lifted “So you’ll go?”

“Yes.”

Kent smiled so quickly that you had to look away before he saw how much you liked it, on Friday, he took you to a small restaurant away from campus, It was quiet enough that none of his teammates were likely to appear, something Kent mentioned almost immediately “I didn’t tell Matty where we were going.”

“That was intelligent.”

“I also didn’t tell Owen.”

“Even more intelligent.”

Kent held the door open for you and pulled out your chair before sitting across from you, for the first few minutes, he was noticeably nervous. He read the menu without really looking at it, nearly knocked over his water and asked whether you liked the restaurant before either of you had eaten anything “You’re overthinking this,” you said.

“I’m not.”

“You’ve checked whether I’m having a good time three times.”

“I want to know.”

“We’ve been here twelve minutes.”

“That’s enough time to form an opinion.”

You smiled “I’m having a good time.”

Kent relaxed after that, Conversation came easily once he stopped trying to make the evening perfect. He told you stories about Vancouver and his family. You talked about starting Michigan early and how strange it felt being a junior when you were only three months older than him. “So you’re technically older,” Kent said.

“By three months.”

“Still older.”

“Does that bother you?”

“No.”

He smiled “I like smart older women.”

You stared at him, Kent immediately looked down “that sounded better in my head.”

“It sounded terrible out loud.”

“But you smiled.”

“I did not.”

“You did.”

Dinner lasted longer than either of you expected, Kent listened when you spoke and remembered details from previous conversations , by the time dessert arrived, you had almost forgotten how angry you had been with him.

Almost

Kent walked you back to your dorm afterward, the campus was quiet, the air cold enough that he offered you his gloves even though you already had your hands tucked inside your sleeves.

“You’ll be cold,” you said.

“I’ll survive.”

“You say that now.”

Kent laughed, at your dorm entrance, both of you stopped, neither seemed ready to say goodbye. Kent shoved his hands into his pockets.“I had a really good time.”

“So did I.”

“Even though I’m academically irresponsible?”

“You’re improving.”

“That almost sounded like a compliment.”

“Don’t get used to it.” Kent smiled, then his expression became uncertain, he looked at you, glanced briefly at your lips and then looked away again. You realized he was trying to decide whether to kiss you, he wanted to, but he was too nervous to risk misreading the moment.

“Kent.”

“Yeah?”

“You think too much.” before he could ask what you meant, you stepped closer, caught the front of his jacket and kissed him, Kent froze, only for a second.

Then one hand moved carefully to your waist while the other touched your cheek, the kiss remained soft, almost hesitant, until Kent finally understood that you were not going to pull away.

When you did, his forehead rested against yours “You kissed me,” he said quietly.

“You noticed.”

“I was going to ask.”

“You were taking too long.”

Kent smiled “Can I do it again?”

You pretended to consider it “Yes.”

The second kiss was warmer and less uncertain, when Kent finally stepped back, he looked almost dazed “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“You know where I live.”

“That’s not an answer.”

You smiled “Yes, Kent. You’ll see me tomorrow.”

He walked away still smiling, and for once, you did not mind that he looked back twice before reaching the end of the path.

yourusername close friends stories

You knew exactly when Kent was supposed to return from Beijing, you had checked the itinerary so many times that you could recite it without looking. The Olympics had been an incredible opportunity for him. You knew that. You had watched every game you could, sometimes waking at ridiculous hours and sitting in front of your laptop wrapped in one of Kent’s sweatshirts.

You had seen him score, you had watched him represent Canada, you had listened proudly whenever commentators said his name, but pride did not make you miss him less.

Video calls helped until they ended, messages helped until you rolled over at night and remembered he was on the other side of the world, by the time he returned to Michigan, you felt as though he had been gone for months rather than weeks.

You waited near the team facility, shifting nervously from one foot to the other, Owen had returned too, but you barely noticed anyone else arriving.

Then Kent appeared.

He looked tired from traveling. His hair was messy beneath his hat, a backpack hung from one shoulder, and his suitcase rolled behind him, his eyes searched the area, the moment he saw you, he released the suitcase.

It tipped sideways onto the pavement, Kent did not seem to notice, you ran toward him, he caught you around the waist, lifting you from the ground as your arms locked around his neck “You’re home.”

“I’m home.”

You buried your face against him, Kent held you so tightly that breathing became difficult, but you did not care “I missed you,” he whispered against your hair.

“I missed you more.”

“That’s impossible.”

“You were busy being an Olympian.”

“I still missed you.” He lowered you carefully but did not let go. Both hands moved to your face, and then he was kissing you, Kent had never been shy about affection, but this kiss was different.

Weeks of distance were carried in it, he kissed you once, pulled back long enough to look at you, and kissed you again before you could speak, Owen past and made a teasing sound, Kent ignored him.

“You watched?” he asked, his forehead resting against yours.

“Every game.”

“Even the early ones?”

“Every game.”

His smile softened “You saw my goal?” you pretended to think “I might have.”

“Y/N.”

“Yes, I saw it.”

“What did you think?”

“I thought you were showing off.”

Kent laughed “You were proud.”

“Very.” he kissed you again, you touched the edge of his Team Canada jacket “You looked good in this.”

“You like Canadian athletes?”

“I tolerate one.”

“Only one?”

“Owen was good too.”

Kent’s expression fell immediately “Don’t mention Owen while I’m trying to have a reunion with my girlfriend.” you laughed and wrapped your arms around him again “I’m proud of you.”

His teasing disappeared, Kent held you closer “It wasn’t how we wanted it to end.”

“I know.”

Canada had been eliminated without winning a medal, and you knew Kent was still disappointed. He could be proud of the experience while wishing the result had been different “You still went to the Olympics,” you reminded him. “You scored. You represented your country. You were incredible.”

Kent looked down “I wanted to bring something home.”

“You did.”

His eyebrows lifted. “What?”

“You came home.”

The words made him stare at you for a moment, then he pulled you against him again “That was really cheesy.”

“You liked it.”

“I loved it.” Kent kissed your forehead, behind him, someone called out that his suitcase was blocking the walkway, he looked over his shoulder as though remembering it existed.

You laughed “Go get your things, Olympian.”

“Come with me.”

“You’re going ten feet away.”

“I just got you back.” You took his hand “I’m not going anywhere.” Kent intertwined your fingers and kept them linked while awkwardly retrieving the fallen suitcase with his free hand, he did not release you once.

__________________

You could barely watch the final minute, Michigan was leading Minnesota, but one goal never felt safe enough, not in a championship game, not with everything at stake. You stood among the Michigan families and supporters, hands clasped tightly beneath your chin while the final seconds disappeared from the clock.

When the buzzer sounded, the arena erupted.

Michigan had won, the players poured onto the ice, helmets and gloves scattered behind them as they surrounded one another, you searched for Kent immediately. He disappeared beneath the celebration for several seconds, swallowed by maize-and-blue jerseys. Then he emerged near the edge of the group, his face was bright with disbelief and joy.

He had won.

After returning from Beijing, after rejoining his teammates and adjusting again to college hockey, Kent was a Big Ten champion, you clapped until your hands hurt, Kent lifted the trophy with the others, shouting as the team gathered around it. Photographers surrounded them, flashes reflecting from the ice.

For a while, you remained only another person in the crowd, then Kent looked toward the stands, he scanned the rows until he found you.

You lifted both hands above your head and cheered, Kent pointed directly at you, even from across the rink, you could see his smile widen, by the time the players were allowed to meet their families and friends, you were waiting near the tunnel.

Matty reached you first, still shouting about the championship, Owen appeared behind him, damp hair pushed away from his face, then Kent emerged, he carried part of his equipment in one hand, but dropped it the second he reached you.

“You won!”

“We won.” Kent wrapped both arms around you and lifted you, turning once before placing you down.

“You were amazing.”

“You think so?”

“You just won the Big Ten.”

“That didn’t answer the question.”

You laughed “Yes, Kent. I think you were amazing.”

“Good.” He kissed you in the middle of the crowded hallway, his skin was still cold from the rink, and his hair was damp, but his hands were warm against your waist. People moved around you, teammates shouted, Philippe bumped Kent’s shoulder, he still did not pull away until he had kissed you twice.

“You taste like sweat,” you whispered, Kent looked offended “That’s romantic.”

“It’s true.”

“I just won a championship.”

“And you’re sweaty.”

He kissed you again deliberately “Now you are too.”

“Kent!”

He laughed and buried his face against your neck, you wrapped your arms around him “I’m really proud of you.” his body softened against yours. “You’ve said that a lot lately.”

“Because you keep doing things that make me proud.”

“The Olympics. This.”

“The class you nearly failed.”

Kent pulled back “You had to ruin it.”

“I’m keeping you humble.”

He smiled “Stay with me tonight.”

“You have to celebrate with the team.”

“You can celebrate with us.”

“I’m sure the guys want a team night.”

Kent looked around, Matty was already speaking loudly to everyone who would listen. Luke and Mackie were arguing about who had started the celebration on the ice. Owen was carrying enough equipment for two people “They see me every day,” Kent said. “You’re staying.”

You lifted an eyebrow “That sounded demanding.”

“Please stay?”

“That’s better.”

Kent kissed your cheek “So you will?”

“Yes.”

His smile returned immediately, Owen passed by and looked between you “Does this mean she’s coming with us?” Kent kept one arm securely around you “Yes.”

“I was asking her.”

“Yes,” you answered, Owen nodded “Good. Someone needs to make sure Kent doesn’t talk about his own game for six hours.”

“I don’t do that,” Kent protested.

“You asked her if she thought you were amazing before saying hello.”

“I kissed her first.”

“That doesn’t help.”

You laughed while Kent pulled you closer, the team had won the Big Ten, Kent had a championship to celebrate but as everyone started moving down the hallway, he remained beside you, fingers linked with yours and the happiest smile on his face.

He had gone to Beijing, he had returned to Michigan and now, surrounded by the teammates who had become his family and the girl he loved, he had another memory he would carry with him when college hockey eventually ended.

_________

Kent had presented the Michigan football game as a date, That was the word he had used when he appeared outside your dorm wearing a Wolverines t-shirt and holding a sweatshirt for you “I thought you said it was cold outside,” you said, accepting it.

“It is.”

“I’m already wearing a coat.”

“You need Michigan colors.”

“You make it sound mandatory.”

“It is for the date.”

You looked around him “Where’s Owen?” Kent’s expression changed immediately “He’s not coming.”

“Kent.”

“He said he might meet us later.” a voice came from farther down the hallway “I’m ready.”

Owen appeared wearing a Michigan t-shirt and hat and carrying enough snacks for several people, you slowly looked back at your boyfriend, Kent looked irritated “He invited himself.”

Owen frowned “You told me you had an extra ticket.”

“I told you that before I called it a date.”

“You should’ve explained the situation more clearly.” you laughed and slipped Kent’s sweatshirt over your head “It’s fine.”

“It isn’t,” Kent muttered. “He’s going to sit beside us.”

“I can sit somewhere else,” Owen offered.

“You’re six-foot-six. We’ll still see you.”

The walk to Michigan Stadium was crowded, with students moving around you in maize and blue. Kent held your hand tightly, occasionally pulling you closer whenever the crowd became too dense, Owen walked on your other side, eating from a bag of chips.

“This is romantic,” you teased, Kent glanced toward him “It was supposed to be.”

“I’m not listening,” Owen said.

“You’re standing two feet away.”

“I can pretend.”

Inside the stadium, Kent insisted you sit between him and Owen, that arrangement lasted until the temperature dropped and you leaned closer to Kent for warmth. He immediately placed one arm around you, opening the front of his jacket slightly so you could tuck yourself against his side.

“You said my coat was enough,” you reminded him.

“You’re still cold.”

“I’m always cold.”

“I know.”

Kent kissed the top of your head, Owen looked toward the field “I’m pretending that didn’t happen.”

Kent kissed your temple next “You don’t have to pretend.”

“I’d prefer to.”

The game became less of a traditional date and more of an afternoon filled with Kent explaining football rules you already understood, Owen correcting him, and all three of you sharing the snacks Owen had brought.

Whenever Michigan scored, Kent stood with the rest of the crowd before turning immediately toward you. Sometimes he celebrated by pulling you into his arms. Other times, he kissed you before remembering thousands of people surrounded you.

Not that Kent cared, at halftime, Owen left to find more food, Kent watched him disappear into the crowd before turning toward you “We have approximately ten minutes alone.”

“You’re very dramatic.”

“He ruined my date.”

“He bought us food.”

“I could’ve bought food.”

“But you didn’t.”

Kent frowned, you cupped his face and kissed him, his annoyance disappeared immediately “There,” you whispered. “Now it’s a date.”

Kent smiled and wrapped both arms around your waist, when Owen returned, he stopped at the end of the row “Can I sit down, or is the date still happening?”

Kent did not release you “The date is still happening.” you reached past Kent for the food in Owen’s hands “But you can stay.”

Owen handed it over “I feel appreciated.”

Kent kissed your cheek “You’re not.” you laughed, leaning against your boyfriend while Owen complained beside you

📍 Columbus, Ohio

liked by yourbff markestapa erikportillo plapointe_22 and kentjohnson.13 others

yourusername It’s been a crazy week, had and exam that nearly made me drop out even though I’m finishing my junior year, had to run to the airport and take a flight to Columbus to watch kj made his nhl debut ❤️ proud of you baby (nick also made his debut 😂)

tagged kentjohnson.13

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Kent had tried not to sound disappointed when you told him you could not attend his NHL debut “You have an exam,” he had said over the phone. “That’s important.”

“So is your first NHL game.”

“There’ll be other games.”

“But only one first.”

The silence that followed made your chest ache, Kent eventually told you not to worry and promised he would call after the game. You knew he understood, but you could still hear the disappointment he was trying to hide.

What you did not tell him was that your exam was during your first class of the morning, the second you finished, you left the room, grabbed the bag you had packed the night before and headed for the airport.

You spent the entire trip checking the time, terrified a delay would ruin everything, by the time you reached the arena, warmups were approaching.

One of the team staff members helped you find the family area, where you stood near the tunnel in a Blue Jackets jersey with JOHNSON across the back.

Kent skated onto the ice without seeing you, at first, he looked focused, then he turned toward the stands. His eyes moved across the crowd before stopping directly on you, Kent nearly missed the puck being passed toward him.

You waved, his mouth fell open, then the biggest smile spread across his face, he skated closer to the glass “You’re here,” he mouthed.

You nodded, Kent pressed one glove against the glass, and you placed your palm against the other side “I told you I had an exam,” you said loudly enough for him to read your lips.

He shook his head, laughing “You lied.”

“I said I had an exam. I never said what time.”

Kent stared at you for another second before one of his teammates called him back toward the ice, he pointed at you, then toward the tunnel. Wait for me.

You nodded, after the game, Kent found you before he had completely finished changing, his hair was damp, his dress shirt was only partially buttoned and he still looked overwhelmed by everything that had happened.

The moment he saw you, he crossed the hallway and pulled you into his arms “You came.”

“You keep saying that.”

“You said you couldn’t.”

“I said I had an exam.”

Kent pulled back.

“You flew here right after?”

“Yes.”

“What if you missed the game?”

“I didn’t.”

His hands held your face “You’re crazy.”

“You only get one NHL debut.” Kent kissed you before you could say anything else, it was quick at first, but then his arms returned to your waist, holding you as though he needed proof you were actually there.

When he pulled away, his eyes were bright “I looked for you before warmups.”

“I know.”

“I was trying not to.”

“Why?”

“Because I knew you wouldn’t be there.”

Your expression softened “I’m always going to try to be there.” Kent hugged you again, burying his face against your neck “This was the best surprise of my life.”

“You just made your NHL debut.”

“I know.”

He kissed your cheek “You’re still the best part.”

yourusername close friends stories

You had spent most of graduation morning trying not to think about Kent, it was supposed to be one of the happiest days of your life. You had finished your degree in education, survived every exam, placement and exhausting week of student teaching, and your family had traveled to Michigan to watch you walk across the stage.

Still, there was an empty space beside them, Kent was in the end of his first full NHL season in Columbus. He had called the night before, apologized again for missing the ceremony and promised they would celebrate properly when his schedule allowed it.

You had told him you understood, you always understood, that had not stopped you from crying while getting ready that morning because you missed him. After the ceremony, you stood outside in your cap and gown while your family took photographs. You smiled, held your diploma and tried not to notice every time someone’s boyfriend appeared with flowers.

Then you heard a familiar voice behind you “Are graduates allowed to cry, or does that ruin the pictures?”

You froze, when you turned around, Kent was standing several feet away with a bouquet in one hand and the widest smile you had ever seen.

For a moment, you could only stare at him, then your diploma was in someone else’s hands, and you were running toward him.

Kent barely had enough time to set the flowers aside before you threw your arms around his neck. He caught you around the waist, laughing as he lifted you slightly from the ground “You’re here.”

“I’m here.”

“You said you couldn’t come.”

“I lied.” You pulled back just enough to hold his face between your hands “You’re terrible.”

“I wanted to surprise you.”

Your eyes filled before you could stop them, Kent’s smile softened immediately “Hey.”

“I cried this morning.”

His eyebrows pulled together “Why?”

“Because I missed you.” The teasing disappeared from his expression, Kent pulled you against his chest again, holding you tightly.

“I missed you too.”

“You’re supposed to be in Columbus.”

“I talked to everyone. I had time to come.”

“You flew here just for graduation?”

“Of course I did.” He kissed your forehead, then both of your cheeks before finally kissing your lips “I wasn’t missing this.”

You rested your forehead against his “I have something to tell you.”

Kent looked slightly alarmed “Good or bad?”

“Good.”

“How good?”

“I got a job.”

His eyes widened “You did?”

You nodded, unable to stop smiling “At a kindergarten.”

Kent’s face immediately brightened “Here?”

You shook your head “In Columbus.”

For a second, he did not react, then his hands tightened around your waist “Columbus?”

“I had the interview last week. They called yesterday and offered me the position.”

“You’re moving to Columbus?”

“If you still want me there.”

Kent stared at you as though you had said something ridiculous “I’ve wanted you there since I left Michigan.” he kissed you again, smiling so much that the kiss became messy “You’re going to teach kindergarten.”

“I am.”

“And live with me?”

You laughed “We should probably discuss that before you decide.”

“We’ve been dating for over a year. I already decided.”

“That isn’t how moving works.”

“It can be.” Kent wrapped both arms around you and buried his face against your neck “My girlfriend is graduating and moving to Columbus.”

“You sound very proud.”

“I am.”

Liked by yourbff edwards.73, dylanduke25, jacob.truscot.20 and kentjohnson.13 others

yourusername Four years, countless memories, lifelong friendships, and a degree I’m incredibly proud of. 💙💛

Thank you, Michigan, for shaping me into the teacher I always dreamed of becoming and for giving me friends who became family.

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Kent proposed on a quiet Saturday afternoon after a walk around Lake Logan, there was nothing extravagant about the day. Just the two of you, hands intertwined as you wandered along the lake, talking about your week like you always did.

You had been together for five years, living together for four. By then, loving Kent felt as natural as breathing, you knew he would steal your fries even after ordering his own, he knew you always reached for his hand without thinking.

You knew he still left his socks beside the laundry basket, he knew you would always complain… and then pick them up anyway.

The conversation had drifted from one of your kindergarten students to the Blue Jackets’ upcoming road trip when Kent suddenly stopped walking.

You turned back “What?”

He looked strangely nervous “I need a minute.”

You frowned “Kent… are you okay?”

He nodded quickly “Yeah. Just… nervous.”

Your heart skipped, Kent took a slow breath before reaching into his jacket pocket “I had this whole speech planned.”

You smiled “And?”

“I forgot it.”

A small laugh escaped you “That sounds like you.”

He smiled back before slowly lowering himself onto one knee, for a second, everything around you disappeared “Kent…”

He opened a small ring box, his hands shaking just enough for you to notice “I don’t remember the speech,” he admitted, looking up at you. “But I remember the important part.” His eyes never left yours “You’ve been my favorite person for five years. You’re the first person I want to tell when something good happens, and the only person I want beside me when something doesn’t.”

Your eyes filled with tears “You’ve made every apartment we’ve lived in feel like home. I don’t want to imagine a future that doesn’t have you in it.”

He smiled softly “I love you more than hockey… and you know that’s saying something.” you laughed through your tears.

“So… will you marry me?”

You were already nodding before he finished “Yes.”

Kent blinked “Really?”

“Yes, you idiot.”

The biggest smile spread across his face, he stood, slipped the ring onto your finger and immediately wrapped both arms around your waist. You laughed as he kissed you over and over again.

“You said yes,” he whispered against your lips.

“I did.”

“My fiancée.”

“There it is.”

“What?”

“You’re going to call me that every five minutes.”

Kent grinned “Probably.”

You kissed him again “I don’t mind.”

He rested his forehead against yours “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

As you walked back toward the car, Kent kept looking down at your hand, smiling every single time he saw the ring, halfway back, he lifted your hand to kiss your knuckles “You know,” you said, “I almost thought you’d forgotten the speech because of that tutoring session.”

Kent groaned dramatically “You’re bringing that up after accepting my proposal?”

You smiled “Forgiveness doesn’t require forgetting.”

He laughed, shook his head, and kissed you one more time “I guess I really am marrying the woman who’ll never let me live that down.”

“You absolutely are.”

Liked by yourbff edwards.73, dylanduke25, jacob.truscot.20 and kentjohnson.13 others

yourusername five years with KJ, four years building a home together, countless memories, one very happy “yes.” 🤍

from a missed tutoring session to forever… i’d choose you every single time, here’s to my favorite person, my best friend, and now my fiancé.

i love you forever, kent. 💍🤍