sara

“Small facts lead to great knowing” - Patrick Rothfuss (2011)

“I can’t believe anybody would do something like this,” you commented whilst looking down at the two documents in your hands—your thoroughly highlighted case dossier and your finished report. Every new case always exhibits unimaginable horror and unfortunately, there will always be something worse than your current worst. 

You turned to Spencer whilst perched cross-legged on the edge of his table.

The corner of the genius’s mouth curled at your words. They were the very same ones that sprouted daily despite the nature of your job. But to Spencer, there was a strange comfort in such small repetitive murmurs of disbelief.

“I gotta agree with Rossi. This job really includes some of the worst lunatics out there.” You sighed before straightening up at a sudden thought. “Actually, fun fact…” You noticed the way your words peeled Spencer’s attention from his report. He finally glanced up, eager for the second half of that sentence. 

“The word lunatic was invented based on the belief that mental illnesses were affected by moon phases.” You beamed at the idea of potentially providing your genius friend with new knowledge. 

“Yeah, and it actually originated from the Latin word ‘lunaticus,’ which means moonstruck or influenced by the moon. The word was first used for conditions like epilepsy or overall just madness,” Spencer replied, perking up at the thought of a potential conversation about this.

The excited smile on your face instantly faltered and you groaned in feigned annoyance. Perhaps you should have known better than to think you could out-fact Spencer and say something he had not already known.

“Is there anything you don’t know, Spence?” you glowered jokingly.

“Well, it’s hard when you’re a child prodigy and genius.” You let out a scoff-like laugh at Spencer’s cocky admission, but you knew he was joking. Despite his IQ of 187, Spencer rarely ever announced himself a genius. It was a title dubbed by those around him. You knew if you had Spencer’s brain, though, you would hardly ever stay as humble as him.

“I’ll get you someday.”

Your declaration drew a snort from another work desk and you twisted around to face the source of such a faithless sound.

“You don’t believe in me, Derek?” You arched a brow, your competitiveness rising to the surface.

“Sweet girl, I believe in you for many things, but this is just not one of them.”

“But surely there is one single fact out there that Spencer doesn’t know about.” Penelope piped up from next to Derek, defending you.

“We’re talking about the same Spencer, right? Spencer Reid? Three PhDs and an IQ of Einstein?” JJ spoke as she made her way down the bullpen.

“Actually, there is no way of measuring Einstein’s IQ as he never took the test, so to say that—” Derek quickly interrupted Spencer.

“Come on, pretty boy. She’s backing you up.”

“Sounds like grounds to start a betting pool going,” Rossi spoke up as he approached the whole group, briefcase in one hand, car keys in the other. “$20 says she’ll do it within four months.”

“I think she can do it within three months.” Emily chimed up from her desk.

“I’m placing my bet on eight months,” Penelope added confidently.

“Alright, and if she can’t do it within one year, JJ and I will split the win,” Derek announced before directing his next words to you, “Stakes are on, sweetheart.” He winked.

“Yeah, yeah. I got it.” You rolled your eyes before turning towards Spencer, declaring to him with exaggerated cockiness, “I’m gonna get you real soon, just wait.”

“You’re welcome to try.” The challenging glint in Spencer’s eyes met your own. Again, you knew better than to think that you would know something Spencer did not already know. He was practically the master of facts. But, unfortunately, you were incredibly bad at quitting.

So, let the challenge begin.

﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏

“Did you know that Australia is wider than the moon?” you questioned the second you saw Spencer enter the office the next morning. “Fun fact.”

“Yes, diameter-wise. Australia is almost 4,000 kilometres wide, while the moon’s diameter is nearly 3,500 kilometres. However, in terms of their masses, the moon is still larger.” You sighed dramatically at Spencer’s reply before spinning your chair towards your computer, turning the device on.

“And day one status: unsuccessful,” you grunted to yourself, catching Spencer’s grin from your peripheral vision.

“Oh? It’s gonna be daily?”

“You bet your ass it’s gonna be. There’s a betting pool and I’m unfortunately too competitive for my own good.” You caught the amusement dancing in Spencer’s gaze. 

“Well then, good luck.”

“Won’t need it.”

﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏

“Did you know a cloud can weigh like a million pounds?” You crossed your arms while peering at the cotton candy-like objects floating amidst the bright blue summer sky. “Fun fact.”

Both of you had your bulletproof vests on, leaning against a car while waiting for JJ to finish speaking to the press before driving back to the precinct. Another case wrapped. Another unsub locked up.

Under the nice weather, you had your cap and Spencer’s sunglasses on, having forgotten yours. He had heavily insisted so, even after you had declined a handful of times.

You turned and looked at Spencer briefly. Though, for a split second, your body stilled as the sun played in his favor, casting nice highlights to his woodsy colored locks. The light crinkle of his nose and his squinting eyes made your lips curl, cause once again, it showcased just how self-sacrificing Spencer can be when it came to the people close to him.

“Yeah, because they contain different states of matter like trillions of condensed water droplets and ice crystals. Its weight is equivalent to the world’s largest aircraft working at full capacity. Though despite its heaviness, clouds have lower density in comparison to the dry air around them, enabling them to float in the same way as oil floats on water.” Spencer tried to maintain eye contact with you despite the blaring sun shining into his eyes.

“Hmm…” you pursed your lips before removing your navy blue cap and placing it on your friend’s head. This cast a shadow over his eyes, blocking the harsh sun from blinding his vision. “Beautiful weather to fail at winning this fun fact thing again.”

Spencer didn’t reject the clothing item.

Some time in the history of human beings, the act of sporting others’ clothing items—especially of the opposite gender—had been made to seem important. Spencer has never understood the significance in such a small exchange. But as your hat landed on his head, Spencer felt an added weight that was beyond the small clothing item. 

Neither did he have it in him to adjust how you had left the cap on him, even if it didn’t sit on his head perfectly.

“I still have time to get you,” you continued after a moment of silence.

“359 days left.”

“More than enough.”

﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏

The clock was close to hitting 11pm. The whole team was taking a short break for a fresh perspective. Most were on their phones or taking a quick nap, but Spencer and you were playing a round of cards.

“Did you know ketchup used to be medicine? Fun fact.”

Both Emily’s and Derek’s watchful gaze panned from you to Spencer, anticipating his reaction to your daily shot at winning the bet.

“Around the 1830s, yeah. They marketed it as a cure for various ailments such as indigestion and diarrhea.” 

Emily instantly groaned at Spencer’s reply while Derek snickered. Once again, Spencer already knew the information you provided, just like the 13 previous times.

“See? Not a single thing he doesn’t know,” Derek chirped up, earning him a glare from the co-worker beside him.

You finally placed your next card down, instantly eying Spencer, wanting a read of his reaction to your play. There was a distant look in his eyes, a clear indication that he was taking this game just as seriously as you were.

Your eyes swept over the rest of your opponent. The un-neat edges in his usually tidy work attire and the way his hair stuck in different directions had your lips curling. They were details that only unveil during late work hours after a long day. But strangely enough, there was something endearing about the slight tiredness in his eyes and the way his cardigan hung disheveledly on him. 

“I won.”

Your eyes snapped to the pile of cards on the table at Spencer’s declaration.

“What?! No way. You must have cheated.”

“Now, now, don’t be a sore loser just because pretty boy over here won,” Derek teased you, despite also highly suspecting that Reid had cheated.

“Are we talking about the same pretty boy who is banned from many Vegas casinos because of his expert skill in counting cards?” JJ countered, placing her phone down. 

Your co-workers’ discourse began fading out of your focus as Spencer took out a ticket from his bag and handed it to you with a cheeky grin. With hesitation, you took the paper begrudgingly. You knew you had to hold your end of the deal. You had lost, after all.

You glanced back at the winner of the card game, catching his toothy grin at your sulking manners. Against all maturity, you poked your tongue out in petulance, but such childish action had Spencer laughing quietly in his spot, eyes gleaming with fondness.

“Sore loser.”

“Cheater.”

﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏

Hotch halted in his tracks upon spotting you and Reid in the break room.

Both of your heads were side by side, just a hair short from touching, fighting to have adequate sight of the newspaper that the two of you were sharing. Each of you also sported a pen in hand, scribbling hastily onto the delicate paper with vigorous competitiveness.

The unit chief entered to refill his coffee, though his eyes continued investigating you two. In the narrow gap between your heads, Hotch caught sight of Spencer rapidly filling out a crossword puzzle. Meanwhile, just as fast, you were solving a Sudoku piece that resided on the same page.

“Did you know, like fingerprints, people also have unique tongue prints?” you murmured, eyes still glued onto the puzzle in front of you. “Fun fact.”

“Yeah, humans have unique color, tongue shape, and textural features, therefore making it a great form of identification. However, we currently do not have the suitable technology to capture intricate surface details of tongue prints. Also, switching costs are high partially because the idea of having to stick one's tongue out in public for authentication can be seen as rather awkward, unhygienic, and undignifying.”

You pursed your lips at another unsuccessful day. But such expression vanished when you dropped your pen on the table and declared with unadulterated joy:

“Done!”

Your victory drew a defeated noise from Spencer.

“Imagine though, having to stick your tongue out at airport immigration and place it onto a public scanner or something like that.” You cackled at Spencer's grimace and the way his body slightly shivered from such a mental image. Eventually though, your laugh reduced to a teasing smile.

Spencer’s gaze lowered to the little crinkle that appeared around your eyes as you smiled, before holding eye contact with you. Spencer knew there was no such thing as “eyes twinkling,” but you had him doubting that scientifically established truth for a second. It was lighting and he knew that, but he had to admit that he could finally somewhat understand why poets and writers were so obsessed with dedicating lines towards such a tiny detail. 

Because even though there was no reason for him to, his own lips began to curl, mirroring the smile on your face.

From behind you both, Aaron Hotchner took a sip of his coffee before departing the room. Though on his way out, his eyes glinted a knowing look, while his lips lifted just the slightest bit before schooling back to a neutral expression again. 

﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏

“Did you know that back then, when raising a toast, people would literally drop a piece of toast into their wine?” you blurted out the second you slid yourself into the empty seat opposite Spencer at his breakfast table. Never have you ever skipped free hotel breakfast and today was no exception.

“Well, hello to you too.” Spencer grinned at your straight-to-business behavior. 

He carefully placed the coffee he made for you into your hand—a casual daily routine. You took a good whiff of the comforting aroma before humming at the first taste. It was exactly how you liked it: a dash of milk along with two and a quarter teaspoon of sugar.

To date, Spencer has never asked how you liked your coffee. 

He simply has always gotten it right.

It was not hard to guess that he had learnt your preferences from watching you make your coffee in the past. But you could not help but wonder if he took mental notes on others the same way he did with you. However, like every other time, you dismissed it as an occupational habit. Every member has been trained to be observant and notice little details. Spencer probably knew everybody’s coffee preferences.

“It actually originated from Ancient Rome, and back then, toast was an act to honor the gods and people would pour wine onto the floor. However, the custom evolved in many ways over time, depending on geographic regions. Around the 1600s, it became a common custom in England and this is where people would put a piece of spiced toast into their wine. They did it to improve the flavor of their beverage and also to “toast” to good health.”

Spencer caught your hum of satisfaction at the coffee and instantly felt pleased.

Science has long documented humans as naturally validation-seeking creatures. Your existence often humbled him from thinking he was not a recurring participant in that particular human instinct.

His eyes fell from you to your coffee—a particular mix that has ingrained itself into his memory since your first meeting. Funny that some time since then, he could no longer look at the beverage without ever thinking of you.

Neither could Spencer for the life of him recite the coffee order of anybody else at the BAU.

“36 days down…” you murmured, already picturing yourself rummaging the internet for more fun facts tonight.

“Maybe tomorrow.” The words came out softly, almost encouragingly. You hummed before matching his tone.

“Maybe.”

﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏

“Flies rub their hands as a sanitizing act, rather clean for an insect commonly associated with dirty places, no?” you murmured before peering up from your book whilst curled up in your seat on the BAU’s jet.

“Yes, it’s a self-grooming act. They do this primarily for two reasons. First and foremost, it’s because their legs are their flavour receptors, so they rub their front legs to ensure they can taste when eating. The other motivation is to remove dust and debris, therefore, ensuring survival.”

Your bottom lip jutted out slightly at another unsuccessful attempt.

“I’ll get you tomorrow…” you murmured with a teasing smile before re-immersing yourself in the fantasy world of your current novel.

Reading has become your escapism and method of self-grounding prior to any case. You tried to plunge into fictional worlds while flying to prepare yourself for the terrible realities that accompanied upcoming cases. Though at one point, Spencer started joining in. But instead of having his own book, he would lean over and scan your current page with unrealistic speed while you leisurely let each letter sink in. It became a routine that occupied your journey from Quantico, whereas on the way back, Spencer and you maintained your tradition of engaging in chess matches. 

Spencer spotted your finger flipping the page once more and his eyes instantly swept over the printed words hastily.

Twenty thousand words per minute. That was Spencer’s known reading speed, which meant in merely two seconds or three, he was already done with the two pages in front of you both. As always, you were still reading at your own pace, unhurried. He knew he could adopt a slower speed to enjoy your chosen fictional literature. But lately, he found himself in a hurry, rushing himself to finish pages in a way that made him think maybe he was now above his previously established reading speed. 

Why?

His gaze flicked over to you, mulling over the familiar details that made you, you. He studied the way your fingers trace the fore-edge of the book mindlessly, lingering on the way you tease your lips with your teeth as you registered the adventure that the story was taking you on. Spencer caught the slight shift in the space between your eyebrows and how they slightly twitch according to plot progression, displaying your commitment to your reading content.

Spencer would not classify himself as a people watcher, despite his necessary observant and analytical traits as a profiler. Yet, somehow, watching you had become one of his favorite quiet activities. In your little habits were his comfort. In moments when cases were overwhelming, his eyes have made a tendency to land on you. The spike in his heartbeat would normalize, whilst rapid thoughts would regulate. It was only in moments when Spencer would get caught by you that he would tear his gaze away sheepishly, before attempting to pretend that he was looking elsewhere instead.

The sound of paper rustling pulled Spencer out of his mind, and he instantly plunged himself into the same self-established cycle again.

And despite his fondness for literature, for once, it did not hold a candle in his eyes.

﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏

“Cows have best friends, how great is that?”

Spencer stopped eating his ice cream the second he spotted someone passing the two of you in a cow onesie, giving away why you decided on that particular fun fact. His eyes fell back on you, glimmering with amusement. 

“Yes, cows do have a ‘best friend’ who they tend to share spaces and rest side by side with. Research shows that when separated, these cows would show signs of stress and anxiety with higher heart rates.”

You hummed at that. By now, you were used to his immediate expansion on your facts, no longer surprised or disappointed every time he added onto your words. 

In fact, you fondly looked forward to hearing what he had to say about whatever fact you would sprout. There was a deep sense of appreciation that you have grown for this challenge. You felt like, intellectually, your general knowledge had expanded immensely, both from researching fun facts to tell Spencer and also from the informative responses that you would receive from him.

“You know, cows also can develop what some may refer to as ‘accents.’ Research observed variations in their moos based on different regions and herds.” Spencer leaned closer to you before adding cheekily, “Fun fact.”

“Nuh uh, don’t go stealing my line. You’re not allowed to put me out of business.”

This tore a laugh out of Spencer, and you immediately bit back a smile at such a sound. 

If humans have the ability to bottle noises for keepsake, you know now what sound you would try to capture.

Surprisingly, this was only the second time that Spencer and you had spent time together one-on-one out of work. 

With the working hours at the BAU that forced you and all your co-workers to be in close proximity for an extensive amount of time, you tend to allocate your scarce free time to those who were outside of your work circle. But something about spending time with Spencer today had struck you with an epiphany:

You really, really wanted to see Spencer outside of work more often.

Both your phones started ringing at the same time.

“Penelope, is everything okay?” you answered quietly.

“Emily?” Spencer whispered at the same time into his phone.

After a few seconds, you both ended your respective phone calls before slowly turning to face each other again. You scanned yours and Spencer’s outfit before sighing.

“There’s not enough time to go home and change.” The devastation in your voice was imminent.

“I know.”

A few minutes later, both of you entered the office, and almost instantly, the noise level declined significantly as the whole team paused their actions. You winced, knowing immediately that you two were about to be the butt of many incoming jokes.

“Whoa, what time period did you guys travel back from?” Emily teased.

“We were at a convention, okay?” You huffed, picking up your go-bag from under your desk for a change of clothes.

“And you two are dressed up as…?” Rossi crossed his arms, undoubtedly amused.

The team scanned over both of your outfits. Spencer was wearing a brown fedora hat, an oxblood colored corduroy jacket, and grey pants. Despite the only semi-chilly weather, he also sported a colorful striped knitted scarf around his neck. As for you, you were in an all pink attire, but what stood out was your long pink coat, high pink boots, and long white scarf.

“The fourth doctor and Romana II, from Doctor Who,” Spencer answered, grabbing his go bag.

Derek’s eyes comedically bulged out at that, and he immediately spun his chair towards you. “Blink twice if Reid is blackmailing you with something to make you go to this convention with him.” You laughed at his remark.

“Listen, remember the card game I lost two months ago? That’s why I had to go, but when I actually started the show, I really enjoyed it.” You raised your hands in surrender.

“Oh, we lost another one. She got Reid-ified,” Derek exclaimed dramatically before placing a hand on his chest in jest heartbreak, grinning at your eye roll.

By now, Spencer had returned to your side with his go-bag. Though just as you two turned around to head off and change, an abrupt flash halted you both in your steps. Blinking away the after-effect of the blinding light, you saw Penelope with her phone facing you two and a cheeky grin on her face.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Delete that,” you immediately instructed, hands on your hips while your brows furrowed in fussiness. You then sucked in a deep breath and used your hand to comb through your hair before a smile broke your feigned annoyed expression. “I was not ready.”

Then, with dramatic flair, you posed properly for the camera, grabbing Spencer’s scarf exaggeratedly with both hands while tugging him lightly. 

Spencer was unsure if his knees had buckled due to a slight loss of balance or from your proximity. He glanced at the camera, face slightly flushed, before witnessing another flash go off, evidencing his blush and putting it on record.

Your hands were gone from his scarf like a breeze. 

“Alright, I’m gonna go change now.” By the time Spencer registered your words, you were already gone. All that was left at the spot you previously occupied was his attention. Spencer's eyes eventually moved when he heard a quiet giggle from Penelope, who was indescribably entertained by the dazed look on his face.

The tech expert slowly angled her phone towards Spencer to show what she had captured, and she carefully observed Spencer’s contemplative gaze. His eyes landed on you first, and they softened at the sight of your beaming face. They then traced the slope of your smile and the crinkle of your eyes before reluctantly trailing down to your hands and the way they bossily clung onto his scarf. 

The sentiment of pictures has always been just a concept to Spencer Reid. He does understand the logic behind people’s attachment to colored captures of moments and why people have ‘important’ photos in their wallets or have framed physical copies. But personally, he rarely ever practiced it. Yet, in this precise moment, he suddenly wanted to begin.

Without even looking at himself in the photo, Spencer murmured to Penelope:

“Can you send that to me, please? Thank you.”

﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏

“Where is she?” Derek’s gaze darted up to his friend. One glance at Spencer and the man already knew who he was referring to.

“Garcia said she called in sick this morning. Why?”

“Nothing.”

Derek scanned over Spencer from head to toe properly this time. Realisation flashed through his eyes before the man smirked as he looked back down at his work. 

Ah, the perks of being a profiler.

“Sure, pretty boy.”

“What was that loo—” 

The sound of Spencer’s phone ringing interrupted his question. He took the device out of his pocket, and the phone almost flew out of his hand when he saw your name flashing on the screen. He immediately picked up and placed the device beside his ear, breathing out your name in greeting.

Instead of your usual cheery tone, Spencer was met with a muffled voice and snifflings.

Immediately, his body stiffened.

“Are you okay?” He was by his desk within seconds. His fingers grazed over his jacket, as if prepared to scoop the clothing up and dash out of the office if your answer indicated any distress. 

“My nose is blocked. Both sides. It’s horrendous,” then came a dramatic sigh, “I’m becoming a mouth breather, Spence.”

Your melodrama tore a laugh from Spencer’s throat.

Derek’s lips curled discreetly at the noise.

“Anyway, don’t think you can escape your daily fun fact just because I’m not physically in the office.” Spencer was glad you were not physically with him, because if you were, you would have seen the idiotic grin stretching his face. But how could he not smile at your stubborn resilience, and the cute sound of your nasally voice that was slightly more high-pitched than normal. 

“You’re sick, and you took a day off work, but not off the fun fact thing?”

“In sickness and in health, as they say.”

Spencer accidentally snorted at your words and immediately cleared his throat in an attempt to cover it.

Derek’s brows scrunched at that.

“Apparently, while wired to specific scientific machines and whatnot, two lucid dreamers can have two-way communication in real time. How cool is that?” Spencer hummed fondly at your words before sitting down, his plan to flee from office hours long gone.

“That’s quite a recent fun fact. The study was recently concluded just about two years ago,” his voice came out soft as he focused on any sound that the technological device beside his ear could carry over from your end. 

He caught your hum, though the sound resembled the same one you always did while sitting next to him on the jet as the team flew back to Quantico. The noise that often preceded the soft landing of your head on his shoulder and the way he’d sit straighter up to accommodate you entirely despite his germaphobia-led touch aversion.

“You should sleep and rest,” he whispered, despite wanting to hear your voice for longer. But selflessness came easy when you were in consideration.

Spencer carefully began listing all the things you ought to do later to get better. But halfway through, he noticed the lack of noise from the other end, except for your rhythmic breathing, signaling your sound asleep state. Spencer sighed before removing the phone from his ear. He stared at the device in long contemplation before clicking the end call button.

Finally placing down the device that signified his only contact with you today, Spencer flipped open today’s case dossier. However, he found himself re-reading the first sentence over and over again. His eyes kept scanning over the same words, and he felt the way they slid past his comprehension the same way small external details occasionally would escape his notice whenever he spent time with you. 

Spencer’s mind kept trailing back to the phone call and to you.

It’s familiarity—he tried to tell himself. Humans were, afterall, creatures of habit, and considering you have been swirled into his daily routine like a necessity, it made sense that the lack of your presence had set him off balance. 

Eventually, Spencer got up and went to the break room for coffee. But the second he opened the cupboard and his eyes landed on your mug, he felt his mouth run dry. 

For the past one and a half years, he has always made two cups of coffee instead of one at the start of each day.

His eyes darted to his mug right next to yours. The idea of separating them sent some sort of ache in his heart, even if logically they were just ceramic vessels.

Perhaps he had mislabeled what missing someone meant all along, because your absence was bringing a hollowness that nobody had managed to carve out of him before. It was the kind of emptiness that made him feel incomplete, as if a piece of himself was not with him. Yet, as opposed to the expected numbness that often accompanied such a feeling, Spencer felt every second of your absence with a constant stinging ache that felt too akin to withdrawal symptoms. 

Eventually, Spencer shut the cupboard and returned to his desk, coffee-less.

That evening after work, Spencer made a detour instead of going straight home, missing the way his friends huddled together, exchanging hushed whispers about his departure.

﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏

Twenty two hours, forty eight minutes, and thirty one seconds.

Spencer witnessed as time quietly slipped through the cracks of his remaining strength. 

The whole bullpen lacked the life his work family usually colored in. The janitor had long shut off the main lights, so the only thing illuminating the space near Spencer was his desk lamp. Everybody else had gone home except for Hotch, but the unit chief was in his office, leaving Spencer as the last man standing in the bullpen.

After a few more ticks, Spencer finally tore his gaze from the timing instrument and glided his vision back down to the pen in his hand, forcing it to ink his unfinished report, but words refused to string together. 

Spencer’s free hand began tapping his desk rhythmically in a pathetic attempt to comfort himself.

Twenty two hours, fifty one minutes, and twenty one seconds.

Spencer wanted to say that it didn’t matter. Why should it? But he knew damn well that the answer was because the team mattered to him. 

However, perspective was truly a funny thing. Someone could be your number one priority, and you barely just made it in their list.

Spencer averted his gaze from the unfinished report to the brand new photo frame on his desk, where a captured version of the recent memory of you two as Doctor Who characters resided.

It did not take a genius to see that you two were closer to one another than with others on the team. However, the fun fact challenge had truly unlocked another level of bond. It was the kind of connection that meant he had started placing you above the others, a position that implied he also expected more from you, cause perhaps he thought you had also valued him just as much as he treasured you in his mind. 

So as much as the whole team was the source of his dismay, there was a spotlight reserved for your absence, one that was beyond glaring and punched his guts in ways that others could not.

His eyes traced your face in the photograph again, like they had done every morning since he had gotten the picture framed. 

Oftentimes, you could never be absolutely sure where you stand in someone’s life.

Twenty two hours, fifty nine minutes, and ten seconds.

A resigned breath escaped the narrow gap between his lips.

With more effort than it usually took, Spencer got on his feet, hoping that another cup of coffee would be the cure for his inefficiency. He slowly placed more weight on one side of his body to turn around. At the same time, Spencer began rubbing his face in hopes that exhaustion and melancholy would push themselves aside for a brief moment so that he could finish this impending task. 

When Spencer finally reopened his eyes to navigate the darkness, he froze at the sight that was once behind him.

Eight steps away was you, looking like a deer caught in headlights. 

Then came your escaped nervous laughter, like you were scared of screwing up, but that was only because you were unaware that you could almost never do wrong in Spencer’s eyes. His heart—which Spencer’s brain has been having a harder time controlling lately—provided you with a much larger margin for error than anybody else.

Your gentle tone filled the fragile silence that was intertwined with suspense.

“Fun fact, birthday cakes are traditionally round as an Ancient Greek tradition to resemble the moon for the goddess Artemis.” Your eyes crinkled as your lips curled into that familiar smile that had previously held Spencer powerless on numerous occasions. “Happy Birthday, Spence.”

There you were, cake in hand after a long day of work on a gruesome case.

There you were, with a homemade cake after a long day of him thinking everybody had forgotten his birthday, or more importantly, that you had forgotten.

But maybe his probability was not entirely against him. 

“I know I’m quite late, but trust me, there’s an explanation. When I got to the office this morning, I realized that I had forgotten your cake at home. I was planning to grab it after work, but the case kept us all back so late, and then traffic was super bad because of a concert today. But hey, I got the cake now, and I really hope you like it.”

You peered down at your own baking product and the slightly wonky penmanship before turning your eyes back onto Spencer.

“Also, since it’s your birthday, I’ll give you a bonus fun fact. There are roughly 30,000 people who have their birthdays on October 12th in the States, but…” 

Your voice fell quiet as your eyes diverted back to the cake again. 

“You’re my favorite October 12th.”

And right at that second, all of Spencer’s previous attempts at rationalising his feelings via scientific explanations collapsed. For once, science could no longer shield him, because as much as it was a field built on facts of concrete evidence, there was also an undeniable truth: he liked you.

It might not be rational, but it was still a fact, and that alone terrified Spencer. 

And while he was your favorite October 12th, you were his favorite every day.

Spencer glanced down at the handmade cake and the singular purple candle pierced in the center. The tiny flame provided just enough light for the space between you both. His eyes then flicked back onto you, and they softened.

God, you were so clueless about the effect your actions have on him and his whole world.

One breath extinguished the fire, and grey smoke fluttered into the air.

Then, for the first time since he saw you five minutes ago, Spencer managed to form the only words he felt were worthy enough of your time.

“Thank you.”

Even if the significance behind those words didn’t reach you today, it was okay. But they carry the weight of his whole heart and every unspoken reason behind his gratefulness. 

Thank you for not forgetting about him today. Thank you for always being so kind and paying attention to the details about him. Thank you for being such an important part of his life. Thank you for choosing the exact career path that you did to lead you to him. Thank you for existing. 

And someday, maybe Spencer Reid will gather enough courage to tell you all of this.

﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏

You halted in your step, and almost immediately Spencer followed suit. His eyesight followed yours, and he instantly knew what you were gonna ask from him.

“Come on, can you play for me? Please?” you urged, and it didn’t take more than your pleading face to make him approach the instrument that lay abandoned in the corner of the hotel where the whole team was staying.

Saying “no” became a significantly harder task for Spencer ever since he realised what kind of position his feelings were in when it came to you. It especially felt like an impossible task when your words came in that pleading tone and the smile that had him wishing stopping time was one of his abilities.

You followed Spencer and leaned against the instrument eagerly. You observed as he lightly cracked his knuckles, eying the mixture of ivory and ink-dark keys with a calculative gaze before placing his fingers delicately on them while his foot pressed gently on one of the pedals at the base.

For a moment, you wondered what Spencer would play. Maybe one of the classical pieces he liked a lot. Perhaps Bach? Or—  

A familiar tune overtook the pleasant quietness in the empty hotel lobby, and recognition struck you with every flawless execution of each note.

First off, you knew he was a liar, saying he only dabbled in piano. But what caught you off-guard was hearing the piano version of your favorite song. 

It was things like this that made you conclude that Spencer Reid was one of the sweetest individuals you have ever had the privilege to know. From making you coffee daily to hunting down first editions of your favorite books (the most recent one in which he handed over along with soup the day you got sick and were off work). Now, he was learning your favorite song on the piano. 

Lucky felt like an inadequate word to describe your position in life when Spencer was in the equation.

Only when he finished the very modern composition did you speak up.

“I thought you only listened to classical?”

“I…did,” was all that came out of Spencer’s mouth, but it was enough for you to catch his implication that he had learnt this song specifically on the piano for you.

Spencer sniffled, diverting his gaze from you shyly as he inspected the keys in front of him again.

Ever since his birthday, Spencer could constantly feel the urge to confess right on the tip of his tongue while his lips trembled in self-control to keep them to himself for now. According to the internet and its various articles, he should try to ‘woo’ you first, and hence these actions instead of confessing right away. He wondered if you got his message. He wondered if you could tell this was his version of flirting. However, Spencer also knew that he had accidentally portrayed himself as an extremely sweet friend from your perspective, so thoughtful actions with the aim of impressing you romantically were most likely ruled as platonic gestures. 

You began toying with the ring on your middle finger, the flattery from his sweet action manifested itself through the heat beneath your cheeks. For the first time in your almost three years of friendship with Spencer, you were struck by a minor nerve-wracking sensation. There was also a fleeting stutter in your chest that you decisively ignored.

You moved on with a quiet murmur.

“You know, humans owe squirrels a lot. They have planted at least thousands of trees.” You gave him a soft smile when his eyes met yours again. “It’s accidental, but no less a noble act contributing to the environment.”

“Yeah, they would bury nuts for later usage, but forget their locations. Many forgotten nuts can grow into trees, therefore, contributing to forest regeneration.” 

“Anddd another fun fact failure.” You groaned, though your expression melted into a smile when you heard Spencer chuckle at that. 

“We should head up. It’s getting late.”

You nodded in agreement and began walking, but looked back briefly at Spencer. “But it’s not too late for an episode of Doctor Who, right?”

An outstretched grin spread across Spencer’s face at your words.

“Never.”

﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏

“No way.” You were speechless as you made way out of Spencer’s car, staring at the building in front of you in disbelief. “Don’t tell me…”

“Yeah, it’s for your favorite film,” Spencer confirmed your suspicion.

“So, it didn’t matter that I had lost, huh?”

Shortly after your Doctor Who convention together, Spencer had invited you to this event that was two and a half months after. Though he insisted on keeping the details a secret, relaying only the dress code—smart casual, but whatever you were most comfortable with.

The secretive factor of the whole ordeal had you guessing in suspense for the entire two months, but now that you were here, you fully understood why.

This was the event that you both would have gone to instead of the Doctor Who convention if you had won that game of cards.

An orchestra movie concert of your favourite movie.

Spencer sucked in a deep breath, fingers toying with the loose threads of his cardigan. There he went again, attempting to present to you that he was an option—the best one, at that—and giving signals that he was pursuing you. He has read at least five hundred online articles on the art of flirting in the past week alone. If Derek ever found his online searching history, Reid would never live it down.

“God, this is the best thing ever.” Seeing how pleased you were with his action made Spencer want to physically preen with pride.

Once you two had settled down inside, you took a couple of photos and observed your surroundings. You looked around at your neighboring audiences before averting your gaze to the empty chairs that were soon to be filled by instrumental experts. Your body was flooded with excitement at the prospect of finally being at this event. 

You decided to chime in with your daily fun fact just minutes before the concert was due to start.

“Did you know that there’s a planet that is ⅓ made of diamonds?” you whispered.

“55 Cancri e, right?” he matched your volume, shifting in the chair beside you to make himself comfortable.

“Yeah, that one,” you confirmed, turning your head back to him. “Go on, I know you have details on it.” You encouraged, shifting yourself into a comfortable position as well.

“55 Cancri e is a super-Earth exoplanet, approximately twice the size of Earth, though roughly eight times heavier in terms of mass. First sighted and discovered in 2004, scientists have found that it is a very hot and rocky planet with a molten lava ocean surface due to its incredibly close orbit to its star…”

You were leaning into your palm while listening to him, clinging onto every word as they absorbed into your brain. The space you left in between you both out of consideration for Spencer gradually lessened as he leaned in closer the more he talked. His tone, too, grew more quiet as he went on, as if the information he was telling you did not exist in some cyclopaedia, but a secret passed in full trust. 

The corners of your lips curled at the twinkle in Spencer’s eyes as he detailed out knowledge that previously sat in the corner of his brain, collecting dust.

Spencer’s intellectual rambling will always be one of your favorite things about him. You loved hearing him talk and the way he enunciated each syllable so clearly, as well as his wordings and his tonal patterns. You should have gotten used to it by now, but it marvelled you every single time that you had the chance to listen to him talk about things you would rely on an internet search to know. Just like usual, today was no different.

Spencer Reid was remarkable. It was almost impossible to take your eyes off him when he talked. He was a bundle of many things that made him an individual worth a lifetime of getting to know.

You wondered if you were looking at him a little bit too fondly right now. But how could you not when he was whispering sweet facts to you as if he only wanted you to know of it? It felt almost as if this fun fact challenge had turned into a sacred tradition between you two. 

“Even though it is widely said that the planet is ⅓ of diamond, this is actually still only a theory and yet to be proven. So, to dub it the Diamond Planet when they’re not even sure if there are diamonds on the planet itself is like…suspecting you are a quarter or half French and then introducing yourself as French to people anyway.”

Your laughter burst out unfiltered, and you instantly grounded yourself by clearing your throat and pulling yourself away from Spencer slightly, putting yourself on timeout.

That was kind of embarrassing. 

The joke was slightly funny, but nowhere close to warranting that kind of laughter.

It sort of reminded you of the videos you have seen on the internet about the kind of laugh that people would let out in reaction to their crush’s jok—

Oh.

You subtly slid deeper into your chair as thoughts shot in your mind at a hundred miles per second. Your fingers immediately curled into your palms to dig at it. You could not look back at Spencer in fear that he would notice that something was wrong. 

Oh God. 

But were you really surprised though? 

A part of you had seen it coming, because as much as you adore all your co-workers, you knew in the bottom of your heart that Spencer was the only one you were willing to lessen your sleeping hours to prolong hanging out and conversing with. Also, to be immune to such sweet actions, you would have to be some statue made of stone. For years now, Spencer had intently taken time to know you and go out of his way just to make you happy. If anything, you were grateful that your heart had picked someone so kind and worthy to give itself away to.

You glanced at Spencer from the corner of your eyes, and just the sight of him alone had your heart hiccupping in a way that you had become familiar with for the past month. It was the kind of stutter that you had outright been trying to ignore and written off as nothing. But unlike all the previous times, you knew you could no longer deny that man next to you was the reason for such palpitations.

And maybe it was also time to face it: you like Spencer Reid, your genius of a friend and very much also a profiler.

Your eyes snapped away from him the moment you realized the significance of playing it cool. You could not have him picking up the signs and figuring out that you have feelings for him. But then again, you have seen how clueless he was around women who were hitting on him and failing to pick up their signals. So, maybe he would not notice your current body language either.

Before you could think more on the matter, the lights dimmed and instruments began stringing together in a well-rehearsed manner. It was only then that you began breathing again, relieved that you had two hours to collect your thoughts and come to terms with the newly attained knowledge about yourself.

﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏ ﹏

“Alright, what’s the fun fact of today?” you heard Spencer’s voice before peering up and seeing him behind your chair, hands on the back of the furniture, looking down at you with a shy smile. The sight of his adorable expression made your cheeks heat up, and you had to avert your gaze to prevent him from spotting signs of your flustered state.

The other members just boarded the jet as well, settling into their own spots after a tiring case. You were much less the same, sporting the now more noticeable eye bags that matched Spencer’s. Yet, that does not deter his gaze from the warmth they hold.

You gestured to Spencer’s usual seat right next to you. Once he had settled down, you made your next move on his chessboard, resuming your current ongoing match with him. You could see the instant way the cogs in his brain started spinning. At that, you provided your fun fact of the day, hoping it would serve as a distraction.

“You know, I read that there are more possible variations of chess games than the number of atoms in the universe.”

“Yeah, it’s known as the Shannon number—the number of possible chess games, I mean, which is 10 to the power of 120. Meanwhile, the estimated number of atoms in the observable universe is 10 to the power of 80, to 10 to the power of 82.”

He made his move, catching your discreet yawn in the corner of his eyes.

“Fascinating, isn’t it?” The weight behind your eyes turned them half-lidded. They landed on the chessboard, trying to formulate the next best move, but your brain refused to cooperate as a fog of sleepiness overclouded your judgments.

“You don’t have to play now, you know. We can just play next time.”

“No, no. Give me a second, I’ll make my move.”

“You’re tired.”

You slowly turned your head towards Spencer, and there it was again. You caught the concern leaking from his gaze, and it instantly reminded you just how caring Spencer was to those in his life and especially you. Your mouth formed a tired yet grateful smile at his expressed worry.

You felt sorry for those who have never had the opportunity to be the subject of his affections.

For a split second, you pondered the kind of doting that Spencer would do if he were pursuing someone romantically. You have never seen him express interest in any woman during your time at the BAU, despite the advances he has gotten from various good-looking women. But if he was already this sweet platonically, you were fairly certain your heart would give out at what he had in mind as romance.

Your shoulders finally slumped before a truthful sigh escaped from you. “Yeah.”

Unlike usual, where you would fall asleep and land on his shoulder while you were knocked out, he outright shifted to sit up straighter for you, offering his shoulder.

Spencer never admitted it out loud, but he had foolishly started wanting the friction of your skin against his or the fabric of his belongings. It was an impossible he thought would never occur, but here he was, anticipating the next rare moment of physical touch beside the one where his shoulder would become your pillow. 

Of course, he had noticed it—your lack of touch when it came to him. He was devastatingly aware of your mindfulness of his germaphobia, and Spencer was grateful, he really was. However, your reservation to accommodate his tendencies had begun feeling like deprivation. In fact, Spencer could count on one hand the amount of times you had ever touched him deliberately, with the last one being one hundred and sixty three days ago.

But it was that particular initiative factor that Spencer deeply yearned for. He craved and awaited for a touch made with purpose. 

He wanted you to mean it.

You stilled at such a small action, gaze stopping on his shoulder. You did not want to over-interpret such a simple movement, but knowing Spencer, there were implications and significance in that little offering. 

You knew it had become a recurring thing. As embarrassed as you were, you could not help the fact that you were the type to move around a lot in your sleep. You had tried using an airplane pillow, leaning against the wall, and so many other methods. However, most of the time, you would still wake up on Spencer’s shoulder before instantly jolting up and freeing him from the physical touch.

But the certainty on Spencer’s face left your rejection stuck in your throat.

Hesitantly, you began shifting closer, giving Spencer just enough time to retract the offer if he wanted to. But he stayed confidently still as your head started leaning down before finally landing on his shoulder.

One single small action had Spencer questioning how much longer he could go on like this. How much longer could he keep these feelings tightly locked and concealed? Because Spencer was utterly gone for you. Gone in the kind of way where one casual compliment from you about the cardigan he was wearing had him immediately putting the item into his clothing rotation a lot more frequently.

“I’m gonna get you some day, Spence…” Spencer watched as you drifted to sleep before closing his own eyes, all while he wished the flight back would last forever.

Unbeknownst to you both, the team exchanged knowing looks and discreet smiles at the sight they were witnessing. There had been nothing more obvious to them than this, but instead of intervening, they decided to let things play its course. 

Because, despite the uncertain nature surrounding the occurrence of events in life, this was the one thing everybody was sure was inevitable.

﹏ ﹏ ﹏

The jet finally arrived back at Quantico around 11pm. Spencer had finished his report a few minutes before you did, but lingered behind as usual to wait for you. About two weeks ago, he had established a new routine between you both. 

“Ready?” Spencer carefully peeled your bag from your hand, checking his watch to see that it was already past midnight, marking a new day.

“Yeah…” you breathed out tiredly, eager to collapse in bed. “More than ready.”

You like to think you have kept it cool well, in general. But Spencer’s new routine of walking you to your car after work had you a nail tip away from laying all your cards bare and revealing your feelings. Even on days when you finished your report first, he would walk you to your car before returning to the office. But the thing was:

Spencer Reid rarely ever drove to work, which meant he was going to the employee parking lot every day with you for no reason. 

Well, for no reason but you.

The elevator began making its descent from the sixth floor with both of you inside. You were listening carefully as Spencer discussed an academic paper he had read last night. The doors soon jerked open, revealing the fairly empty parking lot. At the sight of your car, you subtly began slowing down your steps, biting back a smile when you noticed him mirroring your change of pace. 

You observed as he animatedly gushed about the methodology of the research paper, paying particular attention to the tiny detail of his body language. The way his hands were passionately waving around, exaggerating certain points Spencer was trying to make. The flutter of his eyelashes as he blinked a bit faster than he usually would—a habit that often occurs when he speaks quickly, as you have learned. The smooth movements of his lips as his mouth tried to rush out words to match the pace of his incredibly brilliant brain.

Now that you were looking at his lips, you have to admit that it was kind of hard to look away.

Suddenly, an idea brewed in your mind, and it felt like the holy grail had finally landed in your lap. Who would have known that a random Thursday would be the day you ought to finally win this challenge and put Spencer in checkmate.

“Spence?” Your lips curled mischievously, observing the way Spencer halted in his steps at your tone. 

God, despite being subjected to harsh and unflattering parking lot lights, Spencer still had the audacity to look good in a way that tugged at your heartstrings. The sight had you questioning if he was capable of ever looking bad. His warm eyes colored with interest as he eagerly awaited your next words. You took a couple more steps forward, wanting to hide the plotting expression on your face. 

“Fun fact…” You paused before peering back at him. At those two words, you instantly caught the anticipation rolling off him. There was also a subtle confidence from him that signalled he was sure he already knew whatever you were planning to tell him. But you knew that this time, things would be different. 

With a competitive glint in your eyes, you finally divulged today’s fun fact, your voice calm and stable.

“I like you.”

Just as you predicted, Spencer froze while his mouth fell agape. No words fell out of those talkative lips, a stark contrast to how fast he was speaking a couple of seconds ago. You practically beamed in victory at such a reaction. You wanted to celebrate, you really did. But you decided not to gloat about your win yet. Instead, you prioritised the better option: teasing your friend.

“I recalled you mentioning once that kissing spreads fewer germs than shaking hands?” You winked playfully, expecting nothing from it. It was simply a joke to make Spencer flustered for your entertainment, and there was zero expectation that he would somehow miraculously confess that he had been secretly liking you too and would actually kiss you at your workplace’s parking lot at 1am.

Because there was no way Doctor Spencer Reid liked you, right?

You observed as his lips slowly curled up in amusement as your words sunk in, and that partially made your shoulders relaxed. Well, at least your joke landed, and your friendship would make it out intact despite your confession.

But then, out of nowhere, that closed-mouth smile stretched into a full-on grin before a chuckle of disbelief escaped from Spencer. 

Now, you were on alert. Instantly, you tried to read his reaction—was he in disbelief that he was finally stumped by a fact he had not yet known of? Was he amused by your clever trick of using your own feelings as a fun fact? But the elation on his face and the awestruck look in his eyes hardly aligned with someone who had just lost a long-term challenge.

Your lips parted as you continued assessing the man, but you caught the way his eyes flickered down at that small movement before he sucked in a deep breath.

Oh…?

Suspicion crept in, but confirmation came quicker.

In the blink of an eye, Spencer had completely eliminated the two steps between you both, sealing you two in a proximity that was closer than you had ever been with him. His palms found your face, and they cupped your cheeks in a careful yet certain way.

Spencer’s eyes darted all over your face, searching for all the clues that you were okay with what he had next in mind. He could see that your pupils were slightly dilated, as well as feel the way you were leaning into his touch and the heat that was transferring from your cheeks to his hands. Though it was only when you did not pull away and instead, had your tongue dart out to wet your lips, did Spencer kill the remaining space between your faces.

His lips slanted against yours in a desperate manner that outmatched his need for oxygen, kissing you like it was long overdue. He swallowed the gasp escaping your throat and the surprised noise that followed. There was an urgency he could not hide as his straining self-control snapped from your green light. 

You began kissing him back just a second or two after, and almost instantly, you heard a sigh of relief. Your lips curled, but any trace of smugness vanished when his thumb began rubbing your cheek fondly. Suddenly, you were aware of just how close you two were. Every point of contact was sending a searing heat through your body, because despite his fears of germs, Spencer was touching your skin like it was a need, rather than an obligation for moments like these. 

You pressed your lips harder against his.

Good lord, Spencer could do this forever. 

He might have been able to count the number of times you have touched him on one hand, but even with the whole team, there were not enough fingers to account for the number of times he had glanced at your lips this week alone.

Your own hands touched the sides of his waist, and you instantly caught the longing noise that escaped from Spencer’s throat, echoing onto your lips. At such an encouraging sound, you curled your hands to the back of his body and snaked them up his back. Your lips smirked against his at the way he arched into your touch. 

One hundred and sixty three days—Spencer reminded himself again, humming in utter satisfaction at the way those numbers spun down to zero. Finally, you were touching him on purpose and with purpose. He practically melted at the way your hands roamed so confidently without any trace of guilt that he was uncomfortable, because he was far from that.

In fact, he eagerly wanted to keep the number of days since the last time you touched him at zero permanently. 

You picked that precise moment to pull away, documenting the way his eyes fluttered open and dawned into existence the unadulterated glimmer of yearning in them. 

You have always thought he was gorgeous, but how he looked right then rendered the word inadequate. It was a vision exceeding all your daydreams, and to be the reason behind the look made you feel like you were an award winning fashion designer who had just invented a magnificent masterpiece. But unlike most, you had no intention of sharing this artwork with the world or with anybody else.

Spencer felt his heart squeeze at the sight of you again. Was it possible to miss someone so badly from not having a visual on them for approximately a minute? Maybe he was more screwed than he thought.

Breathlessly, he finally whispered the confession that he had long to say for a month.

“Despite all the facts I already know and have learnt during my whole entire life, you’re my favorite thing to study and know more about, and have been since you stepped into my life. Nothing I learnt after felt like it could outrank anything I learnt about you.” It was true.  Every speck of information about you gets the forefront of his memory’s line-up, taking priority over every other knowledge. Spencer licked his own lips for remnants of you before continuing, “You’re my favorite fun fact, you know that?”

Your heart tugged at his words. You had no idea how you managed to compete with the vast amount of interesting information that existed in the world, but under Spencer’s stare, you truly could see he meant every word.

“But…” The smile on your face instantly dropped at that single word from Spencer. Good rarely ever followed that three-letter conjunction.

“But?”

“I do have to admit that, uhm…” The familiar sheepish glint in his eyes had one of your eyebrows shooting up. “I kinda already know that fun fact already, that you liked me.” Your hands on him stilled their movement before falling onto your sides in disbelief.

“Oh, come on. You can’t be serious.” He resisted the urge to whine at the lack of physical touch from you. “But you looked shocked.”

“I was shocked you actually said it. I didn't think you’d do it today…or tomorrow…or maybe ever–” You slapped his arm, but he gladly welcomed that contact. Anything was better than nothing.

“I thought you’re like highly oblivious to romantic signals? I’ve seen you being completely clueless and not picking up on the fact that women were flirting with you.”

“I think I wasn’t clueless when it came to you because my eyes were always on you.” Those words came out shamelessly. In fact, Spencer almost sounded proud of himself. You tried not to let his words make you flustered.

“When did you figure it out?”

“That you like me? At the orchestra.”

“How? I barely figured it out myself that I liked you then.”

“Yeah, I could tell.” Your huff drew a chuckle from him.

You finally peeled yourself completely away from Spencer, grabbing your bag from his hand before making your way to your car. As you unlocked the vehicle and swung the driver’s door open, you could hear his footsteps following. You crouched to lean into your car and place your bag onto the passenger seat. You could feel Spencer’s presence stopping just behind you, standing much closer than he had ever before tonight.

As you bent back up and leaned against your car, you didn't miss the way Spencer’s fingers twitched, giving away his urges for physical contact. You crossed your arms before tilting your head back teasingly.

“I’m still gonna get you someday.”

Spencer’s gaze melted to an even softer look than before at your declaration. There was a freeing component in his eyes, showcasing the joy from being able to openly look at you in the way he had really wanted to for a while. His voice lowered to a sweet, promising whisper.

“I’m counting on that.”

With that, Spencer leaned in again, wanting a second run of things before the two of you had to part ways for the night.

You grinned into the kiss and quickly wrapped your arms around him again. Quietly, your mind logged in today’s score. 

Day 187 status: unsuccessful. 

But it hardly matters when you think you’ve already won something a lot better.

link to: epilogue/bonus bit

・┈・┈・┈・┈・┈・

⟡ navigation ⭒ masterlist

⟡ spencer reid masterlist

The three words that stuck to your brain throughout the entirety of 15 minutes. You were glad your face was pushed into the pillow and partially covered by your hair. Or else your boyfriend would see the flat expression that you couldn’t manage to cover up. Playing off your ‘pleasure’ with fake high pitched moans. It’s good enough to fool him, make him feel like he’s really doing something. 

“Oh gosh I’m gonna—!” He chokes on his words as his hips come to a halt. Forcing you deeper into the pillow and mattress as his hips stutter. Dumping another sad, sad load into the condom.

A deep sigh left your lips, as you rolled over on to your back. Your boyfriend pulled out and sat on his heels, panting like a dog. A stark difference in who really got to feel it tonight. 

This is how the routine went on. You enter his dorm room, while his roommate is gone for the evening. Laze around on the cramped bed, converse about your days, then go straight into the act. You grew to— you had to grow to get used to it. Did you enjoy it, like it? Like is a very strong word. Of course, you cherished every moment with your boyfriend. But after the ill-fated honeymoon phase passed, a deep pit had started to form in your stomach. One that screamed concerns from its very depths. 

But you aren’t shallow, never will be. You know there is more to a relationship than sex. He got you flowers on every date. Held doors open for you. You liked the way his fingertips felt when they ran over your scalp. You can learn to enjoy mediocre sex. Maybe he just had to be trained a little more. 

Who were you kidding? Why should you have to train your own boyfriend on how to make you feel good?

“So uh— did you finish too baby?” You cringed at the question. Sweet, simple Derrek. Too lost in his own pleasure that he couldn’t tell, in the last few weeks, you had not been able to finish with him at all. Forcing you to take the burden of saving his ego by lying to him everytime. 

“Yeah, yeah I did. Thank you, honey.” Forcing a soft smile on to your lips as you give his arm a soft pat. 

And on with the routine; exchanging a few kisses, pulling clothes back on, and getting ready to slip out the door. 

“I’ll see you tomorrow, yeah baby?” He asked, holding the door open. The dim light of the dorm hall contrasted with the bright, warm light of his dorm room.

“Yeah. Yeah, maybe. I might have to study extra tomorrow night for my microbiology exam on Friday. But, I’ll call your line.”

“Please don’t tell me you’re studying with Robby— You know I don’t like that guy.”

You turn your body to start walking away. Really to hide the massive eyeroll. “How many times have I told you not to worry about Robby?”

You finally slip away from the dorm. Hearing the heavy, wooden door shut behind you as you trail down the hallway, a deep weight lifts off your shoulders. Finally dropping the act that came with every intimate night. The act of pretending that you didn’t want to shake him and scream to finally make you finish. To listen to your needs for a change. Throw in a spank in or something. Call you anything but your name.

You float out of the building, walking through dark courtyards with students lingering around walking to the library or back to their own dorm. Not much is on your mind as you aimlessly stroll. Thinking about what to eat in your little stash of snacks. If it’s time to do laundry. If you’d have to let your fingers slip into your panties to feel some kind of release. Mundane. That’s all it felt like after evenings with your boyfriend. Not magical, blissful, or euphoric.

It’s not long until you are on the floor of your dorm room. Passing by closed doors, old flyers start to peel off the walls. As you approach your door, reaching into your bag for your keys, your eyes drift to the final door at the very end of the hall.

Resident Assistant | Michael Robinavitch 

Do Not Knock After 9 PM! - robby

Your lips curled up from its original thin line. You knew Robby would make an exception this one time. It’s only 9:07 anyway. He always knew how to lift your spirits.

Fleeting past 3 doors, standing in front of Robby’s. Knuckles rapping against cool wood. A muffled groan on the other side, followed by subtle padding of footsteps leading up to the door.

“How many times do I have to tell you people… Read the sign—” As the door opens, Robby rubbing the tiredness from his eyes. Stopped in his slight annoyance from your surprise visit. Leaning against the door as he softens.

“Well good evening to you too, Robert. Am I interrupting your 9 PM bedtime? ” you ask with a fake pout.

“Never sweetheart.”

The mere presence of you is enough to turn Robby’s evening indifference into something sweeter. Reciprocating your smile with a slanted smirk of his own. Jerking his head backwards, motioning for you to come in. l told you to stop calling me Robert, slipping from his lips as a mumble. 

Slipping your shoes off and dropping your bag by the door. Your body finds its new home in Robby’s bed. Falling back into the mattress, that is somehow more comfortable than yours, humming at the easing feeling on your back. And Robby is quick to flop right next to you. Lean arm folding under his head, giving him room to slide right next to you. Pressing your sides against each other. Your head rests on his arm as a cushion as you lean into his body.

According to other people (anyone that isn’t you and Robby), this is not how two friends hang out. Friends don’t cuddle, which you weren’t cuddling anyways. It’s for body heat, and dorm beds are tiny; there's only so much space to go around. 

Ok, maybe the both of you cuddle. Just a little bit. Locking arms, tangling legs, occasionally falling asleep in that position after long nights of studying. It’s for bonding! It’s hard to make meaningful friendships in med school. Everyone either is too busy to hang out, or lives too high up on a self-proclaimed pedestal. And that’s why Robby is your closest friend. Best friends even, that occasionally cuddle, sleep in each other's bed, and give the off handed kiss on the cheek. Completely platonic. Anyone who thought you were more was overthinking it. Especially your boyfriend, who was not too happy when you would catch you sitting too close for his comfort. 

“Friends don’t call each other honey and sweetheart!” Derrek would say.

Yes they totally can. 

“What happened to your night out with your boyfriend? What’s his name, Connor? Brian?” Feigning interest in his eyes.

“It’s Derrek, don’t be a dick Robby. And it ended a little earlier than I thought. So why not pay a visit to my second favorite guy?”

“You must have the wrong room because Freddie Prinze Junior isn’t in here.” You roll your eyes and bite back an annoyed smile. With the uneventful time you had with your boyfriend, you were not in the mood for more jokes. Rolling your body over to let yourself out.

Robby whines, grabbing at your forearm to pull you back in. Pulling you back to the position you were previously in; cradled into his side as you rest on his tricep.

“Heyyy, I’m joking. You know I have all the time for you. What’s on your mind?” He said while nudging your side with his hip.

With a huff, you sit up and press your back against the cool wall, pulling your knees to your chest. Shaking your head, searing denial into your brain. Robby was not the right person to talk to about your bedroom troubles. As much as you want to.

“It’s nothing. Just didn’t feel like going back to my dorm.” But Robby knew you better than that. He egged you on, pushing and prodding you to tell him more. What did you really have to hide from him? He told you everything and as did you. Even though he loved to tease and poke fun at you, he never tried to judge you.

Biting on the inside of your cheek, you look at him cautiously. “If I tell you this, you cannot tell it to anyone else. Like at all.”

“Oh, so I can’t tell Freddie Prinze Junior?”

You smack his arm. “I’m being serious Robby!”

“Ok, ok fine— What’s the matter?” Robby moves himself up, just like you did. Back against the wall and knees slightly bent. Taking a hand to hook under your bent knee and pulling your legs to drape over his lap.

You groan and lean your head against the wall. Squeezing your eyes shut as embarrassment began to creep up your face. As open as you are with Robby, admitting anything about your sex life with your boyfriend was hard. Maybe it’s because you were trying to be serious with Derrek. And vowed to not give Robby any ammunition in order to make him get along with your boyfriend. But the dull sex was weighing on you. You had no one else to vent to about it. 

“For the past few weeks, maybe a month… Derrek has not been able to…” your hands roll in motion. “Finish the job. My job, per say.”

Robby’s eyebrows scrunch, that smart doctor brain of his took a few seconds to catch your drift. His lips turned into that sickening smirk that you knew all too well. He was not going to let you live this down. 

“You’ve been letting that bonehead have sex with you and not let you finish?” He taunts the idea in the form of a deep laugh. You wanted to give him another swat on the arm for laughing. But, you knew better because you knew he was right to laugh. To develop an inside joke with you for later down the line with this new information. Something that will cause him to give you a knowing look anytime he is in the same vicinity as Derrek. A very, I know something you don’t know I know, look. One that came with a shit eating grin.

“It’s not that he’s not letting me finish, I just don’t think he really knows that I’m not finishing…”

Robby dips his head down to level his eyes with yours, eyes that have been avoiding his ever since the conversation started. 

“Are you telling him that you finished?” You nod sheepishly. He stifles a giggle behind his lips, shaking his head to shake away how much knowing your own boyfriend can’t satisfy you is elating him. 

Robby always knew that Derrek was not going to be good enough for you. You were a med student, top of your class during your undergrad. And he was just some guy. So uninteresting in Robby’s eyes, he didn’t know his major or care to remember his name. Robby can do a way better job, but he never really admits that to himself. Usually too busy with his roster full of other girls pawing their way to the top to even consider why he thought he would be a better choice for you. 

“So what— his dick too small? Or he’s a minute man?” Robby asks, another nudge with his elbow, egging you on for more. He is one of the nosiest men you know. But that’s because it was so easy to get the words flowing from you. So trusting of Robby you have no fear in telling him every detail.

“He lasts as long as he can! He kind of sounds cringey? When we have sex. I don’t know, hearing him grunt was not as hot as I thought it would be. He sounds like a pig. But any time we have sex, it’s just that. Not that exciting or freaky… It’s so vanilla.”

And there came the flood gates. Weeks of sexual frustration coming out in the form of broken words. Airing out everything to Robby. From how vanilla sex had been feeling, to how your boyfriend refuses to acknowledge foreplay as an important part of sex.

Just as Robby hypothesized; Derrek is fucking boring. He knew that from the very beginning. Hence, why he knew nothing about him, and didn’t care to know anything about him. And with this new information, he wanted to laugh harder than he should. Tease and rub it in your face that he knew all along that this guy was not right for you. To ditch him, find someone more in tune with your needs and intelligence. 

But Robby is a good friend, he wasn’t going to rub it in your face. At least not tonight, maybe tomorrow after a lecture. It hurt just seeing his best friend not get treated the way she deserves. He brings a comforting hand to your knee, rubbing his thumb over the fabric of your jeans.

“I just don’t know what to do! I don’t want to have to teach him how to have good sex. And it feels like it’s been so long since I’ve had good sex that I don’t even know what good sex looks like!” You whine. 

“What exactly are you missing?”

It felt shameful to admit, shallow. Admitting that you felt entitled to something more than a kiss and fuck.

“Well he doesn’t… he doesn’t do any of the things I want to do…” It’s too late to look sheepish in front of Robby. You were so willing to tell him about your bedroom troubles. He motioned you to keep going, more detail. Robby never liked vague details.

“He’s never eaten me out… or ever really does it the way I like too.” You get quieter with each word, shrinking into yourself. What a humiliation ritual, admitting to yourself and your friend how unsatisfied you have become in your relationship.

“And how exactly do you like it?” he pried, really interrogating you this evening.

“Like, toss me around or something! Pull my hair, I don't care!” Begging and pleading to the room. And Robby heard you loud and clear. 

“Poor girl, you really do have it the worst don’t you?” he said with a taunting frown.

“God, why did I even come to talk to you? What would you know…” 

A deep chuckle erupts from his throat again. Relishing how easy it is for Robby to push your buttons. You enjoy it though, enjoy that Robby doesn’t try to put up a nice guy act. He can meet you at your level and try to bait you into giving it back to him. 

“I’ll have you know I am a very generous person in bed. Always make sure the girl I’m with gets a chance to meet the finish line too.”

You narrow your eyes, mind whirling around how hard you found it to believe in his own words. Robby has always had a reputation of trying to sleep with any pretty thing that walked on two legs. You even had the misfortune of walking in on him and his fling of the week once or twice. He was known to sleep around. So, your mind wanted to fill in the blanks by thinking he was selfish in bed. Who can blame him? Robby was handsome and knew how to use his words well. As much as you want to be Michael Robinavitch’s number one hater, you heard the subtle whispers of girls talking about what he could actually do in bed. You refused to believe it, you know the real Robby.

“Really? Michael Robinavitch, the man that can’t seem to commit to one person for more than a month, has enough care in his heart to treat a girl right in bed?”

“Yeah, I’m wounded that you don’t believe me.”

“Because you’re full of shit.”

“Nope. If I was your boyfriend, you’d be creaming around my cock every night.” The way he said it so casually. Like it was just another passing thought in his mind. Talking to you like it would have no effect on you. It did have an effect on you, a big one. Widening your eyes in bewilderment, how could he just say that to you? Out of the blue?

You were put into fawn mode. Fingers freezing in an invisible grip, heat rising up your neck and flooding into the plush skin of your cheeks. Warm air catches in your throat, fighting with the urge to say anything back to him. The words are lost on you, he got you right under his thumb. Trapping you in a corner where you simply can’t move on from what he said. His forwardness and confidence gave your heart a little skip. As close as the two of you were, the topic of sex was never a hot one. Maybe a jab about being up too late because of sex. But this was new territory for you. 

“Yeah right… Ha ha very funny.” At this time of night, you weren’t really in a joking mood. Especially jokes at the expense of your own pleasure, which you had been seeking out for so long. 

“I’m not joking. If you’d let me, I’d show you a good time.” Robby’s hand that was once a comfort on your knee, slowly slid down to your thigh. His fingertips felt more of your warmth as they slipped to find comfort between your thighs. He managed to stay a respectful distance from your core, but close enough to make you aware of Robby’s growing intentions. Hooking his hold around your thigh, giving you a firm squeeze on your thigh. Your body instinctively pressed your thighs together.

“Stop Robby that tickles. Your room is so fucking dirty, you really need to clean it…” You were quick to try and change the subject. 

Robby was leaning in closer, eyes connecting with yours once again. His warm breath fanned against your face. A part of you was screaming inside to pull away, this is turning into a weird direction. You have a somewhat, semi-serious boyfriend. You pride yourself on loyalty. But that little devil on your shoulder was more convincing. Just hear him out. See what he has to offer. He’s your best friend, why wouldn’t he be telling you the truth? 

“You know I wouldn't lie to you sweetheart. Cross my heart.” His voice dropped to that boyish tone he would use to sway your opinion. A cute smile and a little sparkle in his eyes. Like a god damn puppy that was begging you to take them home. 

And before you could think further, his free hand reaches for yours, intertwining fingers. His large hand envelops yours as he pulls it to his lips. Goosebumps spread over your skin as warm lips press against soft skin. Traveling from the top of your hand, to the bottom of your wrist. A tender type of kiss you weren’t completely used to, especially from Robby. It powered down your defenses, tense shoulders relaxing. You were deprived of this kind of sweet intimacy, weakened by a need for more than the standard. Your eyes followed his movements, kissing your skin and petting at your thigh. Robby started leaning in closer, maneuvering his body to wedge himself between your thighs. Lips traveling up your arm, skipping to your neck. It sparked the long lost warmth in between your thighs that you haven’t properly felt in a long time. 

“Robby… we— I shouldn’t…” You stifle a mewl as he nips at the skin of your neck. “This isn’t right… ‘m with Derrek.” But your body betrayed your words. Softening underneath him as he slowly kissed up to your burning cheek. 

“I won’t tell, I know you won’t… just wanna show you what feeling good really feels like. It’s for science. ‘S that ok baby?” His voice is ringing in your head. Squeezing your eyes shut to try and rationalize it. “It’s not really cheating.”

For science, please. It’s so wrong, so so so so wrong. You crossed the line of cheating when he kissed your hand. Derrek has been nothing but good to you.But you’re buzzing with excitement. A slick forming in your panties that you were sure if Robby found, he wouldn’t let you live it down.

Robby hovered his lips above yours, a sliver of space between you. The slightest movement will close the gap, seal the deal of your betrayal. The logical side of your brain is telling you to stop and shake your head. Run away to your dorm and act like none of this ever happened. 

“Talk to me sweetheart. Do you want me to make you feel good?”

“Yes Robby… please…” 

Who gives a fuck, you’re a girl with needs. And Robby is offering to help you meet those needs. 

With no time to waste, Robby’s lips seal onto yours. Licking himself into your mouth, teeth scraping together as his tongue swipes over yours. The lingering taste of coffee and toothpaste trickling onto your tongue. It was delicious, more than you should like. Tasting Robby’s day on his tongue. Nervous hands reaching up to Robby’s stomach, feeling his body through the boundary of a loose cotton t-shirt he used for sleeping. You can feel Robby smiling into your kisses, amused how you were so in tune with him already. He pulled away briefly, making you whine softly as he pulled the shirt from over his head. 

You have seen Robby shirtless countless of other times. This setting should be nothing new, but it was daunting on your mind. His knees perched between your legs, forcing you to stay spread open for him. A growing bulge in Robby’s sweatpants rutted against the fabric. Physical proof he wanted this just as much. You didn’t know you wanted it too, more so you felt your body pulling you in Robby’s direction. Taking you further and further away from Derrek. 

Robby brought his lips back to yours, licking at the seam, pushing his tongue past your lips to take its place against your tongue. Your mind growing a fog you don’t realize he plucked the button of your jeans, pulling the garment down past your knees and over your ankles. An unforgiving wet spot forming on your cotton panties. The cute white ones with pink lace on the waistband. 

“It’s like you knew this was going to happen didn’t you? Wearing cute panties for me.” He teased, tickling his fingertips on your navel. Threatening to go lower and lower. 

“It’s not for you Robby.”

“Yeah, but I bet I appreciate it more than he does, right?”

Your silence was a good enough answer for him. Looping his fingers under the hem of fabric and pulling it down slowly. Robby watches intently as it glides against your smooth skin. Like nothing, the panties disappear behind him, into the void with your jeans. Robby lets a deep, content sigh escape his lips. Sitting back on his heels as he takes in the sight of your drooling pussy.  Priding himself on how easily he made you a dripping mess. His hand caresses the nook of your thigh, traveling up to feel the warmth above your pussy. Robby pressed his thumb against your aching clit. A firm press, before beginning slow circles. Using your slick as a lubricant to easily glide the pad of his thumb around your clit. 

The muscles of your legs tighten and shake all at the same time. It's as if he was using your clit as a joystick, stirring your body to be at his mercy. With a swift motion, Robby’s free hand pokes two fingers at the slit of your cunt. You gasp, finally moving your eyes to watch as he slides the long digits between your folds. Silent squelching as his thick fingers rub against velvety walls. Struggling to hold in a moan, pathetic whines fails you. 

“Does that feel good baby? When I rub your clit and finger your soaking pussy.” It was vulgar the way he was describing it to you. Forcing you to picture it every way you can. You want to shake your head no, just to prove him wrong and remind yourself your boyfriend will always have your heart. But you’re not a liar. It felt good, amazing even. The most you’ve felt in a very long time. 

“I think she’s enjoying it very much.” Robby answers for you. Easing the pace on your pussy, curling his fingers up against that particular spot with each thrust of his hand. “Pussy is practically crying for me. I think she wants more… What about you honey… Do you want more?”

Never in the months that you have been dating Derrek, had he ever asked if you wanted more. Watching as Robby toys with your heat, you nod your head slowly. Eyes never moving from his movements to not miss what he does to you for a beat. His smile widens, perking his cheeks up. Robby is eating up seeing you unraveling for him in a way he thought he would never have the pleasure of seeing one day. 

He dips his head down, a quick swipe of his tongue up against your slit. Collecting your wetness on his tongue. You groaned and rolled your head back. Robby filled the gap between your clit and finger-stuffed slit by sucking his lips against the free space. Overloading your senses, feeling all of Robby against your pussy. Using everything he could possibly have, with the exception of his dick. He tasted the tart fluid in his mouth, humming into your flesh with satisfaction. Not too sweet, but not sour at all. The right taste that spurred him on to eat more of you. Robby gave his thumb a rest, replacing it with this mouth. Sucking on the bud and rolling his tongue against it. 

It felt like hours he had been ravishing at your sex, dizzying your head and eliciting mindless moans and cries from you. Music to his ears, sounds that he knew your boyfriend never heard genuinely. It will be etched in his brain for the rest of his waking life. Shaking knees coming to a halt when Robby finally pulls away, wiping your arousal away from his chin with the back of his hand. It was over too soon for you. He got you so close to the brink, why was he pulling away now. Bringing yourself to your elbows, huffing as he pauses.

It was rewiring his brain, staring at your soaked cunt. He remembered how it pulsed around his fingers during each movement. He swooped in to save you from Derrek at the right time.

“That good, huh baby? We can go two ways; I keep sucking on your sweet girl and make you cum on just my tongue, or make you cream around my cock. Just like how I promised.” he proposed, leaning himself back in to loom over you. His hands started at your thighs, pushing up to your stomach, slipping under the top you had left on.

Any reasonable girl that loved their boyfriend would realize how wrong this was and stop it. You should have stopped it a long time ago. You were a broken record in your own head; screaming at yourself to finish this and go back to Derrek. Admit defeat and learn to love the sex you had. It’s a shame, everyone has their vices, and this was becoming yours. 

“Don’t break your promise to me now, Robby.” 

He smiles smugly, tugging his sweatpants away and letting them fall off the bed. No boxers, nothing to give you a moment to adjust the sight of him. Long cock bobbing in the air, rosy tip that had the smallest drip of precum. What a whore, of course he doesn’t wear underwear to bed. Robby was consistent in proving your own prophecies wrong. He was much more well endowed than Derrek had been. You pull your top over your head, reaching around to unclip and slip your bra away from your body. In all your naked glory, Robby celebrated in his head. Plush curves and supple skin, how could your boyfriend fail in giving your body the best is deserved?

Robby pumps his cock a few times, inching closer to line himself up with your slit. When his tip finally prodded your folds, it made a sickeningly wet sound. Coating his tip in all of your built up sin. He reveled in the feeling of your pussy on his cock. Rolling his head back as he sunk deeper and deeper. Hips pressing into yours, the most skin contact the two of you have ever made outside of cuddling. The depths that his cock was able to reach pulled out a noise you didn’t know you could make. Raw and hungry, mewling as he stretched you out to a new size. You braced yourself by grabbing on to his forearm. Pressing your eyes shut to see the white stars in your vision. 

Robby started to roll his hips into yours, pulling his cock out half way then burying himself back to the hilt. His well tamed bush tickles your skin. He grabbed under your thighs, splitting you out and open. A deep stretch in your hip joint as he gave himself a better angle to thrust into.

“Fuck! Fuck fuck fuck… Robby!” you try to keep your cries hushed, not wanting to rudely wake up anyone else on the form floor. 

The lustful sounds of skin slapping on skin as he deepens his stroke and quickens his pace. It echoed in your ears and pushed away any thought of your boyfriend. Large hand grabbing at your chin, squishing cheeks to get a good grip to guide your face up from the bed. 

“Open your eyes baby, you wanted this, why aren’t you watching?” A comforting stroke of his thumb as your eyes obediently open. 

Looking down to watch, the base of his cock disappears inside your pussy as he drags himself out and pushes back in. It was intoxicating, forcing yourself with the realization that this is what you were asking for. Begging the universe to give you one night of good sex. You held yourself up, eyes flicking from his face to your weeping cunt. It mirrored Robby, who was savoring the way you bit on your lip to stifle every little noise that came out of you. 

“Say it..” He managed to say between his own grunts and moans.

“S-Say what…”

“That I’m better.”

Smug mother fucker. He can’t just enjoy the moment and let you feel good. He has to keep rubbing it in that you’re willingly cheating on your boyfriend with your best friend. His thumb presses down on your clit, quick to make smooth circles around the needy bud again. Like pressing a button to get the words to come out of you. The sensations that brewed in your core were more than you were used to handling.

“Shit! Robby… you’re better!” 

He leans in close, the hand that was holding your face grabbing a fistfull of hair and giving it a taut tug. The mild pain on your scalp went straight to your core, walls squeezing down around him. A dark chuckle erupting from his throat.

“Better at what, dirty girl?”

He was stirring the pot with his words, berating and shaming you. You liked— loved it. Making you get off on your unfaithfulness. Another tug with his hand, the pressure of his thumb on your clit getting harder.

“You’re better at fucking me! You’re so much better Robby.”

“That’s my girl.” He praised. 

That long lost knot inside you grew tighter and tighter. Toes curling as he thrusted into you like he was on a mission. As that knot snaps, you finally come around his cock, that deep loss of dissatisfaction is no more. It’s fireworks in your core, writhing in his hold as he fuck you through your orgasm. He kisses your bare shoulders and necks, whispering praises into your ears as he chases his own high. 

“Such a good girl… Being a slut for me and letting me show you how good you can feel…”

His grip on your hair and thigh tighten, the edges of his fingernails sure to leave a mark later down the line. Rutting his hips into yours as his thrusts become uneven. Robby catches his release. Spurts of warm liquid flood your insides, painting your walls with his load. You couldn’t have cared less that he didn’t use a condom. It was worth it to experience the cloud you were floating on called bliss. Derrek is finally an afterthought. The shortlasting euphoria was worth it. Even though, when you lie awake tonight, you’ll remember what you have done.

Robby pulled himself away, a trail of your juices mixed together and coating his cock. A dripple of cum starting to leak from your slit. Catching his breath, he slides himself next to you, running his arm under your neck to pull you in close. A soft kiss on your forehead. For how wrong he was for making you cheat, he still made you feel good about it in some ways. Knowing he would be ready to comfort you in any way you’d ask when you eventually dump your boyfriend.

“So… what did we learn today?” he asks.

“It’s way better when you do it.”

a/n pt2: hello taglist i have not used in a long time LMAO

And if there was one thing that he learnt, it was that you were chaos.

Not in the loud kind of way that left you with a reputation. 

It was this way that knew how to keep Logan on his feet 24/7 with you.

𝟏 “𝐦𝐲 𝐜𝐮𝐫𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐛𝐨𝐲𝐟𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐝,”

You were in your dorm with Allie and Hannah doing fit checks as Logan sat on your couch watching. 

He promised to take the three of you to your girls night booking as he liked making sure that you were safe. 

Hannah stood in the frame of your phone as she looked at what she was wearing “so this is actually all from their closests.” She laughed as she did a little twirl. 

You laughed as you shook your head “your shoes are yours!” You corrected as Hannah nodded “yeah these are all mine.” 

The brunette pointed to her sneakers before she pulled you into the frame “the skirt I stole from Allie and the shirt is from brandy.” A smirk spread across your face as Hannah motioned to Logan to join you in your shot. 

Logan wrapped his hand around your waist “I’ve dressed my current boyfriend today in fact.” His arm tensed around your waist. 

He turned to you with a confused expression “your current boyfriend?” He reiterated your words as you nodded with a smile. 

Hannah and Allie giggled from beside your phone “are you planning on getting another one in the future?” Logan scoffed as you caught your lower lip between your teeth trying to swallow your own laughter. 

You ran your fingers down his shirt “hey as they say the night is still young,” you teased as you pulled your attention back to the camera. 

You did everything to not laugh “wow never in my life have I been so offended.” That broke the girls as they were now losing it on the other side of the camera. 

That made Logan clock what was going on “I hate you.” He grumbled as he shook his head making you laugh as well.

You grinned as you cupped his jaw “you love me.” You mumbled as he stuck his tongue out before he kissed you. 

Allie crossed her arms “you better not try to keep her tonight.” Her warning made Logan shake his head.

He laughed as he let his hand settle on your waist “oh no this one is your problem tonight.” He announced as he patted your hip.

𝟐 “𝐬𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐚𝐬 𝐮𝐧𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐧𝐮𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫?”

You were sat on Logan’s bed as he came out of the bathroom “baby can you call my phone f’me? I can’t find it.” He had a towel wrapped around his waist. 

You nodded as you threw your phone to the bottom of his bed as you looked up from your laptop. He used your password to unlock it before he typed in his number.

Then he frowned

“Wait.”

You  barely looked up “what?” You cocked your head as he sat down on the foot of his bed. 

He turned your phone to face you “why am I saved as John Logan in your phone?” He furrowed his eyebrows as it got your attention.

You placed your laptop next to you as you leaned up to sit closer to him “because that’s your name silly.” You rested your chin against his shoulder.

Logan laughed as the sensation made his squirm “yeah but that’s so formal.” He whined as his lips formed a pout. 

You actually laughed at the sight “you want me to save you as Prince Charming or something?” You proposed as he thought about it seriously for a second.

And then he nodded.

“Maybe I should just save you as an unknown number?”

There was a pause before he shook his head “you’re just mean.” You laughed as you stood up.

You shrugged, “it’s more mysterious.” As you wriggled your eyebrows, Logan pulled you onto his lap.

“You’re one update away from me blocking you.” 

His warning made you laugh as you stuck your tongue out at him.

You smiled, leaned in, and kissed his cheek before you grabbed your phone from his hand. 

You were quick to type something before you showed it to him “happy?” 

‘𝙹𝚘𝚑𝚗 𝙻𝚘𝚐𝚊𝚗’ 𝚑𝚊𝚜 𝚗𝚘𝚠 𝚋𝚎𝚎𝚗 𝚜𝚊𝚟𝚎𝚍 𝚊𝚜 ‘𝙼𝚢 𝙼𝚊𝚗 💙’

“Very.”

𝟑 “𝐈’𝐦 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐬𝐚𝐲𝐢𝐧𝐠,”

You were at practice, sitting in the bleachers in his hoodie, legs swinging as you watched the guys skate drills.

He came out of the locker room as he had his bag slung over his shoulder.

His breath was heavy, hair messy, looking annoyingly good in that effortless way that always made you forget your point for a second.

But not this time.

You pointed vaguely pointed to the group of lower-class men behind Logan “the guy with the dark hair,” you said casually “he’s kind of my type.”

John didn’t even turn around “you mean Carter.” His face turned into a sharp scowl as he heard the younger boys making a joke behind him. 

You nodded as you slotted your phone into the pocket of your hoodie “yep.” You had to admit that if you were a freshman and single, you genuinely would have thought that the dude was hot. 

He looked like a younger version of Logan which is why you found this so funny “you don’t even know him.” Logan deeply inhaled through his nostrils as he grumbled.

You shrugged as you licked your lips “I am just saying,”that’s when he slowly turned his head toward you.

Logan sucked at his teeth “you’re joking right?” He was practically weighing up the cost of what his bail money would be if he hit Carter.

You shrugged, “am I?” There was a beat of silence.

Then he stopped walking “that’s it.” He announced as he shook his head 

“What?”

Logan sharpened his gaze back to the younger teammates “we’re leaving. I’m transferring teams. Maybe we’re moving countries.”You laughed as he hoisted you over his shoulder making you squeal.

He started walking the two of you out of the rink “you are a nightmare god.” He was genuinely considering relocating his entire life out of spite.

Or possibly throttling Carter into fear to avoid you for the rest of his life.

Carter never found out he was nearly responsible for a national hockey scandal.

𝟒 “𝐬𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭’𝐬 𝐰𝐡𝐲 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐝𝐢𝐝𝐧’𝐭 𝐤𝐢𝐬𝐬 𝐦𝐞,”

After Dean swore that you and Logan were the worst when it came to PDA. 

And as you had a thing for proving the blonde boy wrong, you set yourself up on a challenge. 

You wanted to see just how long it would take Logan to realise if you swiped his kisses. 

Dean believed that Logan wouldn’t make it past 5 pm but you decided to back your boyfriend more than that “but you can’t avoid him all day then!” Dean pointed out as he watched Logan walk into the cafeteria. 

You smiled as you got up “luckily for me I have a class in ten minutes.” You shot back as you stuck your tongue out at the blonde. 

Logan dropped his bag into the seat where you were just sitting “hey pretty girl.” Logan smiled as he leaned down to kiss your lips. 

You swerved letting his lips grazed your cheek “hey babe I gotta go!” You patted his cheek before you ran off. 

It left Logan a little confused as he watched you run off “that was a little weird right?” Logan motioned to you as your body disappeared into the crowd. 

Dean shook his head as he ate a carrot stick “not a clue what you’re talking about.” The second rule that you two came up with was that, neither one of you could hint that there was a bet going on. 

By the time 2 pm came around Logan was waiting outside of your building after class “hey there princess.” Logan walked towards you with a smile as he reached for your hand. 

You matched his facial expression as you leaned up to kiss him before you remembered what was going on “hi handsome.” You awkwardly shifted into giving him a hug. 

As Logan patted your back, he almost wondered if he was just dreaming “the guys are waiting back at the house.” His announcement came as he mentally went through the previous events of the day as he was concerned he pissed you off. 

You pulled away with a smile “perfect,” you squeezed his hand “shall we go?” You asked as you cocked your head. 

Dean watched how you dodged Logan throughout the next few hours. 

If you were any decent with a pair of skates, Dean would have proposed that he got you on the team. With the way you had been side stepping Logan, it was almost impressive. 

Logan however, lacked the sentiment as you excused yourself to go to the bathroom “is it just me or is she being weird?” Logan spoke up as Dean celebrated.

But his cheering fell short when he realised that it was in fact 5:01 pm, what made your boyfriend even more confused was that you were running down the stairs cheering. While Dean sat with his head in his hands. 

The brunette motioned between the two of you “okay what is going on between the two of you?” Logan asked as you marched over to him.

Your hands cupped his cheeks “god I love you.” You pulled him into a kiss that was so strong the two of you actually fell onto the couch. 

Logan wasn’t going to complain as his hands steadied himself on your waist “god I hate it when she’s right.” Dean’s grumble was enough to make Logan pull away from you. 

He cocked his head, making you sigh, “we had a bet that if I didn’t kiss you, you couldn’t last until five PM before you brought it up.” Your announcement made him laugh. 

Logan stood up as he pulled you up with him “so that’s why you didn’t kiss me,” he spoke as he cocked his head. 

You nodded now feeling somewhat bad until Logan wrapped his arms around your waist “if you boys will excuse us, we have some making out to catch up on.” His eyes flickered with mischief as the boys groaned. 

Garrett shook his head “turn that up so we drown them out.” He grumbled, tapping Tucker’s shoulder as he pointed to the tv while Logan led you upstairs.

𝟓 “𝐰𝐡𝐲 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐨𝐧 𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐞?”

You were sat in the kitchen as Tucker cooked dinner for the group. 

Logan was propped up on the counter as Garrett sat next to you “oh my god babe you wanna know what I saw?” You asked as Logan nodded. 

He snatched a freshly cut carrot from Tucker’s chopping board, making the younger boy swat his hand away “Dean is on hinge!” Your announcement made all three boys freeze. 

While Tucker and Garrett looked at each other, a little confused why you were on that app. Logan seemed far more curious to know what kind of prompts Dean had picked “wait show.” Logan motioned to you to hand him your phone.

When you smiled both other boys laughed finally catching onto what you were doing “nah I didn’t take a picture of it because I was so shocked, I just had to press close on his profile.” You swore your boyfriend must not have heard you properly.

But Logan shook his head “you can’t tell me that you found his profile and then not show me!” The boy whined as he walked over to you. 

His hands wrapped around your shoulders as he rested his head against yours “c’mon babe.” He dragged out the last letter of the last word making you grin. 

Logan pressed a kiss into your hair “this is just cruel and unusu-” he cut himself off as he stood up straight. 

Garrett stood up as he reached for his phone seeing that he was meant to meet Hannah for dinner “bingo.” He patted Logan’s shoulder before he left. 

Logan cocked his head as he looked at you “why are you on hinge?” He turned your body towards him. 

You bit the inside of your cheek to hold back a laugh “I just like to see who is single.” You nodded to yourself, earning a laugh from Garrett before he left the room. 

Your boyfriend cocked his head as he furrowed his eyebrows, “so is your profile like just you or?” He trailed off making you scoff “John Logan do you seriously think that I’m on a dating app to find us a throuple?” 

Your words made Tucker cough as he packed up, laughing “I mean you’ve always said you wanted to try something.” Logan shrugged as he kissed your cheek. 

You scoffed as you gasped, “yeah like positions in your bed, not who is gonna watch.” Tucker had opted to slowly slip out of the room as he was no longer interested in listening to this conversation. 

Logan tucked your hair behind your ear “who said anything about them watching?” His smirk strengthened as your cheeks reddened. 

It wasn’t often that you were speechless but in this moment you actually didn’t know what to say “should I be concerned that you actually seemed turned on by this?” You cocked your head as you pursed your lips together.

Your boyfriend laughed as he shook his head “you’re the one finding my friends on hinge.” Logan taunted as he pinched your side. 

You rolled your eyes “I don’t have a damn hinge account!” You groaned making him smile.

Logan wrapped his arms around you as you stood “good,” he mumbled as he pecked your lips “for the record I like having you all to myself.”

+ 𝟏 “𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐬𝐨 𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐝,”

The group was all in the living room as the boys played the NHL video game in the tv while Logan and you were on a beanbag “thanks.” He sent you a smile as he pulled you on top of him as you handed him a water bottle. 

He pressed a kiss against your cheek making you grin “you two make me sick.” Garrett gagged seeing the two of you from the corner of his eye. 

It made you laugh as you stuck your tongue out at him “oh babe?” Logan spoke up as he scrolled on his phone. 

You turned back to face him “my ex texted me today.” He spoke casually, still not looking at you. 

You blinked slowly as your throat constricted “your what?” Your face turned as if you had just eaten a lemon.

You hadn’t noticed that the boys paused the tv to focus on you both as you were too concerned, and kept scrolling on his phone.

“Ex.”

You stared at him like he had grown three heads “for what?” You didn’t want to jump to conclusions but in that moment, you were teetering on the edge. 

Logan shrugged “she was checking in.”You felt your face go flat as there was little left in your reserve to bite your tongue.

Part of you wondered if when you went to the kitchen to get water, if you were dropped in some alternate universe “oh, that’s sweet,” you said slowly, your body tensed as you prepared your next question “did you reply?” It felt like a penny could have dropped in that moment and it would have echoed through the house.

He shrugged as he bounced his foot “yeah,” there was silence as you sat up a little.

Tucker swore he watched you crack your knuckles a little “you replied.” You couldn’t miss the scowl on your face as you rolled your eyes.

“Mhm.”

Now he looked at you, like he was trying not to smile “and what did you say?” You struggled to understand what rock Logan had hit his head with to assume that you’d be totally fine with him chatting all to his ex like it was nothing. 

He leaned back running his fingers through his hair “I just said hi,” he shrugged as you finally scoffed because that was it.

Something in you snapped instantly “oh, perfect,” you said, standing up “that’s great. I love that. So glad we’re doing this.”

“Doing what?”

You grabbed your bag as you stopped to look at him“whatever this is. Whatever situation I’ve apparently been invited into.” Part of you didn’t know if you were about to commit murder or just burst into tears.

Now he was definitely smiling “you’re jealous.” He pointed out as he stood up crossing his arms in the process.

Your lips formed a sharp line “I’m not jealous.” You grumbled as it made you stop what you were doing.

Logan looked at your bag “you’re literally packing up your things.” Half the stuff that you had thrown into it was stuff that you used to just leave at the house. 

Dean had to admit he didn’t think that you had so many chargers at theirs “I’m going home.” You corrected Logan as you rolled your eyes.

“With my hoodie.”

A wicked laugh escaped your lips “oh you won’t need it where you’re going,” you snapped and that finally broke him.

He laughed like actually laughed and it was enough to make you clench your teeth.

And still he laughed again “babe,” he said, still grinning, “I don’t have an ex.”

You froze as your hands landed on your hips as your bag fell to the floor “huh?” You cocked your head as you were trying to keep the words that came out of your mouth appropriate.

“I made it up.”

You stared at him for a full five seconds and the boys swore that Logan must have gone too far “you are so dead,” you went to hit his chest but instead he pulled you into his arms.

He kissed your knuckles, still laughing “karma is a bitch huh?” Logan teased you as he ran his thumb over your cheek.

Dean rolled his eyes as he rubbed his knee “you two make me sick.” He fake gagged as he shook his head. 

When Logan grabbed a pillow off of the couch and threw it at the blonde.

As you laughed, you knew that you couldn’t even stay mad for long.

Because John Logan looked way too happy watching you lose your mind over him.

And you hated that you liked that part the most.

You were never mine

Hooking up with John Logan is fun. He knows what he's doing. He never leaves you unsatisfied. And that's what it's all about, right? Ending up in his bed when you're horny, or a little drunk, or a little drunk and a little horny, and then he helps you with what you need. And helping? That's John Logan's specialty. 

You usually run into each other by accident. At some party you got dragged to and he's there, after one of his games, a random run-in at Malone's, the usual. You don't text during the day. It's not one of those situationships where something undefined is going on. There are no romantic gestures involved. There's a means and an end here, and sometimes you're the means and sometimes you're the end, and that's perfectly fine.

Because if you're being honest with yourself, and your therapist says you should always be honest with yourself, you're not one of those girls this happens to all the time. If you're being even more honest with yourself, it's never happened to you before. You ended up at the party where all of this started by accident, too. Your roommate convinced you to go because she wanted to make out with Dean Di Laurentis. You don't even like parties. You only go to them now because sometimes, when he's free, you get to make out with Logan.

Most of the time, you wonder if it's pathetic. Because he's said so many times that he doesn't have time for anything serious, because you've watched him flirt with every possible girl in the cafeteria so many times, every girl who isn't you, while sitting right across from you. Making his point. Explaining without words that whatever is happening between you isn't going to change, so you'd better not start thinking it might. You hate being honest with yourself. You suspect it leads to self-destruction.

Something in you, the side that's embarrassed by the whole thing, the side that hasn't even told your best friend you're hooking up with John Logan, knows you probably deserve more. It's not like you've done anything terrible in this lifetime. You didn't shove an old lady into traffic, and you didn't beat up the kids who were screaming on the bus. You've had opportunities to be mean and never even considered it, so maybe you don't deserve to feel like you have nothing to offer someone like John Logan.

But there's something pure about the look in his eyes when he's looking down at you while you're on your knees in front of him, your eyes watery from the effort. His hand brushes over your cheek with a gentleness that's almost unsettling, as if your tears are made of gold. Even when he pushes a little deeper because he wants to get off faster, you don't really feel like you're just a tool for his pleasure. You feel like you're a part of his life.

Maybe that's where your mistake begins. Because hooking up with John Logan is fun. Until it isn't. . . . Logan's life is a fucking shitshow. His mom checks in and out of rehab facilities like they're book clubs that only read her favorite books, probably something heartwarming like Little Women or the one she relates to the most, How to Ruin My Kids' Lives. He hates the look of hope in Jules's eyes every time the woman who gave birth to them checks herself into rehab and makes another round of promises she won't keep.

He hates the fact that the Bruins passed on him in the draft again this year, that he only has one year left to impress them, and if he doesn't, he's going to spend the rest of his life in their mother's shitty garage. His future will probably consist of changing the oil in cars that are way too fancy and cleaning up her puke from places he forgot even existed in their house.

Between practice, whatever little handyman gigs he manages to find around campus, and puck bunnies he has the privilege of fucking, Logan doesn't have much time to spend inside his own head. Right now, though? He'd do just about anything to have practice.

They'd just come back from a game. A brutal one against Yale. They lost because their team just can't seem to click, and Hunter and Dean are constantly at each other's throats. Dean's pissed at him for bringing Hunter in. Everyone is always yelling at everyone. It’s a fucking mess.

So now Logan hates being in his own house, too. Because everyone's looking at him like he's a war criminal over that situation with Hunter. But what was he supposed to do? Their team was in trouble, and Hunter was the best free agent he could think of. How was he supposed to know the history between him and Dean was a hell of a lot more complicated than some stupid rich-kid feud? You could've listened to Dean. The voice in his head that he's trying to shut up whispers. You could've listened to Dean and not reached out to Hunter at all, but John Logan made a decision, and it was a shitty one, so now he has to take the ricochets from the consequences.

He wonders if Dean will ever forgive him. Not out loud. He won't be wondering that out loud. But he's a little worried by the thought that it won't happen anytime soon. Because if there's one thing in his life that hasn't gone catastrophically to shit, it's the Hockey House. And lately, John's been spending more nights in other people's beds than his own. A few days ago, Garrett texted him just to make sure he hadn't fallen into a ditch and died.

Garrett. Another friend John feels like he's close to losing. Garrett, who already got drafted by the Bruins. Garrett, who's dating Hannah. Garrett, whose girlfriend is in love with him. Hannah, whose car Logan fixed during their freshman year and who didn't even know his name. Hannah, who waited on them at Malone's so many times that Logan knew exactly what she smelled like. Hannah, who chose Garrett without ever knowing Logan had been an option at all.

What a fucking shitshow. . . . The next time you see Logan, it's weird. To say the least. He shows up at the movie theater you work at for what looks like a double date with Garrett Graham. You try to hint to Thomas, the idiot you work with, that he should be the one helping them with the popcorn, but Thomas has the social awareness of a raccoon, and you're forced to put on the most convincing smile you can manage and ask them what they'd like.

Logan looks at you and has the decency to seem embarrassed for a few seconds. "I didn't know you worked here," he says. "The big bucks," you reply sarcastically. The big bucks? What the hell are you talking about? Why don't you know how to shut up? "You guys know each other?" Garrett Graham asks. "Not really. We have a class together," Logan answers a little too quickly. You wonder if anyone bought that. "So, what can I get you?" you ask again, this time not even trying to smile or look at him. Luckily, there are three other people standing there that you can direct this conversation at instead.

They give you their order and head into the ridiculously popular horror movie that's playing right now. You hate horror movies. That could never be you. "I'm just saying, if a guy says he doesn't really know you after he's seen you naked on your knees, he's the definition of a douche," Thomas keeps talking and talking, dissecting the situation and saying every single thing you don't want to hear. All you can do is stare at the theater door. How cliché is it to take a date to a horror movie? Who even enjoys being scared? You wonder if they're doing the whole cliché thing, if she's clinging to him during every predictable scene and he's stroking her hair or whatever it is people do on dates.

John Logan on a date. You're basically John Logan's waitress on his date. You fucking hate your life. "If you say one more word, Thomas, I swear to God I'll pull your intestines out," you mumble, dragging your gaze away from the door to the guy standing in front of you, hoping you sound firm enough, but knowing you don't.

The theater door opens, and you're a little surprised to see John. You're even annoyed by the smirk on his face when he catches you staring at the door, which you promised yourself you wouldn't do. "You have a uniform," he points out as he stops in front of you. "Aren't you the modern-day Sherlock Holmes?" Thomas's sarcasm comes out in a mumble while he doesn't look up from his phone, and you wonder if you want to kill him or kiss him on the forehead. "I have a uniform," you say. Great. Riveting conversation. "Do you need a refill?" you add.

"Actually, I was looking for an excuse to get out of there for a minute," he says. "Not a good movie?" you ask. "I have no idea," Logan replies. "That sounds..." You don't know what to say to that. "Like a waste of time?" Thomas finishes for you, still not looking at either of you. "I'm Logan," John introduces himself, because the interaction between the two of them is uncomfortable, to say the least. "I know, superstar." Thomas doesn't introduce himself back.

"This is Thomas. He's also a Briar student, and we both work here, clearly. Shouldn't you be getting back to your movie?" You're talking so fast. You hate the amused smile on his face. "I probably should." He shrugs and doesn't move. "I haven't seen you in forever. When was the last time I saw you?" he asks suddenly, looking like he's actually trying to remember. "You know how it is," you mumble, thinking that neither of you actually knows how it is. And that's okay. It has to be okay. "Seriously, though. It's been a while." His brows pull together as he looks at you this time, making you look anywhere else. The carpet is suddenly so interesting. "Yeah? You know how it is," you say again. Why are you repeating yourself?! "So you keep saying." Are you imagining it, or did he chuckle? "What've you been up to this past month?" he asks, leaning against the counter in front of you. "School, work, the usual. And you're probably busy with... hockey and dates and... you know... how it is." Dates? Fucking fuck. You seriously need to learn how to shut up.

"Hmm." His tone is so amused that you're almost sure if you look at his face, you'll find the most smug smile John Logan has to offer, but the theater door opens, and it's the tall blonde he came with, looking like she just stepped out of a Victoria's Secret catalog. "The movie's about to start again," she says softly to him as she loops her arm through his. "Do you guys want more popcorn? It's on me," you reply. Anything to turn away from this scene as you fill a bucket with popcorn.

For once, Thomas looks up from his phone, raising an eyebrow in the most obvious display of disapproval you've ever seen, not even trying to hide how much he hates this entire situation. "Enjoy." The fake smile from earlier is plastered back on your face again, and you hope your hand isn't shaking too much as you hold the bucket out to them. "Thanks, sweetie," the girl says, and Logan nods, no longer looking amused as they head back into the theater.

"Girl, I need to call your self-respect and see if it's answering-" Thomas cuts himself off at the look you give him. "I'm just saying, you know how it is," he finishes, repeating what you've said to John Logan five times during this conversation and making both of you burst into exaggerated laughter.

It was either laugh or cry. You considered option B, too. . . . Garrett basically forced him to go on that weird double date with some random puck bunny Logan did end up fucking afterward, but his mind was elsewhere. He's wondering now when the last time was that he, well...fucked you?

It's not like there were a lot of girls he'd slept with more than once. It happened rarely, and only when it was obvious to the girl in front of him that it wasn't serious and that he wasn't looking for a girlfriend. But you were cute, and every interaction with you was entertaining in a way he didn't know what to do with except take you back to his bed. Your sexual chemistry was good, so he'd ended up sleeping with you, what, three, four times? Five times? How many times has Logan slept with you? Why can't he put his finger on it?

There was the first time at that party a few months ago. You were both tipsy, and he'd saved you in his phone as Bob Ross because you talk so much, and right before he kissed you for the first time, you'd been telling him about how you dressed up as Bob Ross for Halloween once and didn't realize it was supposed to be a sexy costume. The time after that, he ran into you in the hallway. You were wearing a robe for a lab and were in such a hurry that you didn't even notice who you'd bumped into. You just apologized and kept running. He had to text you that day. You apologized again later. That was an apology worth texting. He always smiles when he thinks about it. God, you gave him one of the best blowjobs he'd ever gotten. Which is insane to him. Because he'd never, in a million years, guess that's a talent you have just from looking at you or talking to you. But if it were up to him, it's a talent you should put on your résumé.

There were a few more times at parties where he'd suddenly run into you. The conversations were always on point, not too long but full of funny moments because you genuinely don't know how to be quiet. And then, without him noticing, he stopped seeing you around. A month? Two weeks? When was the last time Logan fucked you? It's bothering him.

Almost as much as it bothered him that you were there to see him on that double date. He doesn't know if he'd want to see you on a date. Not because you're exclusive or anything. It's just weird seeing a girl you're still fucking every now and then on a date. No wonder you were so embarrassed. God, he loves making you embarrassed. Just not under these circumstances. Maybe he should see if you're coming to the party they're throwing after tomorrow's game.

Dean started talking to him here and there again. It's still not his best friend talking to him again, but it's something. So maybe they won't lose and there'll be something to celebrate. And if there's something to celebrate, maybe you'll come and he can celebrate with you. When was the last time you went down on him? Why the hell can't he remember? It's officially bothering him. . . . Bob, are you coming to the game tomorrow?(John Logan)

You're forced to stare at that text for half an hour. Even while working on your paper, your eyes keep drifting back to it just to make sure you're not imagining it. Because this isn't something Logan does. He doesn't invite you to his games. Or text you in general. The last time he texted you was two months ago after you ran into him in the hallway.

Not really my thing (Y/N)

You reply because you don't see the point in lying. Besides, who would even go to a hockey game with you? You refuse to tell Millie that you occasionally sleep with John Logan and that yesterday you accidentally gave him and his date the free popcorn you're entitled to once per shift. It's humiliating enough that Thomas knows. He definitely wouldn't go with you. He hates the cold and he hates sports. Something about high school and bullies.

That's a little insulting, Bob. Don't you think?(J. L.)

It's not supposed to be(Y/N)

What's not your thing? Be specific.(J. L.)

Hockey?(Y/N)

You wound me and don't even hesitate. I don't know how much more I can take.(J. L.)

Are you coming to the party afterward, or is having fun in general not your thing?(J. L.)

There's a party afterward?(Y/N)

My ego is bruised, Bob. You have to be considerate of my feelings.(J. L.)

But seriously, come. Bring whoever you want. We haven't done a tequila shot together in forever.(J. L.)

You owe me a tequila shot if I win.(J. L.)

I don't drink tequila anymore.(Y/N)

Since when?(J. L.)

Since I went to a party that only had tequila and walked into a pole on my way back to the dorms.(Y/N)

Delete that text and never repeat that story, even if the FBI interrogates you, John Logan. You're under oath. (Y/N)

If you don't come to the party tomorrow, I'll print this out and hang it all over campus.(J. L.)Goodnight. Dream about the tequila shots we're doing tomorrow ;)(J. L.)

John Logan is going to be the death of you. . . . Millie jumped at the chance to go to the party. You didn't tell her Logan invited you. You just told her you'd heard from a friend that if the team won, there'd be a party at their ridiculous house off-campus. That satisfied her. Thomas said he'd rather walk around naked in minus forty degrees than go to another athlete party. Fair enough. They won. After two losses. Someone said Logan scored both of the critical goals. It filled you with a sense of pride you had absolutely no reason to feel. Pride that doesn't belong to you in any way because Logan doesn't belong to you in any way.

"You're in my Lit class, right?" a blond guy asks while you're waiting in line for a keg of beer that's probably way too warm. You try to remember his name, but you're so bad with names that it feels rude to play the guessing game, and luckily, he saves you. "Liam. I sit two rows behind you. You're always the first one out of class," he says with a chuckle. "Because my class after Lit is always on the other side of campus," you explain. "(Y/N)." You introduce yourself and hold your hand out to shake his. "You shake hands?" he laughs, but he reaches for your hand anyway. Then he does something weird and doesn't let go right away. It makes you vaguely uncomfortable for a second, but you smile anyway.

"There you are!" Logan's familiar voice comes from behind you. "Why are you waiting for Tucker's beer? You owe me tequila anyway." He pulls you out of the ridiculously long line, putting some distance between you and Liam. Distance you can't help but be grateful for. "It was nice seeing you, Liam." You smile at him, but Logan doesn't wait for him to answer before giving your hand another tug. It's the most public you've ever been with each other. Not that there's anything public about it. He's just dragging you around his kitchen from one corner to another.

"You looked like you needed saving," he says, smiling as he looks you over. "It's the look I do best." You shrug, not knowing what to say about it because Liam didn't actually do anything. It's not his fault you're bad at small talk. "You missed a good game," Logan says. You can see it on his face that he's proud of himself. "So I heard." You nod. "Rumor has it you're the hero of Briar U," you add. "Does the rumor also say I'm handsome and have the personality of an angel?" He bats his eyes rapidly with an exaggerated smile, and you can't help laughing, which makes him grin for real for a second. "Did you get here a while ago?" he asks.

"A few minutes ago. That line is so ridiculous I lost Millie, my friend." You can feel the critical moment beginning, the one where you lose control of your mouth. "I'm about to tell you a secret that'll change your life, Bob." He looks at you with such seriousness that your eyes widen in concern. "You have to swear this doesn't leave this room. Not to... Millie?" He's briefly unsure of the name you mentioned two seconds ago. "Not even to your coworker who clearly doesn't like me." His seriousness is genuinely concerning. "John, are you okay?" You raise an eyebrow, and he drags you into a room you don't recognize that's relatively quiet compared to the chaos outside.

"Hey," he says softly, stepping close to you after he shuts the door. "Hey?" You laugh a little, making him laugh too, the air from his mouth hitting yours in a way that's somehow a little intimate even though nothing particularly intimate is happening. "Why are we here?" you ask. "Because I'm about to reveal the most important secret in this house, and you have to take it to the grave." He doesn't move an inch, and every word out of his mouth sends a shiver through you that has absolutely no place in a conversation that's supposedly completely normal. "Well?" You try to pull yourself together as you ask.

"This is the room where we keep the alcohol that's actually worth drinking." He whispers it into your ear, making you burst out laughing right into his shoulder. "You're so weird," you mumble after you've calmed down. "I'm about to make you the drink of your life, Bob. You're gonna fall in love with me." He flashes a mischievous smile, as if that's a perfectly normal thing to say. As if this is the kind of conversation the two of you are supposed to have. He clears his throat, realizing within a second what just came out of his mouth, and turns toward the impressive liquor cabinet behind him. For college students, these particular hockey players know their alcohol.

He makes the fanciest drink in the world and hands it to you in a red plastic cup that looks like every other red plastic cup. You also do the tequila shot he demanded from you over text yesterday. He makes sure to hold eye contact while you drink it. "When you get tired of the party, come find me, okay?" he asks as you walk out of the room. "And you can come in here whenever you want for a refill. Mi casa es su casa." He does an exaggerated bow while you roll your eyes but smile, and each of you heads in a different direction. . . . Logan doesn't know how to explain it, but at any given moment, he knew where you were. It didn't matter who he was talking to, how loud the music was, or how many people were currently in his house. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw who you were talking to and where you went. He didn't like it when the person you were talking to was the guy he'd seen you with at the beginning of the party. He didn't like the feeling in his stomach. He wondered if that's what you'd felt when he showed up on a date at your workplace. If he'd only known you worked there, he wouldn't have done it.

He sees you heading upstairs. Nobody else notices you heading upstairs, but he does. The only reason you'd go upstairs is to get to his room and wait for him to get to his room and- "I think I'm done for tonight," he mumbles toward Garrett and the rest of the people standing around him, not waiting for their response. "I wonder who he's going to fuck," he hears from behind him, and all he does in response is raise his middle finger in the air. It's none of their business. You're none of their business.

He wasn't wrong. Fuck, he's so happy he wasn't wrong. Because you're in his room, wearing nothing but his jacket and sitting on his bed, and it's way too pretty of a sight to take for granted. It's been way too long since you've been in his room. He has to make sure it happens more often. "How much have you had to drink?" he asks, because Logan may be a horny asshole most of the time, but he won't touch you if you've had too much to drink. "The drink you made me and the shot we did together," you say, and he doesn't know why, but he thinks it's hot that you've both had an amount of alcohol that won't make either of you skip this part of the evening.

"I've been thinking about you since I saw you at the movie theater," he says as he walks closer, moving your hair away from your face. "What were you thinking?" you ask. "That it's been way too long since I fucked you," he says in a half-whisper right into your ear. He likes seeing the shivers his voice sends through you. You're so easy. It's so easy when he already knows some of your weak spots. "Fuck, Log," you whisper back. "That your lips haven't warmed my cock in way too long," he goes on, saying the filthiest things in his vocabulary. He doesn't even know why it's so urgent for him to embarrass you. To see your cheeks flushed before he's even touched you.

"Yeah?" you ask, slowly dropping to your knees as if you've been given a command, as if he's magnetizing you to the floor. You look up at him from below, and his hand brushes over your face with that gentleness you've caught yourself dreaming about at night since the last time you were in this exact position. "God, you're art that belongs in the Louvre," he murmurs, not taking his eyes off you, trying to preserve the memory of you- your lips slightly parted while you’re on your knees in front of him. "Like this? On my knees in the Louvre?" you try to gather your confidence and somehow manage it from the glazed-over look he sends your way. You feel like you have so much power, even though he's the one in control right now.

You press a soft kiss to his jean-covered thigh, and he lets out a quiet groan. "Don't be a tease, (Y/N). I need you. All fucking evening you've been walking around me like I'm a stranger." He undoes the buttons of his jeans quickly, freeing his erection from his boxers too. "Already? I haven't even touched you yet, Log." You're not laughing. You're mesmerized. You're always mesmerized by his size, by the kind of aesthetics that make Logan so uniquely Logan. "Then start touching me already." He doesn't order you, but it's another quiet command you'll probably obey forever because your mouth is kissing the tip of him within seconds. As if you're worshipping him, with your hands behind your back, wet open-mouthed kisses that say, without words, thank you for the privilege. The kind that makes you feel pathetic at the end of the night but forces you to admit that's who you are for Logan.

"Open up, (Y/N)." He's done playing. You know he's done playing from the look on his face. You open your mouth as wide as you can, and he fills it within seconds. One hand holds your head like a stand, the other brushes over your cheek to wipe away tears that only turn him on more. He likes watching you gag around him. It satisfies him and makes him come faster than he'd like to last.

"Such a good girl, (Y/N)," he manages to mumble through low groans that only make you want to take him deeper into your throat. You moan at his words, which makes him groan again. "No wonder I want to fuck you over and over again. Look at you." He keeps going. "You were made for this," he murmurs, maybe to you, maybe to himself. You don't stop. You add your hand to play with the base of him that won't fit in your mouth. "Fuck, baby, I'm not gonna last like this. You trying to embarrass me?" he mumbles, rolling his hips in a punishing way. "You'll swallow?" he asks, and you nod around him, making him smile that satisfied smile of his. A few minutes later, he finishes, and even though you choke a little, you’re used to his taste by now, so you swallow as much as I can and stick my tongue out to prove you did what he asked.

"Such a good girl. Don't you think you deserve a reward?" he asks, and without waiting for an answer, he starts taking your clothes off. Some of them gently and some with such aggression that you're afraid they'll rip. He's between your legs so quickly. Chuckling at how wet you are as if it's supposed to embarrass you, even though you both know it turns him on more than anything else. Knowing you're enjoying yourself and want to be exactly where you are.

"You're so good," he murmurs against you as he runs his tongue over your clit, gently at first, listening to your little moans. Restrained just in case someone walks down the hallway. "God, if I could, I'd eat your pussy all day. Wouldn't give you a second to recover," he murmurs, and two fingers find their way to your entrance, pumping while his mouth moves over you, perfectly controlling every motion. Switching between licks and sucking and circles.

When you come, it's always sudden, and you never manage to warn him in time. When you apologize, he just chuckles and says it's the hottest thing in the world and that you never have to apologize for coming. Not with him.

"I don't think we should do this anymore," you mumble while you're both panting on his bed. Exactly what a man wants to hear after a perfect orgasm.

John Logan's life is a fucking shitshow. . . .

Opening twitter...

You posted:

♫: puss puss - Zara Larsson

liked by mackcelebrini, oliviarodrigo, catbtoffoli, _willsmith2, and 234.9k more

you: you da real san jose ☀️👙🦈

comments...

theelephantintheroom address me

user1 picked the freakiest part of the song to post btw

↳ user2 'i wanna feel your body when you call me' like oh sorry are we interrupting

↳ you I WANNA WEAR NOTHINGGGG TAKE IT OFFFF MEEEEE

_willsmith2 mean mogging me

user3 ok are we not allowed to say that that is obviously wsh or what?? why is nobody saying this

↳ user4 she's gonna slime you bruh

↳ user3 Bro what

you deleted this comment thread.

you got a notification!

[jacks ex] posted to her story!

opening your messages...

you posted a story!

@_willsmith2 posted:

♫: Hey Blondie - Dominic Fike

liked by you, mackcelebrini, sanjosesharks, catbtoffoli, kkharvey, and 201.8k more

Will Smith: year 2 in the bay 🦈

comments...

you year 2 in the bay what a girl ur a girl to me

user5 I'm still not over this random fucking collab between these two

user6 HAHAHA IS THE LAST SLIDE [name]??

user7 interesting song choice........ from #you know whose favorite movie

↳ you yea he has a crush on me sorry

── .✦

you posted:

♫: Paid Time Off - Noah Kahan

liked by noahkahanmusic, ptc.47, _willsmith2, jackhughes, and 197.8k more

you: my beautiful daughter is dropping or3 soon... thanking god im in a happy relationship for both her and noah kahan's drop 🥹 #freedom

comments...

noahkahanmusic feeling very starstruck right now!! Love you

↳ you liked this comment

oliviarodrigo hi mama

↳ you liked this comment

_willsmith2 🐐

↳ you god could you comment something normal pls im not a hockey player

↳ _willsmith2 i thought you loved me

↳ you 🙄

you got a notification!

unlocking your phone...

you posted three stories!

opening twitter...

opening messages...

── .✦

you posted:

♫: expectations - Olivia Rodrigo

liked by _willsmith2, michaelmisa_, rachelzegler, lizzymcalpine, and 234.9k more

you: these days ive got expectations 💋

user1 OHMYGOD?

user2 YOURE JOE KING.

user3 quite suspiciously will smith hockey shaped man you’ve got there

oliviarodrigo mama,,…

_willsmith2 lucky guy

↳ you liked this comment

bonus: smitty’s texts

── .✦

part 2?? lmk...,,, and feel free to share ideas abt it as well hehe

The first thing everyone learned about Juraj was that he took up space.

Not just because he was tall, or because his shoulders seemed too broad for most doorways, or because he had the kind of presence that made people turn around before he even said anything. Juraj took up space because he was loud. He laughed loudly, talked loudly, cheered loudly, entered rooms like he had been shot out of a cannon and somehow expected everyone else to keep up with him. He was friendly in a way that felt almost aggressive, slinging arms around shoulders, chirping teammates from across the locker room, making random noises when he was bored, interrupting conversations just because he had a thought and needed to share it immediately.

He was explosive on the ice, too. Emotional. Fiery. The kind of player who celebrated with his whole chest, who got into scrums too easily, who threw his head back when he laughed and yelled across the bench like there weren’t cameras everywhere. He was energy in human form, all sharp edges and volume and instinct.

Which was exactly why nobody understood how he had ended up with you.

You were… quiet.

Not cold. Not rude. Not unfriendly, either. Just quiet in a way that felt natural, like you didn’t need to fill every silence to feel comfortable. You listened more than you spoke. You smiled softly instead of bursting into laughter. You moved calmly, chose your words carefully, and had the kind of composed presence that made people instinctively lower their voices around you without knowing why. You weren’t the type to jump into the middle of a group conversation or shout across a room. You didn’t demand attention. You didn’t chase it.

And somehow, Juraj Slafkovsky, human thunderstorm, was completely and hopelessly in love with you.

The first time the Canadiens saw you properly, it was after a home game in Montreal. Juraj had mentioned you before, of course, usually with the subtlety of a man who had never once been normal about anything in his life. “My girl likes this restaurant,” he would say when the guys talked about dinner. “My girl told me that movie is bad,” he would announce unprompted. “My girl says I talk too loud on the phone,” he had once said, sounding both offended and proud.

Still, none of them had expected you to be real in the way you were.

They expected someone loud, maybe. Someone who could match him. Someone who could chirp back just as hard, shove him when he got annoying, keep up with his nonstop talking. They expected a girl who walked into the family lounge like she already owned the place.

Instead, you were standing near the wall in a long coat, hands folded around the strap of your bag, talking softly to one of the staff members. You had a calm little smile on your face, your voice barely carrying over the noise of families, kids, players, and arena workers moving around after the game. You looked elegant without trying to be. Gentle, but not fragile. Reserved, but not uncomfortable.

Cole was the first one to notice Juraj notice you.

One second, Juraj was practically yelling at Kirby about a missed pass, his hair still damp from the shower, his suit jacket open, hands flying dramatically as he reenacted something from the third period. The next second, his whole face changed.

It was immediate.

His mouth shut. His shoulders relaxed. The volume of him dropped so suddenly that Kirby actually turned to see what had happened.

Then Juraj saw you glance toward him, and he smiled.

Not his usual huge, cocky, ridiculous grin. Not the grin he wore after scoring or after successfully annoying someone. This one was softer. Smaller. Almost private “Hi,” he said when he reached you.

The guys froze, because Juraj had just said “hi” like he was afraid of startling a bird.

You looked up at him and smiled, your eyes warming in a way that made his entire posture shift toward you. “Hi,” you answered.

“How was the game?” he asked, voice low, Arber’s head snapped toward Cole so quickly it was a miracle he didn’t pull something.

Cole mouthed, “What the hell?”

Juraj didn’t notice them. Or, if he did, he didn’t care. He leaned down slightly, not crowding you, but close enough that you didn’t have to raise your voice. “You okay? It was loud in there today.”

You nodded. “I’m okay. It was fun.”

“You sure?” he asked, eyes scanning your face carefully. “You looked tired before.”

“I’m just a little sleepy.” His expression softened even further. “We go home soon, yeah? I just have to talk to media for five minutes.”

“You don’t have to rush.”

“I want to,” he said simply, behind him, three of his teammates looked like they had just witnessed a magic trick, Kirby leaned closer to Cole and whispered, “Is he whispering?”

“That is not Juraj,” Cole whispered back, Arber narrowed his eyes. “Maybe she drugged him"

You heard that one, your eyes flicked past Juraj’s shoulder, amused but shy, and Juraj immediately turned around with a glare so sharp it could have cut glass “Don’t be weird,” he snapped, and there he was again, loud and familiar. “Say hi like normal people.”

Cole lifted both hands. “We didn’t do anything.”

“You were looking stupid.”

“We are stupid,” Kirby said. “But that’s not the point.” Juraj rolled his eyes, then turned back to you, and his voice dropped again like someone had lowered a dial inside him. “Sorry. They are embarrassing.”

You smiled a little. “They’re fine.”

“No, they are not.”

That made you laugh quietly, and Juraj looked so pleased with himself that Cole had to bite the inside of his cheek to stop from laughing too.

It only got worse from there.

Or better, depending on who was asked.

The more the team saw you together, the less sense you made and the more obvious it became that Juraj was an entirely different species around you. He was still himself, technically. Still loud with the guys, still dramatic, still capable of turning a simple story into a full performance with sound effects. But the second you entered the room, something in him softened.

He never grabbed you suddenly. Never threw an arm around your shoulders the way he did with teammates. Never shouted your name from across the room unless he genuinely had to. If he saw you before you saw him, he approached carefully, like he didn’t want to overwhelm you. When he touched you, it was always with a small warning first—a hand hovering near your back before settling there, fingers brushing yours before he took your hand, his head dipping toward you so he could ask, “Can I?” before kissing your forehead if other people were around.

It confused his teammates to no end.

One night, after a team dinner, Juraj was in full form. He was laughing too loudly, leaning across the table to steal fries from Cole’s plate, arguing with Arber about something completely pointless, and telling a story that involved him nearly knocking over a lamp in his apartment. He was impossible. Huge and loud and grinning, his voice bouncing off the restaurant walls.

You were sitting beside him, quiet, listening with a small smile as he spoke. Your hand rested in your lap, fingers loosely curled around a napkin. You hadn’t interrupted once. You didn’t seem annoyed, exactly, but you did look a little tired from the noise.

Kirby noticed at the same time Juraj did.

Juraj had been mid-sentence, one hand in the air, when he glanced down at you. Something in your face made him pause “Too much?” he murmured.

The table went silent, not because the question was dramatic. Because none of them had ever heard him check himself that quickly. You looked up, surprised. “No. You’re okay.” his eyebrows drew together slightly. “You sure?”

“Yes,” you said softly. Then, after a second, you added, “Maybe just a little loud.” Cole choked on his drink, Juraj didn’t even pretend to be offended. He just nodded seriously, leaned back in his chair, and said, “Okay. I be quiet.”

Arber stared at him. “You’ll what?” Juraj pointed a fry at him. “Shut up.”

“You? Quiet?”

“For her, yes.” You looked down, trying not to smile too obviously, but Juraj saw it anyway. He always saw you. That was the thing nobody understood at first. He could be in the middle of chaos, surrounded by noise he had probably created himself, and still notice the smallest change in you. If you got overwhelmed, if you got quiet in the wrong way, if your smile became polite instead of real, Juraj caught it immediately.

He didn’t always know what to do with everyone else’s emotions. He could be blunt, impulsive, too intense. But with you, he was careful. Not because he thought you were weak. Because he knew you gave the world your calm, and he wanted to be the one place where you didn’t have to spend all your energy maintaining it.

At the restaurant, he lowered his voice for the rest of the night. Not completely, because he was still Juraj and miracles had limits, but enough that the guys noticed. He leaned closer when he talked to you. He checked whether you wanted dessert before ordering. When someone across the table asked you a question and three other conversations were happening at once, Juraj noticed the way you hesitated, then turned to the table and said, “Wait, let her talk.”

The command was loud enough to make everyone stop, then he looked back at you, voice soft again. “What were you saying, baby?”

Your cheeks warmed slightly. “It wasn’t important.”

“It is important.”

That was another thing, Juraj treated everything you said like it mattered. Even when you were quiet. Especially then. If you spoke in a group, he listened like you had just given a press conference. If you mentioned wanting to try a bakery across town, he remembered. If you said a certain song annoyed you, he skipped it forever, even if he liked it. If you admitted you were nervous about meeting people, he positioned himself beside you the whole time, not hovering exactly, but steady enough that you never had to search for him.

The team teased him constantly.

At practice, Cole started calling him “inside voice” whenever you were around. Arber once pretended to faint when Juraj gently took your coat from your shoulders without making a joke. Kirby told him he looked like a golden retriever trying not to scare a cat. Juraj took all of it badly, loudly, and with several creative insults.

But he never denied it.

Not once.

One afternoon, after a brutal practice, you came to pick him up from the rink. You had texted him that you were waiting near the players’ entrance, and Juraj, still flushed from skating, practically barreled out of the locker room with his bag over one shoulder “Hey!” he shouted down the hallway at no one in particular. “Move, I have plans.”

“With your quiet little girlfriend?” Cole called after him, Juraj turned around and pointed at him. “Don’t call her little.” Cole blinked. “That was the part you took issue with?”

“She is not little. She is normal. I am big.”

“That’s actually fair,” Kirby said, Juraj ignored them and pushed through the door, but the moment he saw you waiting near the entrance, looking down at your phone with your coat buttoned up and your hair tucked behind one ear, his pace slowed. The door shut behind him. The cold air rushed in. You looked up.

His face changed again “Hi, baby,” he said, so gently it almost didn’t sound like the same man who had just shouted at half the locker room.

You smiled. “Hi.” he stopped in front of you, careful not to crowd you with his equipment bag. “You waited long?”

“No. Just a few minutes.”

“You should have stayed in the car. It’s cold.”

“I’m okay.” He frowned, already reaching for your hands. “Your fingers are cold.”

“They’re always cold.”

“I know. That is why I worry.” You let him take your hands between his, his palms warm from the lingering heat of practice. He rubbed his thumbs over your knuckles, focused, almost stern about it, like warming your hands was a responsibility he had been personally assigned. You watched him with a soft expression, and for a moment, neither of you seemed aware of the door opening behind him.

Unfortunately, his teammates were very aware of both of you.

Cole, Kirby, and Arber stepped out just in time to see Juraj bend his head and blow warm air gently over your fingers.

Cole stopped walking, Kirby made a noise that sounded like pain, Arber whispered, “No way.” Juraj’s head snapped up. “What?”

Cole pressed a hand to his chest. “That was beautiful, man.”

“Shut up.”

“You’re like a romance novel.”

“I said shut up.” You tried to pull your hands back, embarrassed, but Juraj held them a little more securely and looked down at you at once. “No, no, don’t. They are idiots. Ignore them.”

“I’m not embarrassed,” you said, though you obviously were, Juraj softened. “You sure?”

You nodded, he looked back at his teammates. “Go away.” Kirby grinned. “We’re going the same direction.”

“Go different direction.”

“That’s not how parking lots work.” Juraj made an irritated sound, but he shifted his body slightly, blocking you from the worst of their teasing without making it obvious. His hand settled at your back, light and protective. Not possessive. Just there. A quiet barrier between you and the noise.

That was when Kirby started to understand.

It wasn’t that you balanced Juraj by being the opposite of him in some neat, cliché way. It wasn’t as simple as loud boy, quiet girl. It was that Juraj, who so often moved through the world like everything would make room for him, had learned to make room for you. And you, who could easily disappear into the background if people weren’t paying attention, somehow held every bit of his attention without trying.

You didn’t need to fight for space with him.

He gave it to you.

The full realization came during a team event a few weeks later. It was one of those charity nights that required suits, photos, small talk, and far too many people packed into one beautiful room. Juraj loved parts of it—the teammates, the kids, the fans, the joking around. You liked supporting him, but events like that drained you. Too much noise, too many strangers, too many people expecting you to know how to respond immediately.

You handled it well, like you always did. You smiled when introduced. You answered questions politely. You stayed close to Juraj but never clung to him. To anyone else, you looked perfectly fine.

Juraj knew better.

He noticed your hand tightening around your glass. Not shaking. Not visibly nervous. Just holding it a little too firmly. He noticed that your answers were getting shorter. He noticed that you had stopped leaning into his side and were standing very still, like you were trying to become invisible.

He was in the middle of talking to two sponsors when he paused.

“Excuse me,” he said, surprisingly polite, and turned to you. His hand touched your elbow gently. “Come with me?” You glanced at him. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“You were talking.”

“I am done talking.” One of the sponsors laughed, probably thinking he was joking, Juraj was not joking. He guided you away from the main room, not rushing you, not making a scene. He found a quieter hallway near the side entrance, where the music was muffled and the air felt less heavy. Only then did he step in front of you, ducking his head slightly so he could see your face.

“Breathe, baby,” he murmured “I’m fine,” you said automatically “I know you are fine.” His voice was steady. Soft. “But you don’t have to be fine with me.”

That almost broke you, your eyes lowered to his tie, your fingers still wrapped too tightly around the glass. Juraj noticed and carefully took it from your hand, setting it on a nearby table. Then he held out both of his hands, palms up, waiting. Letting you choose.

After a second, you placed your hands in his “There,” he whispered. “Better?” You nodded once. “I just needed a minute.”

“I know.”

“You didn’t have to leave with me.”

“Yes, I did.”

“Juraj.”

“What?” he said, but there was no bite in it. “I want to. You think I want to talk to people more than I want to stand here with you?” You let out a quiet laugh. “You like talking to people.”

“Yes. But I love you.” The words came so easily from him. No performance. No drama. He said it like it was obvious, like it explained everything.

You looked up at him, your expression softening, and Juraj’s thumb brushed over the back of your hand “I know I am a lot,” he said after a moment, voice lower. “I know I am loud and annoying and sometimes too much. But I don’t want to be too much for you.”

“You’re not too much for me.”

His eyes searched yours “You’re different with me,” you added quietly. “But I don’t want you to think you have to change who you are.”

“I don’t change,” he said. “I just… I don’t know. I take care. With you, I take care.”

Your throat tightened a little, inside the main room, someone laughed loudly. A camera flashed near the doorway. Juraj didn’t look away from you “You make me calm,” he admitted, almost like it embarrassed him. “Not boring calm. Good calm. Like I can stop fighting everything.”

You squeezed his hands. “You don’t always have to be the loudest person in the room.” he gave you a tiny smile. “But I am very good at it.”

“You are.”

“And you love me.”

“I do.” His smile grew, but he kept himself quiet, like this moment was too delicate to ruin with teasing. He leaned down slowly, giving you plenty of time to pull away if you wanted. You didn’t. His lips touched your forehead, warm and gentle, and he lingered there for a second before pulling back.

Unfortunately, he had chosen the hallway directly next to the side entrance, which meant half the team had seen enough to become unbearable.

Cole appeared first, holding a tiny plate of appetizers and wearing the expression of a man who had just discovered premium gossip “Oh,” he said. “So this is where the emotional support giant went.”

Juraj closed his eyes. “Go away" Arber stepped beside Cole. “No, no. We are learning.” Kirby nodded solemnly. “It’s educational.”

You covered your mouth, hiding a smile, Juraj looked at the three of them with deep betrayal. “I hate all of you.”

“No, you don’t,” Cole said. “You’re too soft now.”

“I am not soft.” All three of them stared at him, Juraj’s hand was still holding yours carefully. His body was angled in front of you, protective without being overbearing. His voice, even while irritated, was quieter than usual because you were right beside him. He looked like a man trying to deny the sky was blue while standing under it.

Arber lifted an eyebrow, Juraj huffed. “Okay. Maybe for her.”

That made you look up at him, he looked down at you, and his expression softened again despite himself. “Only for her.”

Cole made a wounded sound. “That’s actually disgusting.”

“It’s cute,” Kirby corrected “It’s confusing,” Arber said. “But cute.”

Juraj rolled his eyes, but he didn’t let go of your hand.

From then on, the team stopped asking how the two of you had gotten together as if it were some impossible mystery. They still teased him, obviously. They were hockey players; emotional maturity only went so far. They still called him “gentle giant” when you were around and pretended to lower invisible volume knobs whenever he spoke to you. They still acted shocked every time Juraj said “please” in a soft voice or carried your bag without making a big announcement of it.

But they understood.

They understood when they saw him in the family lounge after games, sweaty and exhausted, crouching slightly so he could hear you better over the noise. They understood when he stopped mid-rant because you touched his wrist. They understood when he texted you before postgame media so you wouldn’t wonder where he was. They understood when he never mocked how quiet you were, never pushed you to be more outgoing, never treated your reserved nature like something he needed to fix.

And they understood when they saw you with him, too.

Because you loved Juraj as he was. You never tried to make him smaller. You never looked embarrassed when he laughed too loudly or told the same story with too many gestures. You just touched his arm when he got carried away, smiled when he looked at you for reassurance, and gave him the kind of peace he didn’t seem to know he needed until he had it.

One night, after a win, the team was gathered around in the lounge again. Juraj had scored, which meant he was impossible. Loud, glowing, energized, retelling his goal with so much drama that half the room had heard it twice already. You sat on one of the couches, watching him with quiet amusement, your coat folded neatly over your lap.

“And then I shoot, right?” Juraj said, using his hands to demonstrate. “But it’s not just shot, it’s like—”

“Like a normal shot,” Cole interrupted, Juraj pointed at him. “You are jealous.”

“Of what? Your volume?”

“My skill.”

“Debatable.” Juraj opened his mouth to argue, then glanced at you. You were smiling, but tired, your head resting lightly against the back of the couch.

His entire argument vanished, he turned away from Cole mid-sentence and walked over to you. “You ready to go home?” You blinked up at him. “You don’t have to leave yet. You scored.”

“So?”

“So you’re happy. Celebrate with them.”

“I celebrated.” He crouched in front of you slightly, lowering his voice. “Now I want to go home with you.” Your expression softened. “Juraj.”

“What?”

“You can stay.”

“I know.” He smiled. “I don’t want to.” Behind him, Cole whispered loudly, “Whipped.”, without turning around, Juraj raised one hand and gave him the finger.

You laughed, surprised and quiet, and Juraj grinned like that sound was better than the goal.

He stood and helped you up, careful with your coat, careful with your bag, careful with you. Not because you would break. Because you mattered. Because he knew his own strength, his own volume, his own chaos, and with you he wanted every part of himself to be gentle first.

As you walked toward the exit, his hand rested at the small of your back. The room behind you was still loud, full of laughter and teasing and someone calling after him, but Juraj didn’t look back.

He leaned down slightly, speaking only for you “You hungry?”

“A little.”

“I make you something at home?”

“You’re going to cook after a game?”

“Yes.”

“You can barely stand.”

“I am strong.”

“You’re dramatic.”

“I scored.”

“You did.” He smiled, pleased. “You saw?”

“I saw.”

“Good.” His thumb brushed lightly over your back. “I always play better when you watch.” You looked up at him. “That’s not true.”

“It is true.”

“You’re just saying that.”

“No.” He bent closer, his voice dropping into that soft tone that still made his teammates stare when they heard it. “I like knowing you are there. Makes everything… quieter.”

For a second, you didn’t answer. You just looked at him, this loud, explosive, impossible boy who somehow held your heart with the gentlest hands.

Then you leaned into his side, just enough for him to feel it, Juraj smiled and adjusted instantly, slowing his steps to match yours.

Behind you, the Canadiens were still laughing, still teasing, still pretending not to understand, but Juraj understood.

You were quiet where he was loud. Careful where he was impulsive. Calm where he was fire. And somehow, instead of canceling each other out, you made space for each other to exist exactly as you were.

To everyone else, it looked impossible.

To Juraj, it was simple.

The world could have the loud version of him.

The next morning arrived without any of the softness this trip usually promised. You woke up long late, tangled in sheets that felt far too warm and with a headache that surprisingly had nothing to do with alcohol.

You didn’t know how long you spent just staring at the ceiling. Hours, maybe. Long enough for the sunlight to slowly shift across the room. Long enough to hear the villa wake up around you and realize you had absolutely no intention of joining it.

Lovisa came in a couple of times to check on you. The first time was simply to confirm you were alive and hadn’t fled the country overnight. The second time she brought you a cup of coffee.

You only offered muffled answers to all her attempts at conversation.

The villa was quieter than usual. You didn't hear much of the normal rhythm of people moving around and living their lives. Maybe everyone was sleeping in after yesterday. Or maybe last night's argument had simply put everyone on edge.

And weren't you the one responsible for that?

“You haven't been there for me since the day you got drafted.”

What kind of monster said that to someone? Well, apparently you did. And to your best friend, nonetheless.

You could still remember William's face afterward. The way he'd looked at you like you'd physically hit him. Taken aback and completely numb. In a way, punching him in the face would've probably hurt both of you less, and you were against physical violence in every conceivable way.

You'd spent most of the night lying awake convincing yourself that you didn't care—that he had started the argument, that he'd made it much bigger than it ever needed to become—only to wake up realizing you cared so much it felt sickeningly embarrassing.

With a soft knock on your door and a squeak from the hinges, Lovisa entered your room again. You heard her but didn't bother rolling over to look at her.

“Sunny, we’re leaving for the beach now,” she said gently. “Are you sure you don’t want to come?” 

You groaned into the pillow. “Lollo, leave me alone.” 

“Not possible,” Lovisa informed you. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“I’ve said no, like, fifteen times already.” 

You felt the mattress dip as she sat down on the bed, and you flopped dramatically onto your back. Lovisa sat cross-legged at the edge of the bed, already dressed for the beach in a linen cover-up and oversized sunglasses pushed into her hair. She looked annoyingly put together for someone who had consumed enough vodka to tranquilize a horse two nights ago. You still weren’t entirely convinced you'd recovered from that first night out.

“I think William was being very childish last night,” she stated. 

You groaned louder. There wasn’t possibly anything she could say that would make you feel better. “Lovisa—”

“No, let me finish.” Her voice softened. “He had no right to say any of that to you. Of course you should move when you get accepted. I don’t know what he was thinking.”  

A lump immediately formed in your throat. The stupid thing was that you'd wanted somebody to say exactly that. Just once, to reassure you that you weren't losing your mind, attempting to do the impossible. But if you were being honest, you'd wanted to hear it from William. Because despite everything, despite how angry you were with him, despite the argument and the hurt and the months of distance, his stupid opinion still mattered the most to you. 

“And you will get accepted,” Lovisa continued firmly. “No arguments.”

You ignored that entirely, staring back up at the ceiling instead.

“I called him a shitty friend, Lollo. That’s so much worse.” 

William had said something selfish—that he thought you should stay in Sweden because that meant you’d conveniently be there when he was there. You had said something cruel, and there was a massive difference.

Lovisa's expression softened immediately. “Sunny.”

You looked over at her. Her shoulders had slumped slightly. A small crease sat permanently between her eyebrows now. You hated that she looked worried. You hated even more that your nickname sounded different when she said it, like there were words underneath it she wasn’t quite saying that you miraculously should just know. 

“We’ve all been shitty friends to you these last few months. I think it’s only fair you call us out on it,” she continued. 

“What?” 

You pushed yourself up onto your elbows. The statement surprised you enough to cut straight through your self-pity.

“You’ve been dealing with everything at home. The stuff with your granddad, and the applications and we—” She stopped herself, exhaling sharply through her nose. “We haven’t exactly been present.” 

You quickly shook your head, dismissing everything she’d just said. “But you’re not bad friends, though. I mean—I'm being overly emotional over something most people deal with alone anyway—”

“Shut up, shut up, shut up,” Lovisa mumbled. Before you could react, she had practically launched herself forward. The hug was awkward considering you were still half horizontal, but that had never stopped her before. “You can be so dumb for someone who’s spent her entire life in school.” 

A laugh escaped you despite yourself, small and a little pathetic. Wet from the tears threatening to fall from your eyes. 

Lovisa squeezed you once more before letting go and eventually pushed herself to her feet.

“Anyway.” She smoothed out her cover-up. “I’m gonna leave now. The rest are probably waiting in the car for me.”

You nodded weakly.

“Maybe take a shower?” she added. “And eat something. You look like hell.” 

She was quickly back to the Lovisa you knew and loved, like her hug and almost-tears could be forgotten about. She still smiled at you, though, letting the emotion still shine through her eyes. 

Lovisa took a few steps toward the door before pausing and turning to you again. “And try to talk to William, at least. You’re both fucking miserable whenever you argue.” 

You groaned again. “Lollo, stop.” 

The worst part was that she wasn't wrong. 

You and William hardly ever fought. Maybe because you'd spent most of your friendship avoiding things that could turn into fights. Maybe because you usually understood each other before it got that far. Whatever the reason, arguments always felt wrong between you. Like a sweater put on backwards, uncomfortable in a way that never stopped demanding your attention until you corrected it. 

You’d never really argued about serious things before, anyway. Certainly not to the point of screaming. Your disagreements usually revolved around important issues like who got shotgun in the car, who cheated during board games, or who was responsible for hanging up the phone first.

“Is he not going with you?” you asked hesitantly. 

“No,” Lovisa paused, a small smile tugging at one corner of her mouth. “He said something about sleeping off a headache. I think he’s mostly sulking.” 

Before you could throw something at her, she slipped out the door and closed it after her. 

And your room fell deathly quiet again. For a long moment, you stared at the closed door. Then at the ceiling. Then toward the bathroom.

You should really take a shower and eat something. You were starving for breakfast.

You should also probably answer the texts that had accumulated on your phone overnight. You’d heard them buzz in throughout the night and morning, but you hadn’t dared to look until now. 

Three were from your mother, simply asking about the trip. Those could wait a little longer until you answered them. One was from August asking if you wanted something special for dinner tonight. He was definitely going to attempt solving this awkward tension through food, and it might just work because of how talented he was. 

And one was from Alana with a hope you feel better soon and a red heart emoji. She just had to be nice even when you were acting like the most socially inept person ever. You couldn’t even begin to imagine what that argument must’ve looked like from the eyes of a stranger. 

There was nothing from William.

Not that you expected there to be. 

He had a headache. 

You dropped the phone back onto the mattress and stared at it for a second longer.

You really should eat and shower. And, apparently, talk to William. Unfortunately, that sounded like the hardest task on the list.

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

William’s headache disappeared the second everyone left the house.

He’d spent all morning just muttering excuses about why he didn’t want to leave the bed, hiding from any possible sunlight. And people. God, voices annoyed him when the last thing he wanted was to hear them. Or worse, have to talk to them.

He'd spent enough years testing the limits of his body for hockey to know the difference between exhaustion and avoidance. This was avoidance. Pure, uncomplicated avoidance of any responsibility he might have today. 

He wasn’t going to the beach. He wasn’t being civil with the others at breakfast. And he definitely wasn’t talking to anyone about what had happened last night. 

As Alana had quietly gotten ready in their shared bathroom, she’d asked him a couple of times if he really wasn’t coming or asked if she should stay behind too.

William had shut that down immediately.

And every time she’d asked him if he was okay or if he wanted to talk, all he could blame was his headache. But Alana never argued or pressured him into saying more. That was one of the things he liked about her. She never demanded explanations.

Once he could hear the front door shut and the rental car leave the driveway, he decided he should probably get out of bed. Not before thinking about it for another ten minutes, though.

Because Lovisa had very loudly announced that you were staying home too.

But he couldn’t hear you move around the house, which made him assume you were stuck in the same position he was. 

William dragged himself out of bed, not bothering to change clothes or even look himself in the mirror. 

The villa felt strange without everyone in it. It almost reminded him of his condo back in Toronto with how empty and quiet it was. And he hated that about it. 

Sunlight spilled across empty hallways and untouched furniture. Somewhere downstairs, the air conditioning vent hummed softly. He wandered without much purpose. Kitchen. Living room. Terrace. Back inside. As if movement itself might somehow solve whatever the hell was wrong with him.

Eventually he found himself upstairs again. Should he just go back to bed? 

He stopped in the hallway without really thinking, his eyes landing on the closed door to your room. William frowned. What exactly was his plan here? Stand outside your room like a serial killer? Wait until you inevitably had to come out and he could totally accidentally just be standing there, forcing you to talk to him? 

Great strategy. Real mature. About as mature as he'd been last night.

Suddenly he noticed the sound of running water drifting through the door. So, you were awake and in the shower, apparently. 

For some reason, that made something tighten in his chest. And it wasn't because you were naked on the other side of the wall. That thought genuinely didn’t even cross his mind. Not until now, anyway. William immediately shoved it aside.

The thing bothering him was the realization that you'd probably spent the entire morning doing exactly what he'd been doing.

Just thinking about it all. And knowing you, you’d definitely overthought it already. Brought the thought back to its tiny little core and examined it from every possible angle. He wondered what your conclusion was. 

William leaned back against the wall and quickly pushed himself away again.

Fuck. This was ridiculous.

You'd had arguments before. Not too many. Almost none, actually. But they happened, and usually they lasted an hour. Maybe two at tops. Then one of you made a stupid apology disguised as a joke, the other pretended not to care, and everything went back to normal.

This felt very different to that. Maybe because the topic was actually worth discussing. Not worth fighting over like you currently were, but it was something you needed to talk about. 

William had known exactly what every word you’d said last night meant. That was the worst part of it all. Everything had landed because some part of him knew there was truth buried inside it.

“You haven't been there for me since the day you got drafted.”

That sentence sat in his chest like some sort of spreading disease. 

Because he hadn’t. It was true—he hadn’t been there for you like he used to. He’d left you alone to deal with so much shit, then expected you to answer the phone every time he had a weird dream or a bad playoff loss or some minor crisis he couldn’t figure out himself.

He’d like to blame it on life happening around him. Too much and too quickly all at once. 

He had a team and the entire city of Toronto depending on him. He had relationships falling apart wherever he looked. He couldn’t even remember the last time he hung out with all his siblings together, unless it was related to hockey and they’d all shown up for him. 

So when had he stopped showing up for the people he loved? It had happened somewhere along the way, and he’d stubbornly not even noticed it.

He hadn’t visited August’s new restaurant, even though he’d worked there for nearly two years. Lovisa’s sister had a kid he’d never met. And he'd missed your grandfather’s fucking funeral—a man who'd practically adopted him every summer since he was fourteen years old.

Somewhere along the way he'd stopped being the person who automatically knew what was happening in your life, and that hurt more than he could admit even to himself. 

He hadn't known you were serious about the PhD applications this year. Hadn't known you'd applied abroad or that you’d already picked which cities. He’d been ready to laugh it off like usual when Lovisa brought it up out of the blue. You always said you would apply, yet you never did. 

And somehow hearing it from across a Yahtzee table had felt awful. Not because you were leaving—he could survive that actually—but because you hadn’t told him.

When the fuck had he stopped being the person you told things like that to? And if he didn’t know about this, what else didn’t he know?

William scrubbed both hands down his face. Jesus Christ. He needed to eat something before this fake headache became a real one. So, he finally forced himself downstairs before he could spend another ten minutes staring at your bedroom door like an idiot.

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

William stood with the refrigerator door hanging open, staring at shelves he’d already checked twice, when he heard the sound of bare feet padding softly against the stone floors.

You appeared in the kitchen a second later, freshly showered.

Your hair was still damp, darker than usual where water clung to it. A few strands stuck to the side of your neck. You were wearing a pair of soft sleep shorts and one of those ancient university t-shirts you refused to throw away despite it looking like it had survived several wars, a faded logo stretched across your chest. 

For a moment, neither of you said anything.

William hadn’t seen you since you'd stormed away from the table last night. That realization felt strangely ridiculous. Less than twelve hours, and somehow it felt like weeks.

“Oh,” you said.

Just that.

Oh.

Like you'd stumbled across him entirely by accident and had been expecting literally anyone else to be standing there.

“You’re awake.” 

William shoved his hands deeper into the pockets of his shorts and leaned against the open refrigerator door. “Yeah.”

You stopped where you were, halfway between the doorway and the kitchen island. Your arms hung awkwardly at your sides, like you weren't entirely sure what to do with them.

“How’s the headache?” you asked. 

The question shouldn't have made him feel guilty, but it did. Because you were asking sincerely and you both knew it had never really been about a headache.

“Mostly gone,” he answered. 

You nodded, and silence filled the room again. 

God, this was painful. 

Normally you would’ve been making fun of him already. Or stealing whatever food he’d found. Or hopping up onto the counter and talking about some book nobody else cared about while forcing him to make breakfast for the both of you.

Instead, you hovered near the kitchen island while William stood by the fridge, the two of you behaving like distant relatives who’d unexpectedly run into each other at a grocery store.

The refrigerator was mostly empty anyway. A couple of eggs and an unreasonable amount of beer. The villa was large enough to house a small monarchy. Surely somebody had bought actual food. Then again, August had been in charge of dinner most days, and William didn’t dare to touch any of those ingredients. 

“Why is there absolutely nothing in this fridge?” he muttered, finally shutting the door.

William hadn't really expected you to answer, but a small smile tugged at your mouth. He actually watched you fight against it.

“My guess would be because you boys eat like cavemen,” you said, shrugging. 

There it was. Tiny, but he caught it. The first glimpse of normal he’d seen all morning. And embarrassingly enough, William felt himself relax almost immediately.

“You wanna order something?” you asked. 

“No.” William shook his head. 

You frowned slightly. “What do you want then?”

There was only one thing William could possibly think of eating right now, to rebuild the bridge he’d burned between you last night. Not because it sounded particularly good, but because he needed it. The answer would’ve been the same ten years ago, as it would’ve been last summer. He hoped, stupidly and desperately, that it would still be the same answer ten years from now.

“You know what I want?” he laughed. “I want marmalade toast and chocolate milk.”

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

Sundbyberg, Stockholm County. Sometime in January 2013. 

Three floors up in a mid-century apartment building, William could see big snowflakes through the kitchen window, slowly sailing down to the ground and landing in what was already an entirely white landscape.

Inside, everything smelled like toast.

Between sage-green kitchen cabinets and a fridge absolutely littered with magnets, vacation photos, shopping lists, and takeout menus, he'd somehow found a second little home at your parents' place.

As William waited for bread to pop out of the toaster, he could hear you muttering at something in the living room. It was most definitely directed at his poor attempt at writing a book report that needed to be finished by Monday morning.

“Did you seriously write about that stupid Zlatan Ibrahimović book?” you yelled towards the kitchen. “The assignment is for fiction!” 

“Zlatan's career is unreal. It's basically fiction,” William mumbled back through a mouthful of cheese.

You groaned in response and muttered something unintelligible just as the toaster finally made the very awaited popping sound.

It was a Friday evening, and William had hopped on the metro straight from practice to get to your side of town. Your parents were away for the weekend at your granddad's place—helping him shovel snow, chop firewood, and whatever else retired Swedish men insisted on doing in the dead of winter—so the apartment was empty save for the two of you.

Not that it felt strange anymore. It was a standard procedure by now for you to hang out like this. A few years ago William would've been nervous showing up unannounced. Now he had his own mug in one of the cabinets, and his mother knew where he was before he’d even texted her. 

He'd found you exactly where he almost always found you when he knocked on the door.

Nose buried in a book or homework despite it being a Friday night. Pink fluffy slippers on your feet. Your granddad's old fisherman sweater hanging off your shoulders. The coffee table already showing evidence of your preferred dinner whenever nobody responsible was around to stop you.

Marmalade toast and chocolate milk. 

It wasn't a full meal by any stretch of the imagination, but you'd never seemed particularly concerned by that fact, no matter how many times William pointed it out. If his coach ever caught him joining you as often as he did, he'd probably get benched for crimes against nutrition and not taking the game seriously. 

But there was something unmatched about how nostalgic it made him feel. 

Maybe because you'd introduced it to him not long after he'd moved back to Sweden. Maybe because evenings like these had become such a fundamental part of your friendship that they felt impossible to separate from it.

The familiar sound of the squeeze bottle of marmalade that was always somehow on its way to running out. A label that simply said Breakfast Marmalade. Apricots and oranges, supposedly. Pure sugar, realistically. That together with a thick layer of butter and an ungodly amount of cheese—all slapped onto poppyseed toast and washed down with ice-cold chocolate milk.

God, he could cry. Or have an orgasm. 

As he carried his food into the living room, you were curled up in the corner of the couch beneath a blanket, trying to fight off the winter cold that always seemed to creep into the apartment once the few hours of afternoon sun had completely faded. 

William couldn't wait to warm up too. His fingers still tingled from the rink, and his cheeks burned faintly from having crossed half of Stockholm in the snow.

Surprisingly, you’d put away his book report and were smiling stupidly at something on your phone instead.

“Did you see that Lollo and August ended up going to that house party?” 

“Hm, no,” William mumbled, biting into the toast as he sat down. He got crumbs everywhere, but he knew it didn’t matter in this household. At least not when you would always leave a worse trace. 

A laugh escaped you, half snort and half wheeze. “She just sent me a video of August making out with someone.”

You shoved the phone into his face before he could object.

The footage was blurry, shaky, and clearly filmed from the opposite side of a crowded room. Through the grainy darkness William could just barely make out August and a girl he didn't recognize attached at the mouth.

“That’s way too much tongue,” he grimaced. 

You doubled over laughing, your slipper-clad feet knocking into his thigh. “I know.”

William physically recoiled as the clip replayed. You laughed so hard your shoulders started shaking. He loved when you got like this, even more so when he wasn’t the punchline. 

Once you'd finally recovered, you tossed the phone onto the couch beside you and pointed toward the abandoned papers on the coffee table.

“Anyway. Back to your terrible book report.”

William groaned. “Sunny.”

“What were you thinking picking an autobiography?” 

He leaned further back into the couch, balancing his plate on his stomach. “I just—I truly don’t get the point of book reports. And I wanted to read the Zlatan book anyway.”

“The point of this report,” you informed him, reaching for a pen like a weapon, “is to get you a passing grade in Swedish class so you'll be allowed to graduate like the rest of us.” 

William rolled his eyes. “I still think that rule is stupid. I have passing grades in every other subject. Why are languages so important they dictate everything?”

You pointed the pen at him immediately. “It's almost like they do dictate everything.”

“Oh my God.”

“Language is literally how people communicate.”

“Stop being smart.” 

A grin tugged at your mouth—the stupidly wide kind where your cheeks dimpled deeply and your lips twitched because you couldn’t contain it in the slightest. William hated that he loved when you got like this. Mostly because you were usually right, and partly because you looked entirely too pleased with yourself when you were.

And maybe a little because it was impossible not to smile back.

“I know, I know,” you sighed dramatically. “You're predestined to get drafted ridiculously high and become Vancouver's new golden boy or whatever, but a high school diploma could still be useful, William.” 

William perked up instantly. “You’re thinking Vancouver? My mom thinks it will be Toronto.” 

The draft still felt impossibly far away, even if it was only a few months now. 

It felt like a make-believe thing people talked about more than something that would actually happen. Even less something that he would be a part of. NHL scouts had occasionally been appearing at tournaments for the last two years now. His coaches whispered, and his teammates’ parents speculated loudly.

But William still took the metro train going in the opposite direction to school sometimes when he was tired in the mornings. He still forgot assignments until the very last moment. He still left half his equipment everywhere he went. One of his old hockey sticks had been living in your family's umbrella stand for almost a year, and nobody had moved it—least of all him. 

He was even pretty sure the sweatpants you were wearing now had once been his too, and he’d just forgotten them here. 

It was difficult to imagine him becoming someone important when most of his life still looked exactly the same. Even so, the thought sent butterflies loose in his stomach every single time.

“It’s beside the point,” you argued. “If anything goes wrong, it could be useful to have a backup plan.” 

“Do you have a backup plan, Sunny?” William asked, raising a brow. 

“What? You think I’ll fail at becoming a teacher?” 

“Do you think I will fail at becoming an NHL player?” 

A reluctant smile crossed your face. “Touché.” 

The conversation lingered for a moment after that, settling comfortably into the familiar quiet that always seemed to find its way between you. William reached for the last corner of his toast while you absentmindedly tapped the pen against your knee, both of you listening to the radiator hum softly behind the couch. Outside, snow continued drifting past the windows in slow, lazy flakes. The world beyond the apartment looked frozen solid.

That was until a thoughtful hum escaped you as you glanced toward the overflowing bookshelf beside the television. Then your eyes brightened.

William immediately knew he was in trouble.

“If I pick out a really short fictional book for you to read? Will you do that, and I can help you write the report?” 

William groaned loudly enough to make you laugh. You weren't actually asking. You were presenting him with a solution and generously pretending he had a say in it.

“Sunny.”

“William.”

He dropped his head back against the couch cushion in defeat. A victorious smile immediately spread across your face.

“Excellent.”

Rolling your eyes at his dramatics, you pushed yourself off the couch and padded across the living room in your slippers. William watched you disappear toward the bookshelf.

It occupied nearly an entire wall of the apartment, packed so tightly that some books had been stacked horizontally on top of the others. Most people would've found that excessive. You treated it like a completely reasonable amount of books to own.

He knew your parents read plenty too, but a surprising number belonged to you.

He'd seen you return from your granddad's place before carrying one of those giant blue Ikea bags full of books he'd given you personally to read. Something about teaching the younger generation about the classics—a lesson he knew you’d already learned. 

You trailed your fingers along the spines now, muttering titles under your breath while searching. To William, every single book looked exactly the same.

A moment later, you made a triumphant sound. “Aha. This one is like seventy pages. Is that doable?” 

You returned holding a thin paperback and dropped back onto the couch beside him.

Not your side of the couch, though. His side. So close, your thigh instantly brushed his. 

William shifted automatically to make room. The blanket pooled between you, and without either of you discussing it, you grabbed one side while he took the other, wrapping it around both of you. It happened so naturally neither of you noticed.

Or maybe you did it on purpose and simply didn't think it mattered.

The apartment was always cold in winter. Not freezing, but cold enough that blankets migrated from room to room depending on where people happened to be sitting. William couldn't remember a single evening spent here that didn't involve at least one.

By now he was almost convinced your family measured temperature differently than everyone else.

You immediately curled into his corner of the couch, tucking your feet underneath yourself. One of those ridiculous pink slippers hung halfway off your heel. Your hair was slightly messy from having spent the entire afternoon bent over homework. The sleeves of your grandfather's fisherman sweater swallowed your hands when you handed the book over to him. 

William eyed the cover suspiciously as he accepted it from you.

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka.

“There’s a bug on it,” he stated flatly. 

“It’s about a guy who wakes up one morning as a cockroach.” 

“How is that better than Zlatan’s life story?” 

You looked genuinely offended. “This one has actual substance for you to write about, and not just ‘If you’re good enough at your sport, you get to be an arrogant asshole.’” 

William laughed, pressing a hand dramatically against his chest. “That was directed at Zlatan and not me, right?”

You only smiled in response, which wasn't reassuring at all.

The silence made William look down at the book once more, eyes still caught on what was frankly quite a disgusting-looking crawler. What could possibly be interesting about a guy living as a cockroach? 

“What’s the purpose of the cockroach, anyway?” he mumbled. “Some sort of metaphor?” 

“Read it and find out.” 

You stared at him with raised brows. He could tell he wasn’t going to get more of an answer out of you until he at least gave a fair chance at reading it. 

So, he did. He settled further into the couch and opened it up on the first page, eyes already tired from the small font. 

You immediately looked far too pleased with yourself again.

Forty minutes later, William was sprawled across one end of the couch reading while you pretended to work on your own homework in the other corner. “Pretended” being the important word, because every few pages he caught you glancing over—waiting on him, like a scientist observing a particularly stupid laboratory rat.

The sky outside the windows had turned from pale gray to deep blue. Snow continued to drift past the windows in big, white flakes. Somewhere in a neighboring apartment a television murmured through the wall.

The blanket had shifted gradually over the last forty minutes too. Or maybe it was just that the two of you had become fully one with the couch now, sunken so deep into the cushions, someone would have to pull you out of there with force. 

One of your legs was twisted with William’s, enough to make the warmth from your body spread through to his. It was simply the sort of thing that happened when you'd spent years occupying the same couch in the same spots.

William found himself absentmindedly tracing a finger back and forth across the fabric covering your shin where it rested beside him beneath the blanket. Not really thinking about it, just fidgeting. The way some people bounced their knees, or the way you chewed on pen caps. The rhythm of it became almost automatic as he read. 

Back and forth. Back and forth.

Eventually, when he only had about thirty pages left, William lowered the book. “I think I get it now.” 

You immediately looked up from where you'd been half-curled into the corner of the couch, your attention snapping back to him. “Oh?”

There was genuine excitement in your voice. Like you'd been waiting for this exact moment—for him to finally get it. 

“Anyone can be a cockroach if something bad happens to them, right?” 

You nodded. “Go on.”

William shifted slightly beneath the blanket, letting the book fall closed against his stomach. His fingers still rested absentmindedly against your shin, gripping it nervously through your sweatpants. 

“Illness, depression, disability—anything that makes you heavily dependent on others,” he said slowly, feeling his way through the thought. He frowned, searching for the right words. “It becomes shame, I guess. And isolation.”

For a moment, you just looked at him. Then something softened in your expression, melting off like snow in warm hands. Your surprise disappeared fully, replaced by a small, pleased smile that tugged at the corners of your mouth.

“Yeah,” you said quietly. “You've got it.”

William tried very hard not to look too proud of himself. He still wasn't entirely sure whether this was supposed to be a difficult book to understand or not, but the approval in your voice landed with embarrassing effectiveness.

You tucked your leg further into William’s, the blanket shifting between you as you settled a little closer to him, your slipper hitting him in the arm in the process. 

“There’s also a capitalist interpretation,” you continued. “About how humans are only valuable to society when they can contribute something productive, but I'm not going to bore you with that.”

William snorted. “You already are.”

You quickly kicked his leg beneath the blanket.

“Hey!”

“You deserved that,” you muttered back. 

Both of you laughed in tandem, the sound filling the apartment before fading back into the comfortable quiet.

“Hypothetically,” William mused after a moment, “could a career-ending hockey injury make someone a cockroach?”

You sat up so quickly the blanket nearly slid off your lap.

“There!” You pointed at him immediately, eyes lighting up. “There’s your angle!”

William laughed at your enthusiasm. “Really? It’s not dumb?” 

“No.” You shook your head firmly. “It's good. I promise.”

You looked ridiculously excited. Like he'd solved a puzzle, or maybe like he'd finally understood something you'd been trying to teach him since forever.

“I think your teacher would appreciate that angle,” you added, still smiling.

William looked at you for a second longer than he meant to as the excitement was still written all over your face. It was like he’d lit a spark inside of you by simply caring, for once. You genuinely loved this stuff. Books and languages. Being able to talk about things and helping people understand them. 

“You know,” he said before he could stop himself, “you're going to be really good at this someday.”

You blinked. “What?”

“The teaching thing.” William shrugged. “You're good at it.”

For once, there wasn't an immediate joke waiting behind your eyes. Just surprise. A little vulnerability painted across your features, somehow.

But you'd always been good at explaining things. Good at listening. Good at making people feel less stupid than they actually were. It was one of the reasons he'd kept showing up here in the first place. While he loved his teammates, no one else could make him feel as accepted as you did. 

William suddenly felt his ears growing warm.

Your gaze lingered on him for a moment. Then you looked down at your lap, smoothing an imaginary wrinkle in the blanket. “Thanks,” you said softly.

Embarrassed by his own honesty, William looked away too, staring toward the little cockroach on the book cover that he now had a strange amount of empathy for. Neither of you moved, your legs still touching beneath the shared blanket.

Outside, snow continued falling over Stockholm.

Beyond the windows, the world disappeared more and more beneath a steady curtain of white. By morning, William was fairly certain the driveway back home would be buried under half a meter of fresh snow, and somehow all of his siblings would unanimously decide that made it his responsibility to shovel it.

That problem could wait until tomorrow. The last train to his side of town had already left anyway. And besides, he slept better here than he did at home.

Maybe it was the familiar sounds—the radiators humming softly through the night, the occasional creak of old floorboards, the muffled noise of traffic beyond the snow-covered streets. You couldn’t get that in the newly built house his parents had bought when they all moved back to Sweden. You also had no annoying siblings here. 

Or maybe it was simply that being here had become second nature years ago. And that your bedroom was much cozier than his. Hockey posters and sticks taped to the walls didn’t exactly make the best decor. 

Whatever the reason, he already knew he'd end up stretched across your bed later, stealing half the blanket while you complained about it in the morning.

Inside, wrapped in that ordinary winter evening, neither of you realized that one day you'd both get exactly what you wanted out of your lives. 

Just on different sides of the Atlantic Ocean, and with a friendship neither of you thought could ever break serving as collateral damage.

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

You split up at the little market square in town without really discussing it.

William headed toward the bakery tucked into the corner of the plaza—the one all of you had become embarrassingly attached to over the years; they had the best croissants in all of France—while you ducked into the supermarket across the street with a handwritten grocery list folded in your pocket.

There was only three things on it: marmalade, butter, and chocolate milk. 

You called it efficiency.

In reality, neither of you had quite figured out how to be normal with each other yet. The argument still sat between you like a bruise. Less painful than yesterday, maybe, but tender enough that you kept finding ways not to touch it. You couldn’t solve this argument with marmalade, even if you wished you could.

The market itself was busy despite being a weekday afternoon, and almost painfully French.

Elderly couples lingered beside fruit stalls arguing over peaches and nectarines. Lavender bundles hung from wooden racks tied together with rough twine. The entire square smelled faintly of citrus and fresh bread, with sea salt drifting inland from the nearby coast. Somewhere in the distance, an accordion played a melody that sounded suspiciously like every French stereotype ever invented. It made you feel like Amélie in the best way. 

By the time you returned with the groceries, William was already waiting. He sat on the edge of the fountain in the middle of the plaza, one paper bakery bag tucked beneath his arm while his other hand remained hidden behind his back.

You slowed automatically, just long enough to look at him.

He'd always been beautiful. That wasn't even a romantic thing. It was simply an observable fact, like saying the Mediterranean was blue or that August took barbecuing far too seriously.

But there was something different about William during the summers.

Maybe it was the tan that appeared effortlessly on his skin while the rest of you turned bright red and annoyed. Maybe it was because he spent most of the year hidden beneath hockey gear, workout clothes, media obligations, and the general exhaustion of being a professional athlete.

And summer stripped all that away. Just William, the boy you’d met before any of the other things existed.

When his eyes caught yours from across the square, you immediately felt ridiculous for staring. You hurried the rest of the way over before he could somehow read your mind. You feared he might be able to after all these years. 

“I couldn't find the mixed marmalade we have at home,” you announced, lifting the grocery bag slightly. “So I went with one apricot and one orange. We should just be able to eat both at the same time, right?” 

William chuckled. “I think that’s how marmalade works.”

You set the bag down on the ground between your feet, feeling a sudden warm breeze drift in, momentarily overwhelming you with heat. 

“Did you find the right bread?” you asked him. 

“Yeah, I think so,” he answered, lifting the paper bag slightly before tucking it down into the grocery bag between the jars of marmalade. “But not with poppy seeds, unfortunately.” 

You shook your head solemnly. “Damn Frenchmen. Can’t do anything right.” 

A laugh escaped him. Not one of his loud ones, but one that was more of a giggle. One you knew was unguarded and because he found your humor quite lame at times. 

The square buzzed around you. Cutlery clinked against café tables. Someone's dog barked at a pigeon. The accordion player had migrated somewhere farther down the street, his music now drifting through the warm afternoon in broken pieces.

William patted the empty space beside him. “Sit down.”

“Why?” You narrowed your eyes. “We should be getting back. I’m starving.”

The truth was that you were acutely aware of how easy it would be to leave. Stand up. Walk back to the villa. Let the argument remain mostly unresolved. And that if you sat down next to him, it would almost definitely lead to you to talking it through. 

William only shrugged at your question. “I stopped for something else too.” 

Immediately suspicious, you reluctantly sat down, crossing your arms in the process as some sort of shield. “What did you do?”

A stubborn smile tugged at the corner of William’s mouth. 

“Can you close your eyes, Sunny?” he asked. 

“The trust I have in you will get me murdered someday.” 

You rolled them dramatically first, just so he knew you objected on principle. Then you closed them anyway.

The sunlight glowed red through your eyelids. Somewhere nearby, water splashed from the fountain. And then you felt him take your hand.

The contact surprised you more than it should have. William had held your hand a thousand times before. As kids, when he dragged you through crowds because you walked too slowly. When you nearly slipped on ice. When he’d hauled you onto docks, into boats, off trains, over fences.

None of it had ever meant anything.

It still didn’t, you told yourself.  And yet something about him grabbing your hand now felt vastly different than ever before. 

His fingers settled around yours with easy familiarity, like they already knew exactly where to go—how the unique shape of your hand differed from any other hand he might’ve held. 

Your kept your hand still, fingers resting in his palm while his thumb swept once across the back of your hand. Then came the faint rattling sound of beads.

“You have some new ones,” William murmured. 

You felt something cool circle your wrist before his fingers worked at a clasp. The market noise faded slightly. Or maybe you just stopped paying attention to it.

“Yeah, uhm…” Your voice caught unexpectedly. You tilted your head up slightly, eyes still closed. “The kids at the youth center love making bracelets ever since Taylor Swift played in Stockholm.” 

William laughed. “Of course they did.”

You smiled despite yourself. “We’ve been doing little workshops, so that they can make a bunch and the proceeds go to charity.” 

The explanation came easily because you loved talking about the kids.

Especially the ones at the youth center. They didn’t really have another choice but to be there after school and during school holidays, whether it was because of working parents or estranged parents or something else entirely. You knew those kids deserved your attention even more, just so they wouldn’t slip through the cracks of society.

Even with your eyes closed, you could picture all the individual bracelets: the colorful beads, the crooked letter charms, the uneven knots tied by twelve-year-olds who swore they were following instructions. The stacks of bracelets you’d spent entire afternoons helping untangle.

Tiny projects that resulted in tiny amounts of money, but you’d watched those kids become so proud of them. And that was what mattered.

You knew from the moment William had mentioned your new bracelets which one he’d focused on, though. A thin bracelet with rainbow glass beads, centered by a line of alphabet blocks spelling out fuck cancer. The profit from those went to cancer research, and basically half of Sweden already wore them. You just hadn’t personally had a reason to until this year.

“And uh,” you swallowed. “Well the rainbow one is for grandpa, obviously.” 

The words settled softly between you and lingered there. William didn’t say anything. His hand remained against your wrist for a moment longer, then he folded both of his hands around yours, holding them with a gentle pressure that somehow felt kinder than anything he could have said.

“Can I open my eyes now?” you complained eventually. “You're taking forever.”

The pressure of his fingers disappeared, and you took that as approval. 

After adjusting to the sunlight, the first thing you looked at was your own wrist and the new, pretty blue stones that adorned it. Lapis lazuli, if you had to guess, intertwined with a silver wire. 

Exactly the sort of thing you would’ve stopped to admire yourself but never actually bought. It didn’t just look like your average cheap market stall bracelet. 

Your gaze then jumped to William.

“Can you clasp mine, please?”

He was already extending his wrist toward you, holding another bracelet with the same blue stones. 

“Y-you got us matching ones?” you stuttered out. 

Of course he’d gotten you matching ones. The realization made something embarrassingly warm bloom in your chest.

William rolled his eyes. “Just clasp it, Sunny.” 

You took his wrist without further argument. 

The clasp was tiny and annoying, forcing you to focus harder than necessary. You could feel him watching you while you worked, the thought alone made your fingers slip twice. Eventually the clasp clicked shut.

“There.”

You leaned back to inspect your work. The blue stones looked strange beside the expensive jewelry already on his wrist.

“Sure you want to wear it next to your…” You pointed vaguely at it. “I don't even know what brand that is. Cartier?”

William looked instantly offended. “Did you not see my photoshoot for Tiffany?” 

“Oh, I’m sorry.” You gasped dramatically. Pressing a hand to your chest, you bowed your head. “Of course it’s Tiffany.”

William laughed, his grin lingering for another second before fading into something quieter. The market noise carried on around you. The fountain splashed steadily behind and somewhere on the plaza, a vendor loudly called out to passing tourists.

Neither of you spoke for a moment. You found yourself absentmindedly tracing the blue stones around your wrist, looking over to see him do the same thing. 

Matching bracelets. Such a William thing to do.

You were still smiling when he suddenly said, “I’m sorry I didn’t go to his funeral.”

The smile disappeared immediately. It wasn’t even close to being gradual, not in the way people described in books, where happiness slowly faded from someone's face. It was simply gone. One second you were teasing him about expensive Tiffany jewelry, the next, your chest hurt to the point where it felt hollow.

Your grief still at so close to the surface that it felt embarrassing.

You kept looking down at your hands. To the new bracelet around your wrist. To the familiar rainbow beads beside it. To anything that wasn’t William. 

“I told you a million times, it’s okay,” you said quietly. “You were in a playoff stretch. Don't be ridiculous.”

“But were we really?” William joked, but you knew he didn’t actually mean to be funny.

Your laughter came out wet, broken around the edges.

“Shut up,” you managed. “I believed in you.”

For a moment, William just looked at you, then he smiled.

God. It was such a small smile. Painfully small. The kind that somehow hurt more than if he’d looked devastated, because it was full of guilt. Full of regret. Full of all the things he wished he'd done differently, and maybe the realization that he wasn’t even talking about hockey to begin with. 

“Damn it,” you whispered. 

Your vision blurred immediately, and against your own will. You harshly squeezed your eyes shut, as if that would somehow stop it. You laughed again because crying in the middle of a French market square wasn’t something you had planned on doing. 

Around you, life continued uninterrupted. People wandered between market stalls carrying flowers and paper bags. Someone laughed loudly nearby. The accordion player was still going at it. The entire world had the audacity to keep moving.

“Sunny—” William tried. 

“No.”

You rubbed furiously beneath your eyes, grateful to not be wearing makeup. 

“My little Sunshine, look at me.” 

William’s hand came up to cradle your jaw, forcing you to look at him even as big, lonely tears rolled softly down your cheeks. 

Mitt lilla solsken

You couldn’t believe he’d just called you that. Maybe because he hadn’t called you that in a while, or because the last person you remember calling you those three exact words were your grandfather. 

A strangled laugh escaped you, immediately followed by a couple more tears. 

“God, I hate you.”

“No, you don’t.”

“No,” you admitted miserably. “Of course I don’t.”

His thumb brushed beneath your eye. Then, before you could even take noticed of it, William swiftly moved and pulled you closer. One second he was sitting still and the next his arms were around you. You folded almost instantly, like your body had been waiting for permission. Your forehead hit his shoulder, hands grabbing at the back of his shirt, as his arms tightened around you.

Suddenly there was nowhere left for you to hide.

The past few months crashed into you all at once. The countless hospital visits that still would never be enough. Cleaning out your grandfather’s house, sorting through decades of his life and deciding what stayed and what disappeared forever. The guilt of leaving your parents to handle so much of it. Your PhD applications in the middle of it all. The uncertainty, the loneliness, and the constant feeling that everyone else had kept moving while you were somehow stuck in place.

You’d spent so much time being practical that you hadn’t really stopped to be sad.

Now it seemed determined to come out at once. Messily. Your face buried against William’s shoulder while the people walking past pretending not to notice.

“I’m sorry,” you mumbled eventually, voice muffled against his shirt.

“You don’t need to apologize.”

His hand moved slowly up and down your back. The same steady rhythm he’d used your entire life whenever something hurt. William had always known how to hold you together.

“It’s just—” you swallowed. “It’s been a lot these past months and I haven’t really talked to anybody about it, so even the smallest mention just… sets me off.” 

“It’s okay.” 

Eventually, reluctantly, you pulled back from him. The hug loosened inch by inch, neither of you seeming particularly eager to be the first person to let go. When you finally did, you became mortifyingly aware of the damp spot your tears had left on the shoulder of his shirt.

You stared at it for too long. William, meanwhile, didn’t seem to care in the slightest.

His hands lingered briefly on your arms before dropping away.

The market square felt quieter somehow. Or maybe it was just your head. Crying always did that, like it wrung something out of you and left behind a strange kind of stillness. 

William looked out toward the sea beyond the rooftops, sunlight glinting off the water in the distance, You figured he couldn’t quite bear to look at you while he spoke. 

“I’m the one who should be sorry,” he said quietly. “I feel like I have no idea what’s going on in your life anymore.” 

“Please don’t bring that up,” you groaned lightly, sure you knew were this was going already. “I don’t want to fight with you again.” 

“We’re not fighting.” His eyes found yours again. “I want to apologize,” 

Something in his voice made you stop, trying to listen to him instead of just talking over him to quiet it all down. William was rarely bad at expressing affection, but he was terrible at expressing guilt. Usually he handled it the same way he handled everything uncomfortable—buried beneath jokes and distractions. 

You couldn’t remember the last time you’d heard him sit with the guilt instead.

Yet here he was. 

“You have so much on your shoulders that I’ve stupidly not cared about,” he continued. “I’ve been acting like a really shitty friend, Sunny.”

“But you’re not, though—” 

“Oh, I am.” His answer came without hesitation. “You have no idea how selfish I am when it comes to you.”

For a second you genuinely thought you’d misheard him. The words didn’t fit neatly anywhere in your head. Sure, he’d been selfish during the argument, but selfish with you That accusation didn’t make sense. Not directed at him, and not directed at you.

You frowned. “What does that even mean?” 

William laughed softly through his nose. Not because anything was particularly funny, but out of embarrassed by the fact that he’d said something revealing out loud. His gaze dropped briefly toward the bracelet now sitting on his wrist. The matching one. Then back to you.

“It means you’re trying to make one of the biggest decisions of your life,” he said calmly. “And all I can think about is how much I don’t want you to leave Stockholm.”

The words were simple and ugly and selfish exactly the way he’d called it, and how you’d perceived it last night. You felt your breath tighten painfully beneath your ribs.

“Because if you leave,” he sighed, “I get even less of you than I already do.”

You didn’t have anything to say to that, simply staring at him. The breeze coming off the coast stirred the loose strands of his hair, and you saw tears clinging to the corners of his eyes. He’d perfected the ability to not let them fall.

You couldn't remember William ever sounding quite so vulnerable. He’d accidentally cracked something open and now couldn’t put it back together, because you’d seen it all happen anyway. 

“But that's not your problem to solve,” William continued eventually. “You should obviously do what you want, Sunny.” 

His smile returned then—small, crooked and a little sad around the edges. The kind that belonged entirely to William.

Your throat tightened again, but this time it was from something way more confusing than grief. You’d mastered grief at this point, and this was something entirely new you were feeling. You knew what friendship looked like—you’d spent your entire life surrounded by the beauty of it—but there was something about the way he was looking at you now that made your pulse stumble unexpectedly, heartbeat running wild inside your ribcage, like… falling without knowing where to land. 

“You deserve it,” he smiled. “To go after your dream like that. And I’m one hundred percent sure you’d be incredible at it.” 

For the first time since the argument, you believed him.

And it wasn’t even because he’d finally said the words you’d been yearning for, even if you couldn’t ignore him like you could Lovisa or your parents. It was because of the way he said them, like your success would break his heart a little and he’d cheer for you anyway.

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

On the walk back to the villa, things started to feel miles better between you. 

Neither of you suddenly transformed into people who talked through every emotion the second it appeared. You'd probably never be those kinds of people. But the conversation settled back into something remarkably ordinary, and that felt far more important than trying to force out more apologies. You’d both said enough already. 

William complained about the cobblestones hurting his feet. You complained about the heat blazing down on your shoulders. Somewhere along the way you spent ten minutes arguing over whether apricots or oranges made the best marmalade when the obvious answer had always been both. 

It was the sort of conversation your friendship had always been built on—that didn’t seem special to anyone else but you two, but you’d remember fondly forever. 

Somewhere between the fountain in the little square and the grocery bag William had so gentlemanly insisted on carrying, the heaviness from the night before quietly disappeared. You could probably still pick at the edges of it like an annoying scab if you wanted to, but you knew it wouldn’t help. It was nice enough that neither of you had to walk around on eggshells anymore. 

By the time you got back home, the house remained blissfully empty. The others wouldn't be back from the beach for another couple of hours. You had more time for just you and William.

You unpacked the groceries and started by putting the bread in the toaster, while William immediately made a nuisance of himself, stealing a slice of cheese the second you’d cut it up, then two more when you turned your back against him. 

“Okay,” you said, pointing a butter knife in his direction. “Sit down before I hit you in the head with a pot.” 

William let out a short laugh and leaned casually against the counter, entirely unthreatened. “I think a frying pan would be easier.”

You snorted, reaching for the bread from the toaster.  “Nah. Too obvious as a murder weapon. I wanna get away with it.”

He grinned, watching you with that familiar amused look that always made it harder to stay serious for very long. “You’re in the mood for premeditated murder?”

You gave him your most solemn expression while buttering the toast. “Nobody owns life,” you quoted, “but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death.”

William blinked at you, then laughed under his breath. “And who said that?”

“William S. Burroughs,” you shrugged like it was common knowledge. “My favorite beatnik.” 

“I don't know what that means,” he admitted, shaking his head as he pushed off the counter and came to stand beside you, “but he’s got a great name.”

You laughed, nudging a plate toward him with your fingers. “Okay, I’m done now.”

He looked down at the food, then back at you. “Wanna eat on the couch like old times too?”

“Thought you’d never ask.”

The couch swallowed both of you immediately. One corner each. Legs stretched out. A plate of marmalade toast balanced precariously on your lap. It felt strangely familiar, despite being thousands of kilometers from Stockholm.

The television stayed off. Neither of you reached for your phones. The villa was so quiet you could hear the faint hum of the refrigerator from the kitchen and crickets buzzing somewhere beyond the open patio doors.

For a while all you could hear was chewing, which was perhaps the highest form of friendship. It struck you that silence had always been one of William’s greatest gifts. Not because he was particularly quiet—he absolutely wasn’t—but because even after all these years he still never expected you to fill it.

Most people mistook silence for something uncomfortable. You two never had. 

He took another bite before glancing sideways. “Not as good as at home, right? Or am I crazy?” 

You smiled around your own mouthful. “I thought I was imagining it.”

“It’s literally just bread, and cheese, and marmalade. I don’t understand how it can taste different in every single country,” William shrugged. 

You looked down at the toast for a second before smiling to yourself. “But it will always be nostalgic, I guess.” 

William agreed, nodding once. “No matter where in the world we are.”

Outside, the afternoon sun poured through the windows in long golden strips, warming the wooden floor and turning the room amber. Inside, William leaned further back into the couch cushions and stretched his legs further across the coffee table, looking entirely at home.

The sight of him no longer carried a lingering ache of distance.

He wasn’t the friend who’d forgotten to call, or ask how you were doing, or wonder about what was new in your life. Or the one who’d picked a fight because the idea of you leaving frightened him more than he knew how to admit.

He was just William again.

The fourteen-year-old boy who’d shared Oreos with you at a skating rink. The one who still somehow found his way to your side whenever life became a little too heavy to carry alone. The one who’d bought matching bracelets at a market stall because being subtle with his affection had never been one of his strengths. 

You didn’t think it needed to be either. 

Your fingers absentmindedly rolled the blue stones around your wrist, and smiled into another bite of toast. 

William finished eating first, his plate abandoned on the coffee table while he lounged deeper into the couch cushions, one arm stretched across the backrest. Without thinking about it, you shifted until your feet poked into his thigh, just like they always had whenever the two of you squeezed onto the couch at your parents’ apartment.

He didn’t even react to it, just simply moved to accommodate you into his space and gently hold your ankle in his hand. 

It would’ve been so easy to leave things there—to enjoy the quiet, to let the evening drift by the same way so many had before. Unfortunately, curiosity had always been one of your worst personality traits.

“So… Alana,” your said, dragging out her name. 

William visibly sighed before you’d even finished speaking. “What about her?” 

“No, it's nothing.” You swallowed your final piece of toast down. “I just want to know more. She seems really nice, don't get me wrong. I just…" You paused, collecting your thoughts before looking back at him. “How did you meet her?”

William stared up at the ceiling for a second, as though the answer might be written somewhere up there. 

“We matched on Raya,” he said eventually. “But we’d seen each other around before. A couple of friends in common. None that you would know—” 

“On Raya, seriously?” 

“Don’t laugh, Sunny.”

You had to physically press your lips together to stop yourself.

The image of William—World’s gold medalist, NHL superstar, owner of entirely too many designer clothes—sitting and scrolling through models, entrepreneurs and aspiring actors on Raya was simply a little too funny when he’d never been that person to you. 

“I’m not laughing at you,” you managed. “I just find the mere existence of that app almost dystopian.” 

William rolled his eyes. “Oh, here we go.”

“What?” You lifted your hands innocently. “You think you’re too rich and famous to talk to normal people?”

“I’m talking to you right now, aren’t I?” 

The response came so quickly that you nearly choked on nothing. William immediately looked far too pleased with himself, and you hated that he had a point. A reluctant smile tugged at your mouth before you shook your head and looked back at him.

“Fine,” you conceded, tilting your head slightly. “Well… what do you like about Alana?” 

The question seemed innocent enough, but you noticed a small shift in William’s expression the second you said it. His shoulders stiffened, straightening up in his position on the couch, and his graze drifted away again, up to the ceiling and then out through the windows, clinging to a spot in the garden. 

And he didn’t answer it. 

“That shouldn’t be a difficult question, William.” 

“It isn’t.”

He said it quickly. Almost with confident. 

But you still waited for an answer. 

“So?” you prompted gently, though you could already feel the conversation tilting into something more delicate. “How about her humor? Her music taste? Other interests?”

William rubbed absentmindedly at the back of his neck, a telltale sign he was uncomfortable. You watched the gesture and immediately regretted pushing so hard, even if you still didn’t think the question was unreasonable. You weren’t trying to interrogate him. You were trying to understand him. There was a difference, at least in your head.

“I mean…” He frowned slightly. “She’s kind. She fits my lifestyle. And the sex is alright.” 

You blinked, then let out a short laugh before you could stop yourself. “The sex is alright?” You tipped your head, half amused and half incredulous. “You just find her hot?”

William looked back at you, his expression flattening into something defensive. “Is that so bad?”

You opened your mouth, then closed it again. Was it so bad? Or was it just how dating looked now, reduced to convenience and sexual chemistry and whether someone fit neatly into the shape of your life? Maybe that was enough for some people and you were still a hopeless romantic. But it still didn’t sound like an answer. It sounded like a summary. An overly polite one. And a prevarication, maybe, from whatever he was actually thinking.

“Every other person on the planet is attractive, William,” you said, trying to keep your tone light even as something uneasy settled in your chest. “That doesn't mean you’d date all of them.”

He exhaled through his nose, already looking a little tired of the conversation.

“Okay, let me rephrase the question then.” You leaned forward, resting your elbows on your knees, suddenly more serious than you’d ever meant this conversation to be. “If you were blind and you could not touch her, how would you describe her?” 

His silence stretched long again.

At first it was almost funny, the way he actually seemed to think about it. Then it went on long enough that the amusement began to drain out of you. You watched him stare somewhere across the room, jaw tightening slightly, and a small knot of dread formed in your stomach before he’d even gotten a word out. 

“I don’t know,” he admitted quietly. His eyes stayed fixed on the opposite wall. “Like I said, she’s kind. Almost too kind.” 

Something inside you sank.

It wasn’t that the answer was cruel—you knew he didn’t mean it that way. It was simply flat, almost weightless. Like he was describing a pleasant coworker, or a neighbor who’d once helped him carry something upstairs. Not the woman he’d flown across an ocean to introduce to the people closest to him.

Being too kind wasn’t much of a flaw at all, not really. Not unless it was spoken like one by the person who was supposed to be in love with you.

“Oh, wow,” you said quietly, the brightness in your voice thinning before you could stop it. “I asked you that to make you admit your love for her, but now I get the feeling that you don’t even like her.”

“Of course I like her,” William said, bristling. “I wouldn’t be together with her if I didn’t.”

The defensiveness arrived so fast it almost startled you.

And you knew he meant it.

William wasn’t cruel. He wasn’t the kind of person who dated someone for sport, or chased after beauty simply because he could. That wasn’t what worried you.

What worried you was the emptiness beneath the words. How every answer sounded practical, measured, almost rehearsed. You thought about Alana sitting on the edge of your bed the first night here, carefully blending blue eyeshadow over your lids because she wanted you to feel pretty. She didn’t deserve to be spoken about like this—not because it was necessarily unkind, but because it wasn’t love.

“You seem to know very little about her,” you almost whispered. “We embrace a shadow and love a dream.”

Your gaze dropped to the bracelet he’d bought you earlier, and your thumb began to worry one of the blue beads between your fingers. 

Would he have bought Alana something like this? Some small, ridiculous thing with no real value except the fact that it meant something to you? Or did she have her own version of that—some little token he would’ve chosen without thinking, because he knew how to make a gesture look like devotion? Or did he not understand her like that at all? 

William pinched the bridge of his nose, exhaling through it. “Is that one of your quotes again?” 

“Doctor Glas by Hjalmar Söderberg,” you said, a little too quickly. “They just adapted it into some awful movie—”

“Please stop,” he muttered.

You huffed a laugh, though it didn’t quite reach your eyes. “They totally gave it the Wuthering Heights treatment. Classics shouldn’t be turned into overly sexual cash-grabbing blockbusters.”

“I actually can’t with you right now, Sunny,” William said, dragging a hand down his face. “You’ve seen Alana and I together for less than a week. You don’t know anything.” 

“I know I don’t.” Your voice tightened, coming out frail. “But you don’t seem to either. That’s the point I’m trying to make.”

The words landed harder than you’d intended.

For a second, you considered taking them back. Explaining what you meant. That you weren’t attacking him. That you were simply worried. That maybe he’d convinced himself comfort was easier than love because he didn’t have to sacrifice anything for it. That maybe he should want more out of the so-called love he desperately seemed to seek.

 But before you could say any of it, William pushed himself to his feet.

“Fuck this.” His voice wasn’t angry. If anything, it sounded exhausted. “I’m going back to bed.”

“William—”

“You’re making my headache come back.” 

He didn’t wait for an answer. His footsteps climbed the stairs in quick, uneven beats, and not long after, his bedroom door slammed shut, the sound echoing through the villa like a final note.

You stayed where you were, staring at the two plates on the coffee table—the scattered crumbs, the glossy smears of yellow marmalade catching the light—for a long, long moment.

Somehow, after everything you had managed to mend today, it felt as though you had only gone and split something else open entirely, a wound wider and deeper than before. 

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

When the rest of the group came back from their beach day, you’d crawled right back into bed, refusing to get up more than necessary mainly because you didn’t want to run into William again.  

Your room had gone dark while you’d been lying there. The last traces of sunset lingered faintly beyond the balcony doors, painting the ceiling in muted blue-grey shadows. Somewhere downstairs you could hear Alex and Rasmus arguing about whose turn it was to shower first.

When Lovisa stepped into your room, you were exactly where she’d left you that morning. She stopped at the foot of the bed, took one look at you, and folded her arms across her chest.

“Did you not even try to talk to William or what happened?” she asked. “He’s a bigger bitch now than he was this morning.” 

You stared at the ceiling instead of answering at first, flopping pathetically right on your back across the mattress, your arms landing against it in a thud of frustration. 

The worst part was that you had genuinely thought things were okay again. The grocery store. The market. The matching fucking bracelets. Sitting on the couch eating marmalade toast like you were teenagers again, when the biggest problem in your lives had been getting William to graduate high school.

For a few hours, everything had felt so normal. 

Then somehow you’d ruined it. Or maybe William had. Or maybe both of you were just exceptionally talented at stepping on emotional landmines neither of you knew how to discuss properly.

“We talked it through,” you muttered eventually. “And actually had a decent time together, until…” You frowned at the ceiling, still trying to figure out where exactly it had all gone wrong.

“Until what?” Lovisa prompted. 

You drew in a slow breath and let it out again. “Until I asked him about Alana and made it seem like he doesn’t even like her.” 

“Oh.” Lovisa’s face tightened with sympathy. “Yeah, that one’s rough.” 

“I wasn’t even trying to be mean,” you said, turning your head to look at her. “I just wanted to know more about her. About them as a couple. But he literally couldn’t say a positive thing about her.”

You went quiet after that, replaying it all again in your head, the same way you had all evening. The same words. The same pauses. The same strange, hollow feeling in your chest that refused to go away. 

“I don’t know,” you whispered. “He just got so defensive.”

Lovisa crossed the room and sat down on the edge of the bed. The mattress dipped beneath her, soft and familiar.

“I mean,” she said carefully, folding her hands in her lap, “you’re not entirely wrong. He’s more affectionate toward literally everyone else in this house than he is with her. But I just assumed they were being shy. Or taking things slow. I don’t know.”

“I thought so too.” 

Lovisa gave a small shrug, her mouth tipping into something almost like a smile. “But even then… We’ve both known William for a long time. He goes crazy for the people he loves.”

You stared at the blanket bunched around your legs.

“He said she was too kind,” you murmured. “And decent in bed. That’s bad, right, Lovisa?” 

She let out a breath through her nose and rubbed a hand over her face. “Well,” she said, dry and tired, “he’s not exactly boyfriend of the year, I’ll tell you that.”

A groan slipped out of you, and you dragged the blanket up over your face for a second, as if you could hide from the whole conversation beneath it.

You hadn’t really wanted validation.

If anything, you’d wanted Lovisa to tell you that you’d misunderstood him completely. That William had simply been clumsy with his words, as he always was. That there was something tender underneath all that awkwardness, something you’d just failed to see. Instead, she had only confirmed the thing that had been gnawing at you all along.

“Get some sleep, okay?” Lovisa said, standing again. “Don’t overthink this.”

You gave a small, tired laugh into the blanket. “I think we’re a little past that.” 

She paused in the doorway and looked back at you once more, her expression soft in the dim light. “Night, Sunny.”

“Goodnight, Lollo.” 

After she left, the room settled around you again—quiet, blue, and still.

Blue like the crystal beads on your new bracelet, catching what little light remained whenever you twisted your arm. 

William had bought you matching bracelets, then gone on to say the least romantic things you had ever heard about his actual girlfriend, as if those gestures had come from two entirely different versions of him.

It felt like an incredibly stupid thing for you to be this sad about.

It wasn’t even about you. 

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

The knock came sometime in the middle of the night—nothing loud, nothing urgent, just three soft taps against the door, delicate enough to slip into your sleep and tug you halfway back to consciousness. 

At first, you thought you’d woken because of the heat.

The French Riviera had a way of never truly cooling down, even after midnight. The air still clung warm and heavy to your skin, thick enough that you’d kicked most of the blanket aside hours ago, leaving one bare leg tangled in the sheets. 

Then the knocking came again.

For a few seconds you lay there staring into the dark, disoriented, trying to remember where you were and what that sound had been. The room felt suspended somewhere between dream and waking, all shadow and silence. 

You pushed yourself upright and squinted at your phone on the bedside table.

03:17. What the fuck?

Your first irrational thought was that somebody had died. But then you remembered that people usually didn’t knock politely when that happened. Besides, no one in this house knew how to knock properly anyway, so why would they start now?

You dragged yourself out of bed and crossed the room barefoot, rubbing the sleep from your eyes as you opened the door and the hallway light spilled in, bright and sudden, and for a second you had to blink against it like you’d surfaced too quickly from deep water.

It was William on the other side. 

His hair was a complete mess, loose strands sticking up in every direction. He wore an old t-shirt and grey shorts, like he’d simply climbed out of bed and walked here without thinking. His face looked pale in the dim light despite the fact that he’d spent the past two days tanning by the pool.

Most importantly, he looked wide awake.

Not tired. Not half-asleep and ill at ease to be caught wandering the villa at this hour. Awake in that awful, brittle way people got after something had shaken them loose from sleep and left them stranded in the dark with it.

You frowned. “William? What’s wrong?”

He ran a hand over his face and let out a long breath, the kind that sounded like it had been dragged up from somewhere deep and unwilling. “I had a nightmare. I’m sorry, this is stupid—”

Of course. Of all the possibilities, it was one of his dreams. Your first instinct was relief it wasn’t something more serious, immediately followed by something softer and more careful. William didn’t come knocking in the middle of the night for nothing. If he was here, then whatever had happened in his sleep had followed him all the way out of it.

He was already half-turning away, as if he’d decided this was a mistake and was prepared to disappear back into the hallway before either of you had to make it real, but you stepped aside without thinking. 

“Come in.”

William hesitated for only a heartbeat before walking past you into the room. He sat down on the edge of the bed, elbows resting on his knees, shoulders slightly hunched as if he were trying to make himself smaller than he was. You remained standing for another second, watching him in the dim light, before sitting down beside him.

“What happened?” you asked again, more gently this time.

He stared at the floor for a moment, jaw working once before he answered.

“I dreamed you drowned.”

The words landed with a strange, cold weight in your chest. 

You’d learned a long time ago that William only found difficult words to say if nobody rushed him toward them. You knew you weren’t always the best at respecting that. But this felt like one of those moments where the silence itself was part of the thing. Like if you interrupted too soon, you’d break whatever fragile thread had brought him here in the first place.

“We were at your granddad’s house by the dock,” he said after a moment, his voice gone oddly flat, stripped of its usual warmth. “And it felt so real.”

You stayed quiet.

“I don’t know. I saw you fall in. I could see exactly where you were, but I could not move.” He gave a short, humorless laugh through his nose, the sound barely there at all. “I know it sounds stupid. It’s the kind of dream kids get scared of—”

“It doesn’t,” you cut in softly.

It didn’t sound stupid. It sounded like the sort of dream that stayed with you after waking, clinging to the inside of your ribs, leaving your entire body imbalanced. The sort that made everything feel slightly wrong even when nothing had actually changed.

You glanced at him, at the tension still held in his shoulders, at the way he was staring at the floor as if he could still see the water there.

“Should I get the dream book out?” you asked quietly. “I have it with me.”

That got his attention. He looked up at you, incredulous despite himself. “You actually brought it?”

“Obviously.” You tried for lightness, unsure if this was the right time for it. “I never know when I might need it.”

You made an effort to stand up to get it from your suitcase, but William caught your wrist before you could move away.

“No.” His voice sounded a little rougher now. “I don't think I want to know what this one means.”

And there it was. The thing beneath the thing.

Because for the first time since he’d started asking you about the meaning of his dreams, William sounded like he already knew. Or maybe not knew exactly, but felt it hovering somewhere just beyond the edge of language, waiting for him in the dark. That had to be worse. The tiger in the bathroom had been strange, ambiguous, something you could joke about and interpret and leave half-unresolved. This was different. This fear didn’t bother disguising itself.

You looked at him for a long moment, then let your hand settle over his. “Okay.” 

Any trace of the arguments you’d had suddenly felt impossibly small when he sat beside you looking like this. Heavy, dark circles under his eyes. Exhaustion so deep it showed superficially. The months’ worth of things you’d never properly talked about bothering you both to the point of it looking like insanity. 

“Hey,” you tried, and his eyes lifted. “You’re okay. We are okay.”

You weren’t entirely sure why you said it. Maybe because you needed him to believe it.

You didn’t think about it before you moved. You just shifted closer on the mattress, turned sideways, and wrapped one arm around him in a tight, solid hug. William went still for a second, then leaned into you with a tired little exhale, his shoulder pressing against your chest. You stayed like that on the edge of the bed, half-hugging him, your cheek brushing the side of his head, and for a moment the nightmare—and everything it resembled—seemed to recede just enough to let him breathe.

“You know that, right?” you murmured into the crook of his neck. 

You felt him nod. “I know.” 

You still weren’t entirely convinced he did.

You held him for a moment longer, then pulled back and gave the mattress a light pat. “Lie down.” 

William blinked at you, still a little lost in his anxiety, and then obediently shifted farther onto the mattress. The bed was warm from where you’d been lying in it, the sheets rumpled and soft beneath the two of you.

The arrangement felt oddly familiar.

Not because you’d shared beds that often. Only like once a week when William missed the last train home from your side of Stockholm. 

Still, there was something about it that your body remembered before your mind did: the ease of it, the trust, the way neither of you ever had to ask twice. You tugged the blanket higher, tucking it around his shoulders, and William settled onto his side. 

You stayed sitting up beside him for a moment, resting against the headboard, simply watching him. 

Without really thinking about it, your hand drifted into his hair. You combed gently through the tangled strands until they lay flat again, your nails softly rasping against his scalp in a way that seemed to loosen something in him. He leaned into the touch almost immediately, eyes closing, his breathing already beginning to slow.

You felt absurdly fond of him in that moment. Which was annoying, because he had spent the last forty-eight hours being an idiot.

“You okay?” you whispered.

He made a sleepy little noise beneath the blanket, something between a hum and a sigh, and the sound was so soft it nearly broke your heart.

Close enough, you thought. 

Within minutes, his breathing had evened out, sleep reclaiming him with almost surprising ease. You stayed where you were for another minute or so—maybe longer—just to make sure he was actually asleep, watching the moonlight settle softly across his face as if it, too, had decided to keep watch over him.

For one dangerous, tempting moment, you considered climbing back under the covers beside him. Just going to sleep with him and dealing with everything else tomorrow.

Instead you quietly got up and headed for the door.

Because whatever was happening between the two of you lately, sharing a bed wasn’t going to help. Not when he had a girlfriend asleep somewhere else in the house. Not when you weren’t entirely sure what either of you were doing anymore.

The couch downstairs wasn’t comfortable to sleep in. You knew that before you’d even lain down.

But as you curled beneath a blanket and stared up at the dark ceiling, listening to the distant sound of waves outside, you decided uncomfortable was probably safer.

Even if it didn’t feel nearly as good.

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

You became aware of the world in fragments at first. Slow, dusty white particles swimming across your field of vision, the soft hum of the refrigerator somewhere nearby, sunlight uncomfortably warming the side of your face and the leg you had sticking out from beneath the blanket.

An itchy, knitted blanket. Not the expensive cotton sheets you knew were on your bed 

Right. You slept on the couch.

For a few blissful seconds you couldn’t remember why you’d fallen asleep there. Then the events of last night drifted back in pieces, one after another.

William standing there in your doorway at three in the morning, pale and shaken, appearing smaller than ever. His quiet, uneasy confession of a nightmare. You’d drowned right in front of him. The way he’d treated your room like the only place in the villa that still felt solid enough to hold him. The weight of his head against your pillow, the slow surrender of his breathing as he finally drifted off again; and then, later, your own careful retreat downstairs, choosing the couch over the impossible closeness of sharing a bed with him. 

Your spine deeply regretted that decision now.

Stiff and annoyed, you tried to fall back asleep. It was only when you heard footsteps coming down the stairs a few minutes later that you finally cracked one eye open again.

It was Alana, still looking half-asleep herself, her hair messy and only wearing one of William’s oversized shirts. She paused at the bottom step when she saw you sprawled out on the couch, blinking in obvious surprise at the fact someone was awake this early before her expression softened into something more curious than alarm.

“Good morning,” Alana said softly. 

“Oh,” you croaked. “Morning.”

Her gaze drifted from the blanket in your lap to the couch beneath you, a small crease appearing between her brows.

“Did William sleep in your room?” she asked after a beat. “Is that why you’re on the couch?” 

“Yeah.” You stretched, then immediately regretted it. “God, my back is killing me.” 

A quiet, sympathetic laugh slipped out of her.

You pushed yourself upright, rubbing sleep from your eyes.

“He had a nightmare last night,” you explained. “I don’t know why he came to me, but he fell asleep so I just let him stay.”

Only after saying it aloud did you realize how strange it sounded.

You winced slightly. “I’m sorry if that’s overstepping,” you added. “That was not my intention, and I’m sure William didn’t—"

“You didn’t,” Alana said gently, cutting you off before you could spiral into an apology you had no clue about how it would land. “I’m glad he feels like he can talk to you.” 

That should have made you feel better. It did, a little, but not enough to stop the awkward little knot forming in your stomach.

“I know he calls you at home too. His nightmares seem to be bothering him quite often,” Alana continued. 

You blinked at her for a second. Right. Of course she knew that.

The phone calls had become so ordinary to you that you’d almost forgotten how odd they might sound to someone else. How they might look from the outside. William calling you at weird hours because he couldn't sleep. You answering without thinking.

“Yeah,” you admitted. “They’re usually not nightmares, though. I can’t explain it, they’re so abstract. I have this book that allegedly interprets dreams, but I don’t know if it helps him.” 

You thought about all the times William had called you from home, or from hotels, or from wherever he happened to be. His voice low and tired on the other end of the line while he tried to explain impossible landscapes and half-remembered conversations. You flipping through pages of that damn book that absolutely could not answer a thing.

“I think it mostly just gives him something else to think about,” you shrugged finally. 

Alana smiled, and it was such an easy, unbothered smile that it made your chest loosen a little.

“You're a good friend to him, Sunny. I think just that you listen helps. I understand why he talks so fondly of you.”

“Oh, uhm—”

Your voice faltered immediately.

Was that the kind of compliment you were supposed to answer with thanks? Or was that weird? You looked down at the blanket in your lap, suddenly very interested in the weave of it.

Thankfully, Alana moved before you had to figure it out.

“I’m gonna go shower now.” She started toward the stairs, then paused and looked back at you. “If William wakes up, can you tell him to come talk to me?” 

“Yeah,” you nodded. “Of course.”

She smiled at you again, then disappeared upstairs, the sound of her footsteps slowly fading. 

You stayed where you were for a long moment, staring at nothing. Only then did the conversation begin catching up with you.

Her boyfriend had just spent the night in another woman’s room. And somehow she'd ended up being the one reassuring you that you'd simply been a good friend.

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

By the time you’d showered, gotten dressed, had breakfast, and escaped outside with your book tucked beneath one arm, your brain had already circled back to the conversation with Alana at least six times.

Maybe because she’d managed to make you feel guilty while being nothing but kind.

You’d spent months poking into their relationship whenever William wanted someone to talk to, listening to him over late-night phone calls and in quiet corners of hockey arenas and airports, never once stopping to think about what it looked like from the outside. From Alana’s perspective.

And the worst part was—you hadn’t even cared. You hadn’t thought of Alana as important enough, until you’d obviously met her and learnt the opposite. What kind of friend did that? You’d taken her spot completely. 

Thankfully, the garden behind the villa offered plenty of places to disappear.

A narrow stone path wound between olive trees and flowering shrubs, eventually opening into a small gazebo overlooking the hillside below. The sea glittered in the distance between patches of green. It was far enough from the house that voices dissolved into nothing before they reached you.

Exactly what you needed.

You settled into one of the wrought-iron chairs beneath the shade, tucked one leg beneath yourself, and opened Infinite Jest across your lap.

You were only pretending to read, though. 

You read the same paragraph three times before realizing you hadn’t absorbed a single sentence. Then you got distracted by one of the book’s ridiculous endnotes, flipped back thirty pages, forgot why you’d turned there in the first place, and stared blankly at the paper until the words stopped resembling language altogether. 

Maybe Lovisa had been right. No sane person could actually enjoy a book like this. For all you knew, this David Foster Wallace guy had just been a spectacularly pretentious asshole.

Eventually you sighed and closed the book around your finger, and your thoughts wandered straight back to William. Whether he’d woken up yet. If he’d had to explain himself to Alana yet.

You felt like she could be the sort of person who wouldn’t take out her anger on you because you were technically still strangers, and then put the blame entirely on William, even if that wasn’t exactly fair. 

Suddenly, the patio door slammed loudly somewhere behind you.

You looked up to see Lovisa storming down the path like a mad woman. 

“Is it a coincidence,” she called out before she’d even reached you, “that we can hear arguing coming from William and Alana’s room when he apparently spent the night in your bed?”

You jaw dropped. “What?” 

Lovisa stopped in front of you, hands planted on her hips.

“Is that why you’re hiding out here?” 

“No, no,” you said quickly, lifting your book as evidence. “I just wanted some quiet time to read.”

Neither of you believed that.

“What’s going on?” you carefully asked. 

“I’m asking you that,” Lovisa countered. She dropped into the empty chair opposite yours. “Why did I see William exit your room this morning, looking like he’d slept like a baby for the first time in years?” 

You let your head fall back for a second and groaned at the sky.

“Because he did sleep there.”

That sentence was never going to sound right, was it? 

“But I slept on the couch,” you hurried to add. “I promise.”

Lovisa’s expression shifted, one eyebrow lifting in suspicion. 

“I talked to Alana earlier. She seemed to understand, but…” You glanced back toward the villa, toward the white walls and the closed windows and the possibility of people arguing behind them. “...maybe not if they’re arguing.”

“Understand what exactly?”

You worried at the edge of your bookmark with your thumb, suddenly very interested in the fraying paper.

“He had a nightmare.”

Lovisa repeated the words back to you with a flat, incredulous little echo. “A nightmare.”

You nodded once, already feeling stupid for saying it out loud.

“He dreamt I died. It’s a long story.” 

Lovisa blinked, like her brain had stalled for a second trying to arrange the information into something sensible.

“He dreamt you died?” she said slowly. 

“Yeah.” You shrugged one shoulder, though the motion felt awkward and defensive. “I let him sleep in my bed and took the couch.”

She leaned back in her chair at that, both hands coming up to rub over her face. When she dropped them again, she looked less angry than before and more like she was trying very hard not to be.

“That’s…” She exhaled through her nose. “I don’t even know what to say, Sunny. That’s dark.”

You looked down at the book in your lap, at the cloudy blue cover and the ridiculous thickness of it, as if it might offer some kind of instruction manual for this too.

“Could you hear what they were arguing about?” you asked after a beat.

“No, I decided to be an adult for once,” Lovisa said, shaking her head. “Shoved all the guys out of the house too.” 

You managed a weak smile before it disappeared again. “What if it’s about me?” 

Lovisa immediately groaned. “Oh my God.”

“No, seriously. ” You stared down at your hands, at the way your fingers had curled into the edge of the chair. “I already implied that he doesn’t even like her, and then he goes and spends the night in my bed.”

Saying it like that made your stomach turn over.

“I don't know.” Your shoulders sagged. “I just feel kind of... disgusting.”

For a moment Lovisa didn’t answer. She just looked at you, her expression unreadable in the shade of the gazebo. Then she reached across the little table between you and smacked your arm, not hard enough to hurt, just enough to jolt you out of your own head.

“Maybe everything isn’t about you.” 

You frowned. “Lollo.”

“No, listen.” She pointed a finger at you. “Maybe they were already having problems, and this was just the cherry on top. We can’t know since neither of them has talked about it.” 

You opened your mouth, then shut it again when nothing useful came out.

“And why the hell would you let him fall asleep in your bed?” she went on, quieter now but no less pointed. “You know what that looks like.”

“But I told you, I slept on the couch—”

“I know.” Lovisa let out a breath and leaned back in her chair, the irritation draining out of her face in slow increments. “I’m not saying you did anything wrong.”

The breeze moved through the olive trees overhead, stirring the leaves into a soft, papery whisper. Sunlight flickered across the stone floor in broken patches, warm and indifferent.

“I’m saying you always feel responsible for fixing William’s problems,” she continued. “Sometimes I think you love him too much, Sunny. You can’t protect him from everything.” 

You looked away immediately, toward the sea glittering in the distance, toward the line where the hillside dropped into blue. Anywhere but at her.

Your throat had gone dry all at once.

“If you love until it hurts,” you whispered, “there can be no hurt, only more love.”

Lovisa stared at you for a second before her mouth twisted into a smile. “Yeah okay, Shakespeare. This is obviously hurting you, babe.” 

A reluctant laugh escaped you. “That’s Mother Teresa, you dumb fuck.” 

“I still think you’ve got major issues.”

And annoyingly enough, sitting there with Infinite Jest still in your lap and a knot in your stomach the size of France, you weren’t entirely convinced she was wrong.

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

William woke up slowly, cocooned in warmth and comfortable sunlight. A pillow rested beneath his cheek, the comforter pulled halfway over him. The faint scent of women’s perfume lingered somewhere in the sheets—something floral and summery, much lighter than the vanilla perfume Alana usually wore.

When that thought finally caught up with him, William shot upright.

He was in your room. No, scratch that. He was in your bed. 

William groaned quietly and let himself fall back against the mattress again, dragging both hands over his face.

What the fuck had he actually done last night? He’d shown up at your bedroom door in the middle of the night like a complete lunatic because of a dream. Well... it hadn’t exactly been just a dream. He wasn’t sure he'd ever felt that terrified because of something fictional before. Were dreams fictional? They had to be. They weren’t real. They could not be.

And you’d let him in—despite the fact that he’d spent the better part of two days proving himself to be a spectacularly shitty friend—because you’d never once in your life turned him away. 

The realization that he was alone arrived a second later.

Your side of the bed was empty, the sheets barely disturbed. He remembered falling asleep with impossible clarity. Your hand slowly carding through his hair until his breathing steadied. Utterly soporific, the quiet way you’d kept mumbling long after he’d stopped answering, as if you knew he was already drifting off.

After that, there was nothing.

You must’ve left. Gone downstairs to sleep on the couch or something equally ridiculous. Because apparently, even after comforting him at three in the fucking morning, you still possessed more common sense than he did.

William stared at the empty space beside him for a long moment.

Then he closed his eyes again—the dream flashing back brightly for a moment. You disappearing beneath dark water. Him screaming out your name but not being able to reach you. Never reaching you. 

His chest tightened like something had fallen straight on it. 

What the fuck was wrong with him?

He pushed himself out of bed.

The villa was unusually quiet as he stepped into the hallway, only the familiar sounds houses always seemed to make when nobody was talking audible. Most of the others had probably already gone downstairs. He’d slept for much longer than usual for some reason. 

For a second William considered finding you first. Checking that you were okay, and maybe apologizing for being a complete disaster last night. Most importantly, he needed to thank you. 

Instead, he turned to his own room. He needed to change out of the clothes he’d sweated through the night in before seeing another human. Quietly, he hoped Alana had already gone downstairs because he had absolutely no idea how to explain any of this to her.

When William pushed their bedroom door open, he was expecting maybe silence. Maybe Alana still asleep. Maybe the room empty, or at least half-dark and ordinary, with the usual lazy mess of two people sharing a small space. 

What he was not expecting was to find her sitting on the floor beside an open suitcase, neatly folding her clothes with the kind of calm precision that made his stomach drop before his brain had even caught up. A dress hung over the edge of the mattress. Her makeup bags sat beside it. Everything she’d unpacked thus far was slowly, deliberately being returned to her suitcase. 

For a second William just stood there in the doorway, staring.

His pulse kicked hard in his throat. His eyes moved over the room once, stupidly, as if there might be some other explanation hidden in plain sight. But there wasn’t one.

She looked up as William closed the door behind him. “Oh.”

He frowned immediately, the words barely making it out of him. “Why are you packing?”

Alana’s voice was calm, almost unbothered. “Sophie and some of the girls from my agency are on a brand trip in Cannes with Tag Heuer. I already booked a car to take me there.” 

“What?” was all William managed to say. 

The answer didn’t make sense at first. It landed somewhere in his head and just sat there, refusing to arrange itself into anything coherent. Cannes. A car. Alana packing her suitcase and leaving. 

“And then, when I fly back to Toronto…” Alana inhaled quietly, like she was bracing herself for the rest of it. “…I'm going to move my stuff back to my apartment.”

She met his eyes, locking in fiercely. 

“And whatever this thing is between us can officially be over.”

For a moment William genuinely thought he’d misheard her.

“What?” he repeated again. 

“You heard me.”

William’s mind simply stopped. It wasn’t panic or anger or even sadness. Just a strange, hollow silence, like someone had reached inside him and turned the volume all the way down. He looked at Alana’s face, searching for some sign that she was joking, exaggerating, anything. But she didn’t seem to have any emotions at all. 

“Alana—” he tried. 

“No.” She shook her head before he could begin, still calm, still maddeningly composed. “Don’t do that thing where you try to convince me everything’s fine, because it’s not.”

William stood there for a second, one hand still on the door, as if he could somehow hold the whole conversation in place by refusing to move. The room felt too bright, too ordinary for what was happening inside it.

Alana’s voice never rose.

“You’d rather call Sunny, who’s across the fucking Atlantic most of the time, and talk about the dreams you’re having instead of just rolling over in bed and waking me.” 

William opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

Because there was no defense for that. None that didn’t sound pathetic, anyway. He could feel the truth of it landing in him in slow, humiliating pieces. Not just that he’d done it, but that he’d done it without even thinking. That when he was scared, when he was half-drowning in his own head, his first instinct had been to reach for you. No one else but you. 

People in committed relationships didn’t do that. 

“And I’m completely fine with that, by the way,” she continued quietly. “A girlfriend shouldn’t be, but I am. We don’t understand each other, or even like each other like that, William. Don’t you see that?” 

“What?” 

William didn’t get the time to think out proper answers, all he could do was question her. 

Alana sat down on the edge of the bed, smoothing one hand over the duvet. William, after a beat, sat beside her. Not because he wanted to, exactly, but because standing suddenly felt impossible. His legs had gone strangely weak, as if his body understood more of the conversation than his mind did. 

“I don’t want to be in the way of you two figuring out your love for each other,” she said gently, a sad smile forming on her lips. 

William barked out a disbelieving laugh, though there was no humor in it at all. “My love for Sunny?” 

“Yes.”

“Alana—”

“I mean it.” She turned towards him. “You look at her like she's the answer to a question nobody else understands.” 

He rubbed both hands over his face, dragging them down slowly as if he could wipe the building realization away with enough pressure.

“I don’t need to figure out my love for her. Of course I love her, she’s been my best friend since forever.” 

Even as he said it, the words sounded thinner than they should have. He wasn’t lying. The worst were just incomplete. Like he’d been repeating the same sentence for years because it was the only one he knew how to say, not because they were the full truth. 

Alana watched him for another second before speaking again, dropping her shoulders in a sigh. “Oh, William. It’s quite obvious it could be something more than platonic. At least I think so.”

He stared at the floor, at the edge of the rug. He couldn’t bear to watch her. 

“I like you, I really do,” Alana continued quietly. “But you love her, William. I’ve never seen you more passionate around anything like you are with her. I think you love her more than you love hockey, damn it.” 

William instinctively wanted to argue.

It should have made him defensive, offended, embarrassed—anything but this strange, stunned stillness.

Instead his mind betrayed him with images of you. Because if he was actually in love with you, it wasn’t something that had happened overnight. It had been growing for years, over a decade probably. And Alana had seen through him in just a couple of days. 

That everything else in his life had close to no meaning, if he didn’t get to share it with you. 

Alana let the silence sit for a moment before she spoke again. 

“I like seeing other people in love more than I like being in an ‘okay’ relationship myself, which is why I’m leaving,” she softly explained. 

William let out a breath that almost turned into a laugh, because what else was there to do with a breakup that sounded more like a mutual understanding than a disaster? He’d been broken up with before and he’d dumped girls too, but never had it felt this way. This… easy, almost. It was the only reasonable thing to do. 

“Don’t let your girlfriend stop you from finding a wife, or whatever it is that people say,” she added readily.

William snorted, surprised by her words. “Is that a Drake lyric?” 

Alana laughed. “I don’t know. Sure does sound like one.” 

For the first time all morning, they both smiled.

“This is a very anticlimactic breakup, isn’t it?” William asked, almost to himself. 

Alana shrugged. “It’s kinda nice for it to not be dramatic, actually.” 

William looked at her then, and felt something in his chest loosen—not because he was happy, exactly, but because she wasn’t asking him to be cruel in order to let her go. She was giving him the dignity of honesty. Of not turning this into a war when it didn’t need to be one. She was way too kind of a human, and William had probably never deserved her. 

“I hope you don’t feel like I’ve used you in any way,” he said. 

She waved the thought away. “You absolutely haven’t.”

Another silence settled between them, softer now. Less like a wall and more like a pause between chapters, the kind that gave both of them a second to let everything sink in.

Alana looked at him for a moment, then her expression shifted—something bright and almost delighted flickering across her face.

“So… can you admit it to yourself that you’re in love with her? That you don’t just love her as a friend?” 

William sighed, looking down at the floor again. He felt a little pathetic thinking about how stupid he’d been… forever, basically. You’d always been around and he’d never done anything about it. 

He pictured you exactly as you’d looked yesterday afternoon, sitting in that little market square with your eyes closed, the sun hitting your face at all angles, your wrist stretched toward him so he could clasp the matching bracelet he'd bought.

He had thought then that the feeling in his chest had simply been relief. Relief that you weren’t arguing anymore. Relief that you’d forgiven him.

Now he wasn’t so sure that feeling was only relief. Maybe his way of acting around you all these was finally starting to make sense. 

“I fear…” he admitted quietly, “I fear I’ve always known.” A breath escaped him, shaky and embarrassed and true. “Just been too much of a pussy to do anything about it.”

“Oh my god, William.” Alana covered her face for a second, then dropped her hand with a helpless laugh. “You absolutely cannot fuck this up with Sunny too. She seems like a really special girl.” 

William smiled to himself before he could stop it, his head already full of thoughts of you—your voice, the way it pitched up when you got excited and softened when you were tired, your stupid quotes he’d somehow memorized without meaning to, the way you made everything sound like it meant something even when you were talking about absolutely nothing at all. 

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “She is.”

“You can’t break her heart by being indecisive or unclear with your feelings for her.”

William nodded, the smile on his face tightening into something more nervous. He’d seen you sad for a lot of reasons, but he’d never forgive himself if he were the reason your pure heart got broken. That felt sacred. Untouchable.

Alana studied him for a beat, then sighed. “You know she talks like a fortune cookie, right?”

“Yeah, she does,” he said, a laugh bubbling up without any warning. “I love that about her.” 

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

After a long, quiet moment out by the gazebo, Lovisa somehow convinced you to try talking to Alana again.

She disguised it well enough. Claimed it would be good for your conscience. That apologizing properly would make everyone feel better. That Alana deserved to hear, without interruptions or misunderstandings, exactly how you felt about William.

Lovisa was also unbelievably nosy. 

She wanted to know what William and Alana had been arguing about just as much as everyone else did.

Still, you’d let yourself be convinced.

You weren’t trying to be some boyfriend-stealing bitch.

You were just someone who had missed her best friend so much that somewhere along the way it had become unhealthy. Somewhere between the phone calls, unanswered texts, missed funerals, and different continents, the line between missing someone and depending on them had quietly blurred.

That wasn’t something you were particularly proud of, but it also wasn't something you knew how to fix. And you needed Alana to know that. 

Which was why you’d been standing outside William and Alana’s bedroom for almost ten minutes now. Long enough that your courage had started evaporating again. You couldn’t hear a noise behind the door, and neither Alana nor William could be found anywhere else in the house. 

The hallway was also too quiet. The villa wasn’t. The boys had been allowed inside again. Somewhere downstairs someone laughed, a cabinet door slammed shut, glasses clinked together in the kitchen.

Life kept moving for them. 

You just... couldn’t.

You’d rehearsed the conversation over and over in your head. A proper apology. An explanation. Something that would make it crystal clear that none of this had been intentional.

That you’d never wanted to hurt her and intrude on their relationship. 

You just wanted your best friend back.

Finally, before you could lose your nerve entirely, you knocked. The door drifted open immediately beneath your knuckles. It hadn’t been properly closed.

“Alana?” you called carefully. 

You got no answer so you pushed it open another few inches.

“Look, I’m not trying to steal William from you. That’s never been my intention.” Your voice sounded embarrassingly small in the echoing hallway. “I don’t like him like that. I just…”

The words dissolved somewhere in your throat. You closed your eyes briefly before trying again.

“He’s my best friend. And I can't imagine life without him. That's all I want.” You swallowed. That sentence felt infinitely simpler. “I want my best friend. If I overstepped and hurt you in the process, Alana, I’m really fucking sorry.”

Silence answered you again. Only then did dare to properly take in the room, pushing the door fully open. 

The room was empty. The bed was neatly made, the lights were turned off, and only one suitcase was left in the corner of the room. A suitcase you knew was William’s. 

Suddenly you saw that the door to the ensuite was open, a shadow lingering for just a second before William stepped out. 

You felt your stomach drop. “Where’s Alana?” 

For a second he didn’t answer. Then he crossed the room almost mechanically before sitting down at the edge of the bed, shoulders hunched and his expression strangely plain. 

“She left.” 

You stood frozen by the door, confused. “Left? Where? Why?” 

“Some of her friends are in Cannes,” William shrugged. “She’s spending the rest of her vacation there.” 

“Oh,” your voice faltered. “Why?”

“Sunny, don’t play dumb.” William almost scoffed. “We broke up. Or she broke up with me.” 

You didn’t know what to say. For being someone who’d spent her entire life preaching about the importance of words, there still didn’t seem to be words fitting for moments like these.

The mattress shifted beneath William’s weight as he leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees, basically hiding from you. 

“I’m sorry, William,” you managed. 

He surprised you by shaking his head. “I’m not sure I am.” 

He laughed softly. Not because anything was funny. More because he seemed exhausted. Because he’d reached a point where there was nothing left to hide behind. Nothing left to avoid. Maybe Lovisa had been right about this argument being the cherry on top. 

You shifted awkwardly toward the door, suddenly aware of how small the room felt and how much you wished you could disappear back into the hallway and have this all undone. 

“Do you want some time alone?” you asked quietly. “I should probably go—”

“No.” 

The answer came so quickly it startled you. William stood up from the bed again. His shoulders straightened. His jaw set. Even his eyes, still tired and red-rimmed, had gone bright with a kind of frightened determination that made your chest tighten.

“We’re going to talk about this now,” he said, the words coming out firmer than you’d ever heard him, “because it might be an entire year until we next see each other. We’re not leaving this unresolved.”

“How am I involved in your breakup?” you asked, trying and failing to keep your voice steady.

William sighed. “Sunny, please—”

Then he stopped. Just like that.

The courage that had carried him upright seemed to falter all at once. He looked at you like he had a thousand things to say and no idea which one would survive being spoken aloud. His throat bobbed once. His hands flexed at his sides. For a second he seemed almost angry with himself, like he couldn’t believe he’d gotten this far only to lose the sentence before it reached you.

“William…” You searched his face, suddenly unable to look anywhere else. A faint flush crept up his neck. He looked terrified now, not of you, but of whatever he was about to admit. “You can talk to me.”

William didn’t answer. Instead, he reached for you—not roughly, but with enough urgency that you understood immediately he couldn’t stand there another second without falling apart. His fingers closed around your wrist, then slid to your arm, and he gave the smallest tug, guiding you toward the bed.

You sat beside him when he finally let go, the mattress dipping beneath your weight. William stared at his hands, jaw tight, as if he were still bracing himself against the force of his own thoughts.

Then, with a shaky breath, he let himself fall backward onto the bed. After only a second’s hesitation, you followed, easing down beside him with your hand resting lightly against his chest, as if to physically show sure you were there for him. 

For a moment he lay still, one arm thrown over his eyes, the other lying limp between you. The silence stretched, soft and trembling, until at last he seemed to find the courage to speak.

“Do you remember when I dreamt about having a tiger in my bathroom?” William whispered. 

You nodded slowly. “Yeah.”

“And you said something about how it could resemble the need to confront a fear,” he went on, his voice low and careful, “and maybe the dreams were gone because the tiger finally got what it wanted.”

You frowned, trying to place the exact words. “I might’ve.”

William let out a breath through his nose and gave the faintest nod. “Well, the dreams stopped for one day,” he said, “and that was the day you arrived. They came back as soon as we fought.”

You stared at him, your pulse beginning to thud harder in your ears.

“The tiger was you,” he said at last, the words so quiet you almost missed them. He turned his head just enough to look at you. “It’s always been you. And we’ve been apart for too long now.”

A shaky laugh escaped you, more from disbelief than amusement. “You… you’re kinda rambling right now, William.”

He huffed a small, humorless laugh too, but there was no real relief in it.

“What does this have to do with Alana leaving?” you dared to ask. 

William didn’t immediate have an answer. 

“Does she hate me?” you continued before you could stop yourself, the fear in your voice making you wince. “I feel like she hates me.”

William’s head came up at once. “No. She didn’t leave because you made her feel unwelcome. You’ve been nothing but kind.”

For half a second, you felt relief. Until you remembered there was still an issue to solve. 

“Then why—”

“She left because I’m in love with you.” 

Everything inside you stopped. Your heartbeat seemed to vanish entirely before slamming back into place, hard enough that it almost hurt. You stared at him, waiting for the laugh, the correction, the explanation that would make this make sense. But William didn’t move. He only looked back at you, utterly still, utterly terrified, because he’d just said the one thing he could never take back.

“William…"

“I know,” he said softly. 

“No, I—” You swallowed hard, your fingers tightening gently in the fabric of William’s T-shirt as if that alone could keep you steady.

“I know, Sunny.” 

Your hands had gone cold. Your whole body felt strangely weightless and heavy at the same time. Years of little memories suddenly rearranged themselves into an entirely different picture in your head. Years of little memories suddenly began rearranging themselves into an entirely different picture in your head. You didn’t know if you wanted them to or not, but you couldn’t stop it.

The skating rink. Stupid fucking Oreo cookies. Endless phone calls at stupid hours of the day. Every goodbye you’d ever said. Every hello after months apart. Every time he’d looked for you first in a crowded room. Every nightmare you’d gone through together in both dreams and real life. Every hug that had lasted just a little too long. 

None of it looked the same anymore.

You felt tears burning behind your eyes, hot and immediate, and your breath caught painfully in your throat.

“William, I can’t—” you whispered again, your voice was already breaking.

“Little Sunshine.” William’s hand found your arm, stroking gently up and down. 

The nickname, said so gently, so familiarly, like he hadn’t just turned your entire world inside out, undid you completely. You had to clamp your mouth shut and look away for a second, because if you didn’t, you were going to start sobbing for real. And if that happened, you’d have a hard time breathing and an even harder time getting any words out at all.

When you finally looked back at him, your eyes were stinging.

“I don’t know what to say,” you admitted with a shaky laugh. 

The cruelest part of it all was not that he loved you and that you obviously loved him back. It was that the truth had been sitting between you for so long, patient and quiet and impossible, waiting for the exact right moment to ruin everything for the both of you.

You had spent so long orbiting each other that it almost felt absurd to call this a revelation. It felt more like surrender, and you weren’t prepared for that at all. 

Then, because your brain had apparently decided to abandon you entirely, a few pointed words slipped out before you could stop them.

“You’re a cage in search of a bird, William.”

He blinked at you, startled enough that the tension in his face shifted.

“I’m sorry, I need to stop with the damn quotes—”

“No, please don’t.” William shook his head, and there was something almost desperate in the way he said it. “Who wrote that one?” 

“I want to say it’s Kafka,” you said, sniffling. 

“That’s the bug guy, right? The one you tortured me with in school?”

A laugh escaped you, wet and breathless and a little broken.

“The Metamorphosis, yeah.” 

He nodded slowly, like he was turning the words over in his head, trying to make sense of them in the same way he always had with your quotes and your books and your impossible way of speaking in riddles when you were too overwhelmed to say anything plain.

“So if I’m the cage…” His voice had gone quieter now. “Are you saying you can’t be my bird?”

The question landed between you with a kind of devastating tenderness.

“Not right now,” you murmured. 

Disappointment crossed his face so quickly it almost made you sick. 

“Not when I have a million things to figure out at home and you have to go back to Toronto,” you explained further. “Not when part of me feels like you’d take any bird just so you won’t be alone.”

The moment the words left your mouth you regretted them. Because you watched them hit—watched the hurt flash briefly across his face and how he instantly tried to cover it up. And you knew what you’d said wasn’t entirely true. He’d never really wanted Alana, or any of the other girls he’d been with. But he’d filled up his emptiness with them when he couldn’t have you. 

That realization made your chest ache in a way that felt almost unbearable. Because it meant this had never been sudden. It had never been random. It had never been some reckless, inconvenient thing that had happened by accident in a villa in France.

It had been building for years.

In the way you had both kept choosing each other, over and over again, in every possible way except the one that mattered most.

“But you’re not just anyone to me. You never have been.” 

His voice was low, steady, and so full of feeling it nearly undid you all over again.

“I know that,” you sighed. “That’s why we have to pick our friendship first.” 

You were still lying in bed, both of you half turned toward each other above the covers. The sheets were warm from the sun, and his shoulder was pressed against yours. It should have felt normal. Instead it felt like the whole room was holding its breath.

Because that was the truth too.

You knew exactly how much you meant to him, just like he knew how much he meant to you, which was why neither of you could afford to get this wrong.

If you did, there would be no going back to the easy version of this. No more pretending the ache you constantly felt was harmless. No more hiding behind jokes and distance. No more pretending that what you felt was anything less than love. 

“We can’t loose this, William.” 

“I know, I know.” 

He said it right away, almost too quickly, like he’d known what you would say before you did it. But he didn’t move away like you’d expected. He didn’t shy away. He just looked at you from close enough that you could feel his breath, close enough that the bed dipped slightly between you.

At your eyes, still shining with tears. At the way your mouth trembled when you tried to breathe around the lump in your throat. At your lips, parted slightly as if you were still trying to find the right thing to say.

Something changed in his face as he watched you. 

Then, in a voice that sounded steadier than he probably felt, he asked, “Can I kiss you?” 

You closed your eyes, head falling forward against his body, a laugh that was broken around the edges escaped you. 

“William.”

“I’m serious.”

You opened your eyes again.

His expression somehow made everything harder. He was hopeful, terrified, and patient all at once. Like he’d wait forever if he had to. Like he’d already waited long enough. He knew this was the kind of thing that could only happen once, and he was willing to let you decide whether it happened at all.

You looked at him for what felt like an eternity.

For one impossible second neither of you seemed to know what to do, then your hand found the side of his face. Warm skin beneath your fingertips. He leaned into the touch, the space between you disappearing so naturally it felt inevitable.

His forehead brushed yours first.

One last chance to pull away. One last opportunity to pretend none of this had happened.

Neither of you took it.

William kissed you carefully.

Your hand stayed at his cheek, thumb brushing once over his skin before you, too, leaned in fully. His mouth was warm against yours, familiar in a way that was almost unbearable, and when you kissed him back, the breath left your lungs in a trembling rush. 

It was soft in the way people are when they’ve wanted something for so long they’re almost afraid to touch it too hard.

You shifted closer without really thinking about it, your knees brushing together. One of his hands slid to your waist, steadying you, and you let yourself move into him, letting the kiss deepen little by little. Your other hand curled into the front of his shirt. There was grief in it, and relief, and something brighter and more frightening than either of those things.

“Oh no.” Your words came out against his mouth, half laugh, half sob. “I think you just ruined everything for me,” you whispered, though your fingers were still curled against his cheek and your heart was beating so hard it felt like it might split open.

“I’m not sorry about it.” William smiled. 

And when you kissed him back again, deeper this time—ending up pressed against him on the bed, your knees on either side of his hips, his hands warm at your waist as he held you there—you already knew it had been a mistake.

You also knew, with terrifying certainty, that you would spend the rest of your life wondering what would’ve happened if you hadn’t.

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

EPILOGUE

The arena usually felt like it existed in a vacuum after games. It obviously wasn’t quiet, but something about the dwindling adrenaline and slowly building exhaustion always made William feel strangely numb. Like the world kept moving around him while his own thoughts lagged a few steps behind.

He absentmindedly followed the stream of players out of the locker room after showering and changing, stepping into the family lounge.

Children darted between tables with far too much energy for ten o’clock at night. Strollers blocked half the walkways. Somebody’s toddler had dissolved into dramatic tears because they wanted to see their dad right this second. Wives, girlfriends, parents, siblings—entire lives gathered together after sixty minutes of hockey.

William normally liked it, but recently it had been a little rough. 

He lingered in the doorway for a moment, letting his bag hang lazily from one shoulder as he watched the room. Across the lounge, one of the defensemen had his daughter balanced on his hip. His wife was laughing at something he’d said, one hand resting automatically against his chest.

People belonged to each other here.

William was truly happy for them. He wasn’t actually bitter. It had simply been months since France, and the closest thing he’d gotten to affection lately was when his younger brother accidentally fell asleep on his couch instead of driving back to his own apartment.

He’d spent these months of trying desperately to be patient. Months of reminding himself that loving you wasn’t something that needed solving immediately.

You suddenly had Edinburgh. He obviously had Toronto. Life was complicated. Most days, it was still worth it. Tonight simply happened to be one of the harder ones.

He rubbed a hand across the back of his neck and started toward the exit.

“Are you really leaving without acknowledging me?” 

William froze.

For a moment he genuinely thought he’d imagined it.

Then your voice came again.

“You’d think someone flying in from Scotland would be granted your attention, but I guess not.” 

He turned so quickly he nearly walked straight into a stroller. You stood against one of the walls with your arms folded across your chest, failing miserably to hide a grin.

William stared right at you. 

Well. He was about to make an absolute fool of himself in front of his entire team.

He crossed the room before his brain had any chance of catching up, reaching you in only a few long strides before wrapping both arms around your waist hard enough to lift you clean off the ground.

You let out a startled squeal that dissolved immediately into laughter. “William!”

He only laughed into your shoulder.

“You are causing a scene.”

“I don't care.”

He truly didn’t. Not when you were actually here. Not when he could feel you in his hands instead of being reduced to a tiny rectangle on his phone screen.

When he finally set you back on the floor, it was only long enough for him to pull you into another hug before kissing you all over—your hair, your temple, your forehead, one cheek, and then the other, trying to make up for every month he’d spent missing you.

You laughed when he pressed a kiss to your nose, then another to your forehead, and when he finally murmured a breathless “Hi,” you were already dissolving into helpless laughter. 

“Hello to you too,” you managed, while he stood there smiling like he couldn’t possibly stop. He wasn’t even trying to.

“How…” he laughed breathlessly. “How did you get here?”

“Alana put me in contact with some of the WAGs, and they sorted me out.” 

He barked out a laugh. “Of course she did.”

You were still smiling when the moment settled between you, soft and warm and almost unreal. William kept one hand at your waist like he was afraid you might vanish if he let go. 

Then, a little more quietly, he asked, “What does this even mean?” 

For the first time since you’d arrived, your smile faltered into something quieter.

“My new schedule is very flexible,” you said. 

William listened without daring to interrupt.

“I can do a lot of work remotely. I’ll still need to be there for certain meetings but…” You hesitated, glancing down for a second before looking back up at him. “But…”

“But what?” he prompted. 

“If you want me here,” your voice became almost shy. “I can stay for a while.” 

Everything inside William seemed to go still.

For months, he’d convinced himself that wanting more time with you was selfish. That asking you to come to Toronto would mean asking you to sacrifice the life you’d worked so hard to build. He’d spent so long trying to deserve you that he’d forgotten something simple and devastating: you were allowed to choose him too.

“William? Is that okay, or—”

He’d been silent for too long, and now you were looking at him with that careful, searching expression, like you thought you knew his emotions but weren’t entirely sure.

He reached up and cupped your face before you had the chance to retreat even a single inch. His thumbs brushed lightly along your cheekbones, reverent and disbelieving.

“Shut up,” he murmured, smiling so hard his cheeks hurt. “I love you.”

Then he kissed you.

Because he could. Because there was nothing else he wanted more in this world. He kissed you slowly at first, as if he wanted to memorize the exact shape of this moment, and then with a little more certainty when you leaned into him, your hands finding his shirt, your breath catching softly against his mouth.

When you pulled back, you rested your forehead against his, smiling gently. 

“I love you too. I love you so much it hurts sometimes, like my heart should’ve broken from carrying all of it and…” You laughed quietly to yourself, the sound trembling at the edges. “And somehow it just keeps finding room for more.”

“And which author said that?” he asked quietly.

You leaned up and kissed the corner of his mouth, soft as a promise. “I think that was just me.”

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

Thank you for reading ◡̈ Please tell me what you think My ask box is always open!

William had a problem with dreaming. 

They weren’t nightmares, not really—nothing he could neatly explain away, anyway. He could understand nightmares. Losing a Stanley Cup Final in overtime, legs turning to lead while the puck slid past him. Or something worse—his mother slipping off the edge of a mountain, that awful, helpless drop in his stomach as he could only watch.

Those nightmares made sense in their own terrible way. But he could not understand the dreams he’d been having lately. For the past two months or so, ever since missing the playoffs, something had shifted. He’d told himself it was just that—stress, disappointment, too much time to think. That it would stop once summer started and he had space to reset.

But they hadn’t stopped like he thought they would. If anything, they’d only gotten stranger.

These new dreams lingered in a way nightmares never did. Not sharp or terrifying, but strange—sticky, almost. Like they left something behind when he woke up, an odd residue clinging to his thoughts for hours afterward. 

A few nights ago, he’d been riding a bicycle along the ocean floor, pedaling through a quiet, endless blue while fish drifted past like it was the most natural thing in the world. Another time, he’d been walking on stilts down an empty street, the sky pressing too close, the ground too far away, no destination in sight.

And today he woke up totally disoriented because there’d been a tiger in his bathroom. Just sitting there. Not pacing or growling—just patiently waiting. Watching him while he, in the dream, went about his business like it wasn’t completely insane.

William dragged a hand over his face as he lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling, the early morning light barely bleeding through the curtains. He exhaled slowly, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes until white spots swam in front of his vision. 

What the hell was it supposed to mean?

The headache came with it again, right on cue. Always the same feeling. A dull, pulsating ache behind his eyes, like his brain had been working overtime trying to make sense of something that refused to be understood. It wasn’t sharp enough to be painful, but persistent enough to make everything feel slightly off.

And, as always, going back to sleep was out of the question now.

It didn’t matter where he was—on the road, in some anonymous hotel room, or at home in his own bed. The result was always the same. Awake. Way too fucking early. Mind buzzing with absolute nonsense.

Beside him, Alana shifted slightly in her sleep, her quiet, nasal snore continuing in soft, steady intervals. It wasn’t loud. Most people probably wouldn’t even notice it. 

But William did. Because it broke his rhythm.

Every time he tried to settle back down, to chase that drifting edge of sleep again, there it was—a tiny interruption that pulled him just far enough back into wakefulness that trying again felt pointless.

He turned his head slightly, glancing at her, then back to the ceiling.

Yeah. This was not happening.

If it were early enough, he’d usually give up and get up. Make something out of it. Take the dogs out on a longer walk than usual. Watch some game tape, and cook an actual breakfast instead of defaulting to a protein shake. It helped, in a way. Made the whole thing feel less like a loss.

But this was that in-between hour. Too late to pretend it was still night. Too early for anything to really start.

His eyes flicked toward his phone on the nightstand. Stockholm would be five hours ahead by now. It always was. He hated the time zone difference most of the time, but a little less once he’d started being awake at weird hours of the early morning. 

You’d be awake. Probably already at work, tucked into your classroom with stacks of books and half-finished lesson plans spread across your desk. There’d be a mug of tea you kept forgetting about, and some novel open that you were halfway through reading because you always had to be reading something. Just for your own enjoyment. 

You had a book for everything. Seriously—everything.

That included dreams. That was your thing—well, one of them. A high school English teacher by profession, but unofficially William’s go-to for anything that required interpretation or just making sense of things.

Like a personal search engine. That was why he called you so often nowadays, he told himself.

Because of the book. Because you might have an answer. Because maybe there was some hidden meaning in bathroom tigers that his brain just wasn’t equipped to figure out on its own.

Or maybe he just really fucking missed his best friend, and his dreams gave him a perfect excuse to call you more often. 

He didn’t really know why he felt like he needed an excuse in the first place. You’d been friends since middle school. If his dreams annoyed you, you would’ve told him by now. You were painfully honest like that. 

William stared at his phone for a second longer, then pushed himself up from the bed with a quiet exhale. He slipped out of the bedroom, easing the door shut behind him until it clicked softly into place.

For a moment, he just stood there in the hallway, running a hand through his hair, thumb already hovering over your name. He didn’t let himself think too hard about it, so he pressed call. 

The line rang as he started moving, slow and aimless, drifting into the kitchen. His fingers trailed along the edge of the counter, catching on a stray breadcrumb. He flicked it into the sink, then turned the tap on without really thinking, watching the water run for a second before shutting it off again.

One ring. Two.

He leaned his hip against the counter, gaze unfocused somewhere out through the windows. 

On the third ring, he heard you answer, silence turning into a low buzz through his phone speakers. 

“You busy, Sunshine?” 

“Nope, I’m on my lunch break.” 

William let out a quiet breath, something in his chest loosening almost instantly at the sound of your voice, bright and happy in Swedish. You sounded more like home than anything else to him. 

He pushed himself upright again, restless, grabbing a glass from the cupboard just to have something to do with his hands.

“Kids being nice to you?” William asked. 

A soft huff of amusement came from you through the line. “I had to teach a sixteen-year-old that you should capitalize names today. The kids are not alright, William.”

He snorted under his breath, filling the glass with water and taking a slow sip, picturing you on the other end—probably half-slouched in your chair, one leg tucked under you. Ergonomics had never been your strong suit. He could practically hear your mother’s voice in his head telling you to sit properly while you rolled your eyes and slouched even further just to be difficult.

Some things probably hadn’t changed.

“Sounds rough, Sunny.”

“We’re in a crisis, honestly.”

He could hear the smile in your voice—bright, twitching at the corners of your mouth, like you were trying not to laugh at your own dramatics.

William’s fingers tapped lightly against the side of the glass, condensation cooling his palm. There was a shift on your end—fabric rustling, maybe you adjusting in your chair or kicking your feet up onto your desk like you weren’t supposed to.

“Isn’t it really early for you, by the way?” you continued. 

He glanced at the clock on the microwave like he didn’t already know the time. “06:30. Couldn’t fall back asleep.”

He took another sip, slower this time, letting the silence stretch just a second too long before you filled it.

“Another nightmare?” you wondered gently. 

“No, not really.” William paused. “But there was a tiger in my bathroom.”

“A tiger?” 

“Yeah,” he said, already moving again, drifting out of the kitchen and into the living room like the stillness was suddenly too much. “It was really weird. I couldn’t even tell I was dreaming at first—everything else was normal. And then I go to use the bathroom and there’s just…” He exhaled a quiet, disbelieving laugh. “A tiger. Sitting there.”

He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck, frowning slightly at the memory, as if he focused hard enough, it might rearrange itself into something that made sense.

“Was it scary?” you asked.

“Nope,” he said easily. “Not at all. It was just—” He hesitated, searching for the right word. “Like a big house cat. Just watching me.”

Like it had been waiting. William didn’t say that part out loud.

There was a brief pause, and he felt it—the way something on your end shifted gears. He knew that pause. He knew exactly what it meant. You were thinking now, digging, already halfway into whatever system you used to make sense of things no one else bothered trying to explain. Your own little superpower. 

You had the stupid dream book with you.

He could envision you almost too clearly—dog-eared pages, little notes shoved between sections, and your handwriting crowding the margins. You’d probably started carrying it around more often lately, ever since he’d started calling about this. Ever since he’d started calling more, period.

“Hm,” you murmured. “I don’t think the book has an explanation for tigers.”

William smiled faintly, dropping down onto the arm of the couch, one foot tapping idly against the floor. “Shocking.”

“Wait a minute,” you added quickly, something sparking. He could hear it. “There’s a section about predator animals. That could be something, right?”

“Alright,” he said softly, settling back just a little. “Let’s hear it.”

He listened to the faint rustle on your end—pages shifting, maybe you pushed something aside to make room. He pictured your brows furrowing the way they always did when you were concentrating, a deep crease constant on your forehead that you couldn’t care less about. 

“They often represent raw instincts. Primal energy. Passionate feelings,” you read, voice slowing slightly as you followed the lines. “It can represent a need to confront a fear if you’re running from the animal… or it can mean those feelings are present in your life already. That they’re uplifting you, I guess.”

William let out a short breath through his nose, gaze drifting toward the window. Early light washed everything out, pale and quiet. “That makes no sense. We just missed the fucking playoffs.”

“Is everything in your life really about hockey, William?” 

He closed his eyes for a second, a faint smile lingering despite himself, like you’d nudged him somewhere familiar and maybe even self-conscious. “Okay, no,” he admitted. “But I don’t know what else it could be.”

And that was the truth of it. He did not know.

Or maybe he didn’t look very hard—didn’t sit still long enough to sort through any emotions that didn’t come with clear rules and outcomes. Hockey made sense. Effort in, result out. Even when it hurt, it was clean.

These fucking dreams weren’t. 

“Your new girlfriend isn’t bringing out any passionate feelings?” you asked, doing a poor job of hiding your laughter.

The question didn’t land as a joke to William, though. He shifted, leaning forward, elbows braced on his knees, his phone pressed a little tighter to his ear as his gaze dropped to the floor.

“No… I don’t think so?” he said finally, uncertainty threading through the words before he could smooth it over. “I don’t know. We’re comfortable. That’s it.”

Comfortable felt like the safest way to describe it. Because that was what it was. It didn’t ask anything of him. Alana didn’t ask anything of him. She fit seamlessly into his lifestyle, like her life had been designed for it. 

There was nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with things being easy for once. 

So why did it feel like something was missing when he said it out loud?

“It’s not some whirlwind romance,” he added, a little quieter. “You know I’m not like that.” 

He didn’t know why he felt like he needed to explain that to you. But he did. Maybe because you’d always had a way of cutting through things he left half-figured out. Or maybe because some part of him wanted you to hear it and think yeah, that makes sense. He wanted your approval, even if he’d never call it that out loud.

There was a small pause on the line, the kind where he could almost hear you thinking.

“I don’t know much about your recent love life at all, William,” you said. “We haven’t even seen each other since last summer.” 

Since last fucking summer. Time moved too quickly. 

Since late nights at beach clubs that blurred into early mornings. Since expensive bottles of rosé were drunk on an even more expensive roof terrace of some rented-out villa. Since it had been easy to exist in the same space as you without the distance stretching everything thinner than it should have been.

William huffed a quiet laugh, scrubbing a hand over his jaw. He really needed to shave. “That’s probably on me.”

More than probably.

He’d let things stay surface-level instead of taking a bunch of baggage from Sweden with him every time a new season started in Toronto. He wished for nothing more than to be able to pause those relationships until he had the time to care about them again, but that only worked one-sidedly. Time didn’t pause for you just because he was gone again. 

“We could catch up, y’know, Sunny,” he said after a moment, tone lighter, like he was stepping around the problem instead of through it. “If you make it to France.”

Placing the ball in your court. 

He didn’t want you to know how much that if really mattered to him. Like the trip would be the same either way.

“I’m going to try my best, okay?” you said quickly. “I have to help clean out granddad’s house first. You know that.”

Yes, he knew that. 

And he knew that house too. 

It had been his first introduction to the archipelago outside of Stockholm. A big, iron oxide red-paneled house with white wooden details and mullioned windows sat on a lonely island, only accessible by boat. 

Where summer days felt endlessly long and no one ever complained. Where he’d been dragged along on visits and somehow never minded.

Midsummer parties, going out in the middle of the night to look for crayfish, or just sitting on the lawn with you, eating wild strawberries until your mouths were stained pink, and listening to your granddad talk about things that didn’t make sense at the time but felt important anyway.

It was strange, trying to picture that place now as something to be cleared out. Reduced to boxes. A closed chapter, decided never to be opened again. 

“I know,” William said, just as quick, like he needed to apologize for even bringing it up. “I’m not trying to push you or anything. I just—”

He stopped, swallowing something down. He pushed up from the couch again, pacing a few steps like movement might shake them loose, his grip tightening slightly around his phone.

“I just miss my best friend,” he finished. “That’s all.”

It sounded weaker than it felt.

For a second, all he could hear was the faint background noise on your end—distant voices, a door opening somewhere down the hall, the low hum of a place that kept moving even while you stood still inside it.

“I miss you too, William.” 

Your voice sounded mumbled. You were suppressing tears, and he knew it. 

“Can we talk more later?” you asked. “I need to eat lunch.”

“Yeah,” he said immediately. “Yeah, of course.” He forced a small exhale, easing some of the tension out of his shoulders. “Go eat.”

You paused, breathing loudly too. “Love you, William.”

He didn’t hesitate.

“Love you too, Sunshine.” 

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

Your suitcase had literally never felt heavier.

The wheels caught awkwardly against the uneven stone path as you dragged it toward the villa, your palm damp against the handle despite switching hands three separate times since the taxi dropped you off. The heat of the south of France wrapped around you immediately despite the coastal breeze, thick and golden and relentless, beads of sweat gathering at the back of your neck and along your hairline.

You paused for a second by the gate, pushing your sunglasses higher into your hair as you looked up at the house.

The villa looked like they always did now. Maybe bigger this year. Definitely more expensive, and you probably couldn’t even blame inflation for that one.

It was strange how naturally it had happened over time—the more money the boys made playing hockey, the more absurd these summer rentals became. Though honestly, if you were being fair, this one had Lovisa written all over it. The boys might’ve funded the trip, but Lovisa was absolutely the one who found these places. No one else would care about hot pink bougainvillea climbing dramatically across white stucco walls like the house had been specifically designed for an Instagram post. 

Still, you had to admit this one was beautiful.

Rustic terracotta roof tiles glowed warm beneath the late afternoon sun. Tall manicured hedges curled around the property like something out of a magazine spread, and beyond the greenery you could see flashes of glittering blue water somewhere below the cliffs.

Even the taxi driver had recognized the address immediately at the airport. The small nod he’d given you afterward had said enough on its own.

Rich people.

You almost laughed thinking about the first summer trip this group had taken together. God, was it ten years ago now? Maybe more.

Back when August’s parents had let all of you stay in their tiny two-bedroom apartment farther up the coast because none of you could afford anything else. William and Alex sleeping on air mattresses. Rasmus snoring so loud he’d been banished to the balcony one night. You and Lovisa crammed together on a pullout couch that folded inward every time one of you moved too suddenly.

That had also been the trip where Lovisa discovered her alleged allergy to red wine. She blamed the histamines; you still believed she’d simply consumed an amount medically incompatible with human survival.

The memory tugged a stupid smile out of you before it faded again, something tighter settling into its place instead. A knot slowly pulling itself taut somewhere beneath your ribs.

You were arriving late. Only a day, or maybe two for the ones who’d flown in earlier from North America. Inside the walls of this Villa was already a group of people settled into motion. They were your people, technically, but the distance had started to feel a lot larger recently. 

The past months of your life had felt detached from reality in a way you’d never experienced before.

After hugging your students goodbye for the summer and watching the graduating class sprint screaming out of the school gates for the last time, Stockholm had blurred into snapshots instead of actual days. The city had stayed beautiful, almost annoyingly so in the summer. All bright water and late sunsets and crowded outdoor cafés, while your own life felt paused somewhere slightly behind it.

Everything became cardboard boxes stacked against walls. Dust-coated shelves. Your parents quietly snapping at each other in your grandfather’s kitchen over what should stay and what should go.

Your mother had inherited her father’s inability to throw anything away, and she’d somehow married what was essentially a minimalist in your father, treating sentimentality like something that got in the way of his need to clean. 

And even if your dad was right—if no one realistically needed thirty-seven years of newspapers and chipped porcelain and winter coats from the eighties—it still felt cruel hearing someone reduce a person’s entire life into things that could be discarded.

It certainly wasn’t something you said to an actively grieving daughter. 

But you hadn’t been much help either.

Every room in your grandfather’s house held something capable of stopping you cold. A receipt tucked into a shoebox from 1964 when he bought his wedding shoes. His initials embossed into old stationery in the desk drawer. His reading glasses still folded neatly beside his armchair by the window, like he might come back and ask if anyone had seen them.

You’d thought leaving Stockholm for a while would make you feel lighter; instead, it just felt like you’d stepped away from something unfinished. Exhaustion sat heavy beneath your ribs with every breath you took, the knot in your stomach pulling tighter and tighter until it almost felt physical—coarse rope fraying against itself somewhere inside you.

France was supposed to be a getaway. A safe space, almost. It had become its own little universe over the years. A suspended version of your lives where everyone returned to themselves a little bit more. Same jokes. Same routines. Same people.

Well. Mostly the same people.

Your grip tightened slightly on your suitcase handle as you climbed the last few steps toward the massive front door.

Before you could knock, though, voices spilled out from somewhere deeper inside the house—music faint in the background, overlapping laughter, the scrape of chairs against tile. For a second, you just stood there listening. Then you heard quick footsteps coming, and the front door swung open hard enough to startle you.

“Oh my god, finally.”

Lovisa practically launched herself at you before you could even react properly, all sun-warmed skin and dramatic affection as her arms wrapped tightly around your shoulders.

“You’re sweating to death,” she informed you immediately.

“You’re crushing my organs, Lollo,” you muttered into her shoulder, hugging her back anyway.

“I missed you too, idiot.”

She pulled back just enough to look at you properly, oversized round sunglasses covering half her face and reflecting your own tired expression back at you. Her blonde hair had already gone lighter from the sun, curling at the ends around pink cheeks that were bordering on sunburned despite whatever delusions she’d definitely convinced herself of. 

Warmth bloomed in your chest quickly, a different heat than from the blazing sun. A little feeling of home, even for just a moment.

Lovisa grinned suddenly, her smile crooked and bright, before stealing your suitcase from your hand.

“Come inside before you melt,” she said. “The boys are by the pool and August has already complained three times that you’re ruining dinner timing.”

“That’s surprisingly sweet of him.”

“It wasn’t sweet. He’s hungry.”

The inside of the villa was cool in the way only obscenely expensive places managed to be, the air conditioning soft and nearly silent against your overheated skin. Marble floors stretched beneath your sandals, sunlight pouring through towering windows overlooking the water somewhere below.

You barely had time to process any of it before voices drifted in from the terrace.

“Is Sunny here?”

“She better be, or Lovisa just kidnapped another woman from the street.”

“That happened one time,” Lovisa yelled back.

“Which is one time too many, babe,” August answered.

You were laughing before you’d even stepped back outside again.

Alex was sprawled across a lounge chair with tiny sunglasses on that he had to have stolen from William. August stood by the outdoor kitchen with a beer in one hand and grilling tongs already in the other. Rasmus was halfway submerged in the infinity pool, only his head visible above water, motionless enough to resemble some kind of lake creature. 

For one strange second, the knot in your stomach loosened. 

These were your people. 

“Sunny!” Rasmus called immediately, pushing himself higher against the edge of the pool. Water slicked down his shoulders as he squinted at you through the glare of the sun. 

“Holy shit, you actually came.”

“Unfortunately,” you answered automatically, dropping your carry-on bag on the terrace floor with very little grace. 

A chorus of overlapping greetings followed after that, the kind that talked over each other because nobody in this group had ever mastered the concept of taking turns.

Alex sat up in his lounge chair, just enough to squint at you over his sunglasses. “You look tired, Sunshine.”

You stared at him flatly. “Thank you. That’s exactly what a woman wants to hear after a full day of travel.”

“I’m just saying you look a little rough,” he defended. “That’s not mean.”

“And you’re definitely not balding, Alex.”

The silence that followed lasted maybe half a second before August barked out a loud laugh from beside the grill while Lovisa pointed dramatically between the two of you.

“Nature is already healing.”

Alex looked slightly offended, covering it up with a laugh as he dragged his sunglasses off completely and ran a hand through his hair like he needed confirmation it still existed.

Then your eyes caught on the one person who hadn’t said anything yet, but you’d recognize his squeaky, high-pitch laugher just about anywhere. 

William.

You’d known he’d be there, obviously. The entire trip practically revolved around him half the time. But seeing him in person after basically a year of only phone calls and scattered texts still hit you with an uncomfortable amount of force.

He was leaning back against one of the lounge chairs, shirtless already, his skin a warm golden tone from even a single day in the Riviera sun. His hair had gotten longer since hockey season ended, curling slightly at the ends from humidity, and thankfully he’d shaved the giant beard he’d been stubbornly growing all winter.

And he was looking at you straight on, like he’d been waiting for you to walk through the door all afternoon.

“There she is,” he said finally.

“Hi, William.” 

His expression softened almost immediately at the sound of your voice, and before anyone else could interrupt, he was already crossing the patio toward you. 

“Did you have a nice flight?” he asked.

You snorted quietly. “Are airports ever nice in the middle of summer?”

“Fair point.”

There was barely a second between the end of the sentence and his arms wrapping around you.

William had always hugged you like he meant it. Or maybe he hugged everyone this way. You honestly didn’t know. But there was something about the sheer familiarity of him that made your body react before your brain had the chance to catch up.

He was always so solid and warm, embracing you like it was muscle memory. 

But this hug lingered. Long enough for awareness to creep in slowly and all at once. Long enough for you to become acutely aware that he absolutely should have put a shirt on before greeting you. 

His skin was hot from the sun, chest pressed directly against yours, one hand broad and steady between your shoulder blades. You could smell sunscreen and salt and something deep underneath it that was just William. Or possibly cologne. 

Your arms tightened around him automatically before you could think too hard about it. And God, perhaps it was exhaustion, travel brain, the lingering grief that still sat heavy beneath your ribs no matter how far you traveled from Stockholm, or all three at once, but for one brief second, you wanted to stay there forever—just slowly die in his arms with your cheek pressed into the tuft of hair on his warm chest. 

“Did you shrink or something, Sunny?” he murmured, his chin brushing lightly against the top of your head.

You pulled back just enough to glare at him. “Shut up.”

His grin spread instantly, easy and boyish. “I’m really happy to see you.”

The sincerity in it caught you a little off guard. Not because William wasn’t affectionate—he was, annoyingly natural and without embarrassment. But there was something unusually earnest about the way he said it now, like your arrival had settled something restless in him.

“I’m happy to see you too.”

Behind you, Lovisa made a loud gagging noise.

“Jesus Christ,” she announced. “You two are sentimental.”

Heat rushed belatedly into your face as you stepped back fully, suddenly hyperaware of yourself all at once. Your airport clothes. Your sweaty… everything. And the small fact you’d just spent an arguably inappropriate amount of time pressed against William’s completely bare chest in front of everyone.

Including the beautiful woman who still sat on one of the lounge chairs a couple of feet back. 

William glanced backward quickly, like he’d also realized half a second too late.

“Oh—right,” he said. “Sunny, this is Alana.”

There was the slightest hesitation before he continued.

“My, uh—girlfriend. But you already knew that, of course.”

Alana. 

Seeing her in person felt oddly disorienting after months of hearing her name casually dropped into conversation. Just her name sounded like she could be one of the Hadid sisters, and you knew from pictures she wasn’t far from looking like one of those models. Even more so now that you actually saw her. She was beautiful in a way that looked effortless—jet black hair, sun-bronzed skin, tiny gold jewelry catching the light as she stood up and a bikini with more straps and strings than you figured was necessary. 

And she’d just watched you cling to her boyfriend. Fantastic. 

Alana smiled warmly anyway and stepped forward first, which somehow made you feel worse for acting so awkward. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

“Hopefully nothing too bad,” you said quickly, your voice coming out bright and way too fucking cheerful. It was so blatantly insincere that you immediately hated yourself for it, but if Alana noticed, she was gracious enough not to acknowledge it. 

Instead, she laughed softly, glancing toward William for a second before looking back at you. “It was mostly embarrassing childhood stories.”

You narrowed your eyes. “Which ones?”

“The boat story,” Alex answered before anyone else could. “Definitely the boat story.”

“Oh my god,” Lovisa groaned, already laughing.

Alana smiled wider. “I think the version William told involved you falling off a fishing boat and knocking your front teeth out?”

You snorted despite yourself, the memory surfacing instantly.

Your grandfather’s old fishing boat—the tiny white plastic thing with faded blue trim that all of you used to borrow every summer despite almost never actually fishing. Mostly it had become an elaborate competition to see who could shove everyone else into the water first, leaving one man standing. 

You had lost spectacularly that year.

Or more specifically, William had pushed you hard enough that your face had smacked directly against the side of the boat on the way down. Your front teeth had literally left dents in the plastic.

You’d spent the rest of the summer with a lisp and a bruised ego while William followed you around apologizing so aggressively your grandfather eventually threatened to throw him into the lake too if he didn’t shut up. 

Not exactly the kind of story you wanted William’s beautiful new girlfriend to remember you by. 

You pointed accusingly at Alex. “I need you to know I’ve never liked you.”

“That’s completely fair,” he replied easily. 

August was still laughing quietly by the grill while Rasmus floated uselessly in the pool like this conversation had nothing to do with him despite definitely participating in that incident. 

“You cried for like a week,” Lovisa added helpfully.

You groaned, dragging both hands down your face while everyone laughed around you. “I was twelve!”

And strangely enough, some of the tension finally started to ease.

Not entirely. You were still hyperaware of Alana standing there. Still aware of William nearby in the way you always seemed to be lately. But the familiar rhythm of the group had started pulling you back into it piece by piece, smoothing some of the awkward edges down.

Before another embarrassing story could surface, Lovisa clapped her hands loudly once.

“Well,” she announced. “I think Sunny needs a drink and probably a shower.”

“And sleep,” you added.

“No sleep, Sunshine,” William said immediately.

You looked over just in time to see him grab your suitcase before you could protest, already hauling it toward the stairs like it belonged to him.

“We’re going out tonight, duh.” 

Of course you were.

You sighed dramatically, exhaustion finally catching up enough to make you almost feel delirious. “Yay,” you deadpanned. “My two favorite things! Sweaty guys and house music.”

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

After dinner, the sun had started to settle low over the coastline, coating the entire house in a golden glimmer. Warm light spilled through the tall windows and stretched across the tiled floor in uneven honey-colored shapes. 

August had absolutely outdone himself. 

He was the only one of the boys who didn’t professionally play hockey anymore. He’d quit sometime after juniors because of a stubborn hip injury that refused to heal properly and now worked as a chef instead—which explained the deeply suburban-dad energy he’d radiated at the grill earlier, beer in hand while aggressively telling Alex he was chopping tomatoes wrong. 

You hadn’t realized how much you’d missed his cooking until you actually sat there, shoving forkfuls into your mouth and barely being able to contain yourself from moaning out loud. 

Lovisa had caught you shamelessly sopping up sauce with bread at one point and looked disgusted.

“Please remember you were raised in public,” she’d said, before doing the same thing herself. 

It hit you harder than expected, though. Sitting there at the long outdoor table while everyone talked over each other in a mixture of Swedish and English, music humming quietly somewhere behind you, the sea breeze warm against your skin.

August and Lovisa had moved to the Swedish west coast last year after he landed a position at a Michelin-star restaurant, and while you were genuinely happy for them, you hadn’t realized how much you missed having them nearby until now.

Until experiencing moments like this again.

Watching August lean down absentmindedly to kiss Lovisa’s cheek while clearing plates from the table. Watching her reach up automatically to squeeze his wrist before he disappeared inside with a stack of dishes professionally stacked in his hands. 

It made you miss high school like crazy. 

You couldn’t believe there’d once been a period of your life where all five of you—or six, technically, if you counted Alex, though back then he’d mostly just been William’s deeply irritating little brother, and honestly not much had changed—had seen each other almost every day.

You and Lovisa sat in freezing hockey stands for hours during practice, wrapped in blankets and complaining dramatically while the boys skated until midnight. Then all of you ended up piled into someone’s parents’ living room afterward, supposedly doing homework while William and August screamed at each other over video games and Rasmus fell asleep sitting upright on the couch.

Back then, none of you had needed calendars or plane tickets or group chats to stay in each other’s lives.

You’d just been there for each other.

Your suitcase still sat half-unpacked near the foot of the bed now, clothes spilling slightly from one side while your brain struggled to catch up with everything around you. That was tomorrow’s problem.

For tonight, there was only France. And your hair, unfortunately, because it was still a mess from the shower you’d taken after you arrived. 

You plugged your straightener into the bathroom outlet and exhaled tiredly, catching your reflection in the mirror as the plates heated. The dark circles beneath your eyes weren’t just from traveling anymore, no matter how much concealer you planned on weaponizing against them in the next hour.

At least your hair was about to stop looking like you’d been electrocuted.

From the bedroom, Lovisa was already spreading her makeup across the wide windowsill. Brushes, palettes, skincare, jewelry—all arranged with perfect precision despite the fact that she herself functioned like absolute chaos most of the time. It was pretty impressive, if you were honest. 

“We should invite Alana in to get ready with us, right?” you called, the straightener clamped awkwardly between your shoulder and ear while you separated another section of hair.

The silence that followed lasted just a beat too long.

“Do we have to?” 

You leaned partially out of the bathroom doorway immediately. “Lovisa.”

“What?” she asked, turning toward you with wide innocent eyes that fooled absolutely no one. She picked up a moisturizer and unscrewed the lid with what looked like pure muscle memory. “William is going to break up with her in a couple months anyway. That’s what he always does.”

“Lovisa!”

“What? It’s true.”

“That’s mean to both him and her,” you argued, pointing the straightener at her accusingly. “We don’t even know Alana yet.”

“You’re only defending him this hard because it’s William.”

“That is not true.”

“It absolutely is true.”

You opened your mouth, then closed it again. You couldn’t really argue. 

Lovisa smirked. “Exactly.”

You rolled your eyes hard enough to hurt and disappeared back into the bathroom before she could look too smug about it. The straightener hissed softly as you dragged it through another piece of hair, the motion repetitive enough to quiet your thoughts for a second.

Because maybe Lovisa wasn’t entirely wrong.

Not about Alana—she couldn’t possibly know anything substantial about her yet, and neither could you. But about William. You did defend him more than you defended other people. You always had. It came naturally enough that you rarely noticed when you were doing it.

William was just… like that. As if that explained anything.

You set the straightener down with a small sigh, palms braced briefly against the bathroom counter.

“Fine,” Lovisa announced dramatically from the bedroom. “We’ll be nice girls for once.”

You could hear the scrape of her chair legs against the tiled floor as she pushed herself upright. A moment later, her reflection crossed briefly through the bathroom mirror as she wandered toward the open bedroom door, still absentmindedly blending moisturizer into her skin.

“Alana?” she called toward the hallway. “Do you want to get ready together?”

A second later, Alana appeared around the corner, already halfway dressed for the night in a silky cream-colored slip dress that made the wrinkled pile of outfit options still in your suitcase feel deeply inadequate for the occasion.

“Oh,” she said, visibly brightening. “Yeah. I’d love that. I’ll go get my makeup.”

The moment she was gone, Lovisa wandered back toward the windowsill and dropped dramatically into her chair again, crossing one leg over the other as she reached for a makeup brush.

You watched her through the bathroom doorway for a second before shaking your head slightly.

“She seems really nice.”

“She does,” Lovisa admitted reluctantly. “Which honestly makes it worse.”

You shot her a look.

“What?” she asked defensively, though the corners of her mouth twitched. “I’m serious. If she were horrible, I could be a bitch in good conscience.”

A laugh escaped you before you could stop it, warm and sudden enough that it startled you slightly on the way out.

And, unfortunately, that was the exact moment Alana walked into your room.

For one terrible second, your brain immediately assumed the worst—that she’d heard enough to understand the context, that this entire week was about to become socially catastrophic before the first night had even started.

But Alana only paused briefly in the doorway, carrying what looked like three separate makeup bags balanced carefully in her arms.

“Oh good,” Lovisa said quickly. “Another girl with a chaotic makeup routine. Sunny gets ready in literally three minutes.” 

“No, I just don’t bring every single thing I own when I travel,” you corrected absently, crouching beside your suitcase while you dug around for something wearable. 

Alana laughed softly then, and the initial tension dissolved before it could fully settle into the room.

You held up a pair of black linen pants uncertainly from your suitcase. 

“Can I wear pants and a nice top,” you asked, glancing between them, “or are we going to a dress-and-heels kind of place?”

Lovisa didn’t even look away from the mirror she faced. “Dress and heels, babe. I’m sorry, the boys picked the club.”

You dropped your head dramatically toward your suitcase. “Well,” you muttered, already digging deeper into the disaster you’d packed, “fuck me, I guess.”

“That’s generally the hope when going out in Saint-Tropez, isn’t it?” Alana offered lightly.

You laughed before you could stop yourself again. Honestly, you needed to work on that.

Did Alana have to be funny too? It wasn’t enough that she was drop-dead gorgeous? 

You glanced up at her over the edge of your suitcase, and she smiled slightly before sitting down cross-legged on the bed near Lovisa’s makeup setup, looking entirely at ease despite the fact that she barely knew either of you.

Eventually, after what felt like twenty straight minutes of rejecting everything you’d packed, you disappeared into the bathroom to change before Lovisa could threaten to dress you in something of hers. 

The dress you finally settled on was simple by Riviera standards. Soft white fabric that skimmed your body without clinging too tightly, thin straps resting against your shoulders, the hem short enough that your first instinct upon seeing yourself in the mirror was immediately tugging it lower.

The dress wasn’t actually that revealing or out of your comfort zone; you were probably just showing off body parts that hadn’t seen the light of day since sometime last summer. Which made you vaguely uncomfortable, as if the girl in the mirror wasn’t even you. She was softer, maybe even prettier, and looked nothing like the version of yourself you carried around back home buried beneath sweaters and practical shoes and coffee stains from work.

You stared at your reflection for a second more, then sighed.

“Okay, okay,” you called reluctantly, stepping back into the bedroom. “Is this alright?”

The two girls sitting in front of the window, doing their makeup, instantly turned their heads to look at you. You couldn’t read Alana’s expression, but Lovisa was transparent, her eyes going a little wide as she whistled under her breath. 

“You should show off your legs more often, Sunny,” Lovisa said. 

“What does that even mean?” you sighed. “Just tell me if the dress is appropriate or not.” 

“It means,” Lovisa said dramatically, “that you spend too much time dressing like a divorced librarian.”

“I work with children, dumbass. I have to follow a dress code—” 

“I think you look lovely,” Alana cut in warmly.

She was sitting on the edge of the bed in her silk dress the color of champagne, makeup half-finished, and dark hair clipped away from her face. Without the full polished look from earlier, she seemed simpler somehow. A lot less easy to hate. 

“Thank you,” you said honestly. “You’re significantly kinder than Lollo.”

Alana’s gaze then drifted toward your wrist. “Are you keeping your bracelets on?”

Your hand instinctively brushed the stack looped there—faded thread bracelets tangled beside tiny beads and silver bangles, some old enough that you barely remembered getting them.

A couple were from old France trips. Others had been made by kids at the youth center where you worked in the evenings and over the summers, tiny, uneven knots tied with complete seriousness before being gifted to you like treasures. One very old one was from a hockey tournament William had played in Prague when you were both teens—the red, white, and blue threads from the Czech flag faded from years of wear. 

You still wore them all without really thinking about why.

“Why?” you asked, admittedly a little insecure about it. Maybe they looked childish to her. “Do they ruin the outfit?”

“No, no. They’re cute,” Alana said immediately. Her gaze flicked thoughtfully back toward her makeup scattered across the windowsill. “But…” She tilted her head slightly. “You should totally do colorful eyeshadow to match them.”

Lovisa barked out a laugh so violently she nearly dropped whatever product she was holding. “Don’t give her ideas,” she warned. “Sunny is completely clueless when it comes to makeup.”

“That’s not true,” you argued weakly.

“It absolutely is.”

You opened your mouth to defend yourself further before realizing you had, in fact, used the same simple routine for close to a decade now. There was nothing remotely creative about it.

Alana laughed softly at your helpless expression. “I could help you, if you want?”

You probably made a little confused face as she immediately explained herself further.

“I went to beauty school before I started living off my socials,” she added with a small laugh. “So I promise I won’t make you look like a clown.”

Your eyebrows lifted lightly. “Wait. Really?”

That somehow made Alana feel more human too. Not just William’s gorgeous influencer girlfriend dropped randomly into your friend group—but an actual person with history and jobs and old plans that maybe changed along the way.

You looked between the two of them for a second before shrugging slightly. “Only if you want to,” you said. “I don’t want to take up your time or anything.”

“Nonsense,” Alana said, patting the space beside her on the bed. “Sit down.”

You hesitated only briefly before crossing the room.

The mattress dipped slightly beneath your weight as you settled beside her. Up close, you could see the organized chaos of her makeup collection spread across the windowsill—brushes, palettes, tiny glass bottles, and compacts that all looked far more expensive than anything you owned. You assumed part of it came with her job. 

For some reason, you'd expected her to feel intimidating. You’d known she would be here so it wasn’t like her presence had surprised you. But most times when someone brought a partner on one of these trips that wasn’t already acclimatized to the group dynamics, everything would feel really off. You’d made that mistake yourself a couple of years ago and ended up breaking up with the poor guy as soon as you were back on home soil. 

There was nothing worse than a partner who didn’t mesh well with someone’s friends. Which was maybe why you felt a little confused by Alana. She almost felt too normal. Too easy to be around. And you weren't entirely sure what to do with that.

Especially now that she was about to put her hands on your face. Granted, they were manicured and smooth-looking hands, but still. Stranger danger and all that. 

She grabbed a palette and dipped a brush into a shade you couldn’t really see. You guessed you had to trust her with this. 

“Close your eyes,” she instructed gently.

You obeyed, feeling the soft press of her fingers against your temple as she tilted your face slightly toward the light spilling through the windows. The brush moving across your eyelid tickled at first, and then it was soft as she blended the shadow into place.

For a few moments, all you could hear was the rustle of makeup products, the faint hum of music drifting up from downstairs, and the distant sound of the boys arguing about something entirely unimportant.

Some things really never changed.

“So,” Alana said after a moment, conversational now. “How'd you land the nickname Sunny?”

You kept your eyes closed. “I’m from a place in Stockholm that has sun in the name. And hockey players can’t resist an easy nickname, I guess.” You smiled faintly. “Willy hasn’t given you one yet?”

“No,” Alana said. “Just Alana.”

“I’m sure that’ll come eventually.”

Lovisa leaned back in her chair by the window—you could hear it squeak against the floor even if your closed eyes stopped you from actually seeing her. You could easily picture the smug expression on her face, though. 

“Well, Just Alana,” she said. “How’d you meet William? He literally doesn’t tell us anything anymore.”

“Lovisa,” you warned immediately.

“What?” she said. “I'm being friendly.”

“But you don’t have to interrogate her.” 

Alana laughed softly before answering anyway. “No, it’s okay.” 

You felt the brush leave your face briefly as she reached for another palette, and you dared to open your eyes again. 

“We actually have a couple mutual friends,” Alana explained. “We kept seeing each other at events and stuff. Charity events mostly. Sponsor things. Y’know?”

“No, we don't know,” Lovisa said. “Because he doesn't tell us—”

“—I think that sounds like a great way to meet someone, right, Lovisa?” you interrupted. “That's how you met August, after all. Through mutual friends.”

That made Lovisa shut her mouth instantly. You didn’t need her to intimidate Alana more. 

Alana smiled again, shrugging lightly. “Honestly, William didn’t tell me much about you guys either. He said you needed to be experienced. I think I’m starting to understand that now.”

“That’s because we’re all insane,” Lovisa said.

“We’re charming once you get to know us, I promise,” you added. 

Alana shook her head, smiling to herself as she brushed something softer into the corners of your eyes. You closed them out of courtesy again. 

“I didn’t even realize you and August were together,” she admitted to Lovisa. “Until you called dibs on the same room yesterday.”

You let out a giggle, opening one eye just enough to catch Lovisa's reaction in the mirror. “We don’t believe they’re a couple either,” you said dryly. “So honestly, that’s a fair assumption.”

Lovisa looked scandalized. “Just because we’re not heavy on PDA doesn't mean we’re not a couple,” she defended. “C’mon, we all think that shit is disgusting, right?”

The thing was, Lovisa was probably right. Not about the PDA necessarily, but about the fact that none of you had ever really been that affectionate in public. At least not in the traditional sense.

You and the boys had spent years making fun of her and August for dating, mostly because the relationship itself had felt so absurd when it happened. One day they were two stubborn idiots who'd been friends forever, and the next they were apparently in love.

The announcement had genuinely destabilized the friend group for several weeks. Mostly because nobody knew how to act. You’d spent an entire France trip staring at them like they were participating in some elaborate social experiment. But eventually everyone realized nothing had actually changed. The only real difference was that they left together at the end of the night.

Sometimes there was a hand resting on a knee. A kiss against a temple. Small, little comfortable things. The kind that almost disappeared if you weren't paying attention.

“That’s Scandinavian romance for you, Alana,” you laughed. “Acting like friends in public even though you share a mortgage.”

“I actually kind of agree with Lovisa,” she admitted, looking at you with a sideways smile. “I hate excessive PDA too.”

“See?” Lovisa pointed immediately. “Finally. Another sane woman.” Then she pointed directly at you. “You're just single and touch-starved, Sunny. Admit it.”

“What? How did this turn against me?”

Lovisa looked overly pleased with herself.

Alana grinned slightly as she leaned closer again, dabbing something near your brow bone. “How long have you been single?”

You honestly had to think about it. Was twenty-eight years really the answer? You didn't know. There had been dates. A handful of almost-relationships. People you'd liked well enough. People who'd liked you more than you liked them. Months that looked like something from the outside until they quietly dissolved into nothing. But if someone asked you to name an ex-boyfriend? You weren't sure anyone came to mind.

“Uh…” You stuttered lightly. “Last time I dated someone was maybe eight months ago?But we only saw each other a couple of times. Nothing serious.”

“I don’t think you’ve ever been serious with someone,” Lovisa said. 

You knew she wasn't trying to be malicious. Lovisa rarely was. But the comment landed somewhere uncomfortable anyway, poking at a truth you knew too well but never wanted to admit to. 

“Shut up.” 

“Never,” she laughed. 

You pointed a finger vaguely in her direction without opening your eyes. “And for your information,” you informed her, “I'm thriving as single.”

Lovisa rolled her eyes so dramatically you swore you could hear it. Alana, meanwhile, was smiling softly to herself.

“You don’t miss it?” she asked after a second. “Having someone to come home to?”

You hummed thoughtfully. The truth was, your life had become very comfortable lately. If you ignored the dead grandpa and bickering parents for a moment, you were practically set for life, almost suspiciously so. 

You had your routines.

You woke up alone in a very comfortable bed. You ate breakfast alone. You took the subway to work alone. You spent your lunch breaks alone unless a student wanted to sit in your classroom and tell you about whatever catastrophe had consumed their sixteen-year-old life that week. You went home alone. You ate dinner alone. You spent your evenings reading books or watching horrible reality television alone.

And the horrible thing was you genuinely liked it. You were so comfortable alone that an outside observer might've briefly diagnosed you with something where antisocial was a symptom.

“I bought a pregnancy pillow for cuddles,” you said after thinking about it, “and I moved into a place with a dishwasher recently, so honestly? I’m pretty set.”

For a moment, the room went silent. Then Lovisa dropped something. You opened your eyes to realize she was staring at you in horror.

“Oh, and those Satisfyer toys work better than any man I’ve been with anyway,” you added. 

Alana choked on her own laughter beside you while Lovisa put her head into her hands. 

“Wow,” Lovisa breathed. “She doesn’t even miss dick. I think she’s beyond saving for real, Alana.”

The sound that came out of Alana was somewhere between a laugh and a wheeze. “You seriously don’t miss anything about it?”

You considered it, and maybe there was a thing or two you couldn’t do alone. 

“Okay,” you admitted reluctantly, “it would be nice to have someone rub my back every once in a while and maybe… eat me out until I see stars. But that’s it. I don’t miss anything else.”

Lovisa slapped the windowsill triumphantly. “I knew you weren’t hopeless, Sunny. We’re getting you laid tonight!”

“Oh my god. That’s not what I—”

“What?” she grinned. “This is huge progress for you.”

You swallowed the rest of your words quickly. The worst part was that both of them were laughing now. Together. Like they'd known each other for years instead of less than two days.

“Wait,” Alana said slowly. “Sunny, you actually… enjoy that part?”

Both you and Lovisa stared at her. 

“You don’t?” Lovisa asked. 

Alana shrugged a shoulder, looking suddenly sheepish. It was the first genuinely awkward thing she'd admitted all evening. A faint flush crept into her cheeks as she glanced down at the makeup brush in her hand.

“I mean—I do sometimes. But William is like overly enthusiastic about it.” She laughed softly through her embarrassment. “I don’t know, I guess I just don’t want it that often—”

You and Lovisa reacted at exactly the same time, both making identical sounds of horror, landing somewhere between a screech and a gagging noise. 

“I’m gonna stop you right there actually,” Lovisa cut in. “I’m starting to like you, I really do, but William is basically a brother to us, and knowing he’s a munch is really gross.” 

“Oh my god, Lovisa. Don’t call him that—” 

“What?” Lovisa said. “It’s apparently true!”

You pressed both hands over your face, careful not to ruin Alana’s work, but you also had to hide from this nightmare of a conversation. 

Secrets being uncovered about each other's sex lives weren't unusual in this group. 

Unfortunately. 

There were things you knew about your friends that no person should ever know. The image currently forming in your head of William and Alana ranked dangerously high on that list. Only one memory really competed with it—the year Alex and Rasmus had decided on having a threesome during a France trip and somehow forgotten there were other people in the house trying to sleep.

The less said about that week, the better.

“Did he do it even with that stupid beard he had all season?” you asked before you could stop yourself. 

Silence.

The second the words left your mouth, regret hit you like a freight train.

Alana made a strangled noise, and Lovisa physically folded in half. “Sunny, what the fuck,” she wheezed.

“Wait, don’t answer that, Alana!” you said immediately afterward, slapping a hand over your mouth. “Actually, I’m leaving this room now—”

The girls completely dissolved into dying laughter while you attempted to stand up blindly, only for Alana to grab your wrist gently.

“Nope,” she said through a grin. “Sit back down. I’m almost done.”

You groaned but obeyed. 

The laughter lingered long after the conversation moved on. Little bursts of it escaped every few minutes whenever someone made eye contact. You'd get it under control, then catch Lovisa grinning at you through the mirror and immediately start laughing again. By the end your stomach actually hurt.

“There. All done,” Alana said after a while, clapping her hands together. 

You opened your eyes fully and turned toward the mirror.

Across your eyelids was a light blue shimmer, reflecting with iridescent glitter. Closer to your lashes, she’d smudged out a dark navy shadow. 

It was unlike anything else you’d ever tried, but it wasn’t overpowering. Just enough to make your eyes look a little brighter and more intense, pulling the shades from your colorful jewelry. Just enough to make you feel prettier than you had in…  God. You couldn't even remember how long.

“Wow,” you said honestly. “I don’t even recognize myself.”

Alana smiled. “That’s good, right?”

You turned toward her. Toward the girl you'd expected to tolerate for William's sake and somehow ended up genuinely liking even after spending mere hours with her.

“Yes, absolutely,” you beamed, unable to stop smiling back at her. “I love it.”

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

The club sat directly against the water.

One of those half-inside, half-outside places that seemed purpose-built for picture-perfect summer nights. The dance floor glowed beneath shifting colors, clacking softly whenever high heels struck the illuminated panels. Beyond it, a glass railing wrapped around the terrace overlooking the coast, where dark waves rolled lazily against the rocks below.

Because of course it did.

Everything in Saint-Tropez felt engineered to be beautiful in a way that bordered on ridiculous. White lights woven through palm trees. Superyachts glowing in the harbor like scattered stars on a night sky. Bass heavy enough that you could feel it vibrating through the soles of your shoes before you'd even made it past the bouncer.

By midnight, the place had dissolved fully into sweat and noise and bodies moving too close together.

August had disappeared almost immediately after arriving, dragged toward the bar by people he apparently knew from the restaurant scene. You suspected he was responsible for choosing this club in the first place. Alex was deep into the kind of drunken social confidence that made him incapable of speaking below a yell, simultaneously attracting and repelling women in equal measure. Rasmus had somehow befriended a group of Italian men close to twice his age over cigarettes and appeared determined to spend the entire evening with them, looking like a scene out of a bad mafia movie. 

And Lovisa and Alana had decided you were their personal project for the evening.

Not a single song passed without one of them identifying a new candidate. Someone for you to try out, whatever that now meant. You'd gotten surprisingly good at rejecting men from a distance because of it. No man-buns. No sunglasses indoors. No Hawaiian shirts. Lovisa insisted you were being shallow. You insisted you simply didn't want to be set up with strangers on a vacation that was supposed to be about seeing your friends.

Especially after the summer you'd already had.

You were leaning against the terrace railing beside Lovisa, enjoying the brief relief of cooler air after dancing, when Alana reappeared carrying three drinks balanced carefully between both hands.

“I come bearing vodka sodas,” she announced.

“An angel among women,” Lovisa beamed, taking one and nearly finishing half in a single sip.

You accepted yours with a grateful smile.

Honestly, Alana was making it increasingly difficult to dislike her.

She laughed at everyone's jokes, including weird inside jokes that didn’t even make sense to you anymore. She remembered details from conversations. Never tried too hard to insert herself into the group but never seemed intimidated by it either. Somehow she'd managed to slide naturally into a dynamic that had taken years to build.

Which was probably why everyone liked her already. Even Lovisa, and you weren’t even sure she liked you most of the time. 

“So,” Lovisa announced suddenly. The tone alone made you dread her following words. “We're officially fixing this now. No more lallygagging.”

“Fixing what?” you asked even though you knew. 

“Whatever weird celibate nun era you’re going through,” she said. “How about tall, dark, and handsome in the corner booth?” 

As your gaze scanned the room, trying to make out whichever guy she was now talking about, you instead found William—his eyes already locked on yours. 

He’d been more anonymous than the rest of the group tonight. 

He stood near the bar with August and two strangers you didn’t recognize, drink loose in one hand. His white linen shirt was unbuttoned low enough that wearing it must’ve been simply symbolic at that point. August was saying something to him animatedly, but William’s attention looked split at best.

Like part of him was here and another part of him was completely elsewhere. If you didn’t know him, his blank stare might’ve even made you uncomfortable. 

Alana had been standing with them earlier when she'd gone to get drinks, but she'd drifted back to your side within minutes. Maybe they simply weren't one of those couples who stuck like velcro on each other. Lovisa and August definitely weren’t, and they were your closest point of reference. Then again, Lovisa and August also spent half their relationship pretending they weren't dating.

“Stop staring at William,” Lovisa said, and you nearly choked on your drink. “And look at our cute candidate instead.” 

You denied it on instinct, but the knowing look she gave you made it clear she wasn't buying it. With a pointed gesture toward the corner booth, she redirected your attention back to the latest man she'd decided was perfect for you.

You followed the direction she pointed, and the man sitting in the corner booth looked like he'd walked directly out of a cologne advertisement. Dark hair in defined curls, sleeves rolled up at his forearms, a drink balanced lazily between his fingers that looked suspiciously like a Negroni. 

“He’s not even that cute,” you tried. “He’s got a weird necklace on.” 

The necklace in question was, admittedly, completely normal. A silver chain on the chunkier side, but it looked nice against his tan skin. 

“Don't be so picky,” Lovisa groaned.

“He is cute, Sunny. William wears an amulet, that necklace is nothing, I promise,” Alana offered humorously after glancing over.

You narrowed your eyes at her. “Whose side are you even on?”

They both laughed while Lovisa grabbed your wrist before you could escape. “Relax, Sunny,” she said, steering you forward. It was honestly a firm push right between your shoulder blades. “You don’t have to marry him. Just flirt a little.”

Behind you, Alana offered an encouraging thumbs-up.

By the time you reached the booth, the man had already noticed you approaching.

He stood immediately. That was polite. Good posture. Very French.

“Bonsoir,” he said, attention landing fully on you.

Behind you, you could practically feel the girls watching. They’d moved towards the boys at the bar, and suddenly an entire committee seemed to have formed around your social life. The awareness crawled across the back of your neck like static that you desperately tried to ignore. 

“Hi,” you answered.

The conversation started easily enough after that. His name was Jean-Luc. He worked in architecture in Nice. He was funny in a smooth, effortless kind of way that suggested he’d done this many times before. It also made everything he said sound more interesting than it probably was. 

He asked questions and seemed to care about the answers. When you told him you taught English, he looked genuinely horrified.

“Teenagers?” he repeated. “Every day?”

“Unfortunately.”

“I think I would rather be unemployed.”

And while that was a tone-deaf and privileged thing to say, you laughed along because you could tell he meant it as a joke. 

The smile he gave you afterward was warm enough that you immediately understood why Lovisa had picked him out of an entire club full of people. It was terribly unfortunate because now she'd never let you hear the end of it.

Somewhere behind you, yet another song started. The bass rolled through the terrace beneath your feet while voices and laughter blended into one continuous hum. The sea glittered beyond the railing, dark and endless beneath the lights from the harbor.

You let yourself enjoy the conversation for some reason. You stopped paying attention to where everyone else was. Stopped wondering what the boys were doing. Just let this cute Frenchman ask you questions without any substance, but at least it felt easy for once. 

— 

William had been nursing the same drink long enough for the ice to melt. The realization came to him somewhere in the middle of one of August's stories. Or maybe the end. He wasn't entirely sure. The music was too loud, the club was too crowded, and his attention kept drifting before he could hold onto anything for very long.

“...and then he tells me they don’t even have halibut on the menu—”

William blinked. “What?”

August stopped mid-sentence. For a moment he simply stared, and then he laughed. “That's exactly my point.”

William frowned. “What point?”

“That you've been somewhere else all night.”

The accusation should've been easy to dismiss. He could've just picked up on the last thing August said and let him continue the story. What even was a halibut, anyway? Some kind of fish?

Instead, William found himself quiet again, gaze drifting across the club.

The dance floor pulsed beneath shifting lights. Alex was talking to three different women at once and somehow losing all of them simultaneously. Rasmus was still missing in action. The sea beyond the terrace glittered black beneath the harbor lights.

“Okay, what’s wrong with you?” August asked.

“Nothing,” William mumbled. 

“Liar.”

The bartender slid another round of drinks down the polished counter. Somewhere behind them, the music shifted into another song, bass vibrating through the floorboards beneath William's sneakers.

August sighed dramatically. “You've had that exact expression since you arrived yesterday.”

“What expression?”

“The one where you look like somebody stole your dogs.”

William snorted. “My dogs are fine. They’re with my parents.”

“You know what I mean, Willy.” August nudged his shoulder. “You look like you don't want to be here.”

That was the frustrating part. He desperately wanted to be here.

The season was over. Training camp was months away. His friends were here. France looked exactly the way it always had. You were here. The trip was complete now. The group was complete. For months he'd been looking forward to these two weeks.

So why did he still feel like he hadn't quite settled into it? Like some part of him was still waiting for something.

William blamed the drinks for now. Or the humid heat pressing against his skin. Or the fact that nightclubs seemed specifically designed to overstimulate people until their brains stopped working properly.

Any explanation was better than examining the feeling too closely. He’d probably have a weird dream about it tonight anyway that either explained it to him in grave detail, or sent this brewing panicky feeling into something solid and terrifying. 

“You know,” August said slowly, “Alana is going to dump you if you keep ignoring her.”

William frowned. “I'm not ignoring her. She was here literally five minutes ago.” 

His eyes found her automatically. Alana and Lovisa were dancing together beneath the shifting lights, wobbly heels jumping up and down on the floor. Neither of them seemed particularly concerned about where their boyfriends had wandered off to. Their dresses moved easily with every movement, silk catching flashes of gold and pink from the lights overhead.

“See?” William pointed vaguely in their direction and August followed his gaze. “You're not with Lovisa every second of the day and nobody bats an eye.”

“That’s because we’re not in the honeymoon phase,” August argued. 

He said it simply—a mere assumption that since William and Alana were still pretty new to their relationship, certain stereotypes would apply to them. But a strange realization drifted through William. He wasn't sure he'd ever had a honeymoon phase. Not with Alana. Not with any woman he'd dated, actually.

At least not in the way people always described it. There had never been that can't-stop-thinking-about-her feeling. Never any overwhelming urge to learn every single thing about a new person, or drop other responsibilities just because of love. Mostly he'd just enjoyed their company. Enjoyed having someone who could be around at all times. 

The thought lingered for a moment before dissolving beneath the music.

Across the terrace, laughter carried over the bass. A laugh William could recognize anywhere. Slightly louder than most, usually drifting off into a snorting sound before any real cackle could be formed. His attention wandered before he could stop it. Toward you, and whatever guy you were talking to. 

He seemed to be doing most of the work, honestly. Talking with his hands. Leaning forward every time he told a story. The sort of guy who was probably charming in multiple languages and knew exactly how charming he was.

You looked relaxed, though. More relaxed than when Lovisa practically shoved you across the club toward him. Whatever initial resistance you'd had appeared to be gone now. Your shoulders were loose. Your smile came easier. Every so often your head tipped back with a laugh at something the man said.

William watched you for a good moment. You didn't look back at him once, which was what finally made him drag his attention away.

“Sunny can handle herself, you know.”

William's eyes snapped back toward August. “What?”

August took a slow drink, looking entirely too pleased with himself. “You keep checking on her.”

William denied it, but the look August gave him made it clear neither of them believed that. It was the same look he'd been getting since they were teenagers—the one that appeared whenever August caught him in something before he'd caught himself.

The accusation bothered him more than it should have.

He frowned into his glass. “I'm just looking out for her,” he said. “Is that so wrong?”

August froze. “Oh.”

William immediately regretted speaking. “Shut up.”

August's grin came back slowly, spreading across his face. “I didn't even say anything.”

William groaned and took another drink, hoping that would be the end of it.

It wasn't.

A moment later, movement across the terrace caught his eye. You were standing now, leaning down to say something to the guy over the music. He nodded immediately, smiling as you gestured toward the interior of the club before disappearing into the crowd alone.

August followed William's gaze without needing any explanation.

“There she goes,” he said, amusement creeping into his voice.

William didn't bother responding.

“You should go talk to her.”

That finally earned him a laugh. “Why?”

“Because whatever's wrong with you is clearly above my pay grade.” August lifted his glass before taking another sip. “Your mood is Sunny's specialty, not mine.”

William rolled his eyes even if the comment was true. 

You were the only person that wasn’t in his immediate family that he felt comfortable sharing his emotions with. The deep, underlying emotions tended to even weird himself out. He could talk about hockey with the boys, but you understood hockey and everything else. 

A few moments later, he set his still half-empty drink on the bar. August was right. Something was wrong with him, and he needed help figuring it out. Or maybe he simply hadn't had a chance to properly talk to you since you'd arrived, and he was desperately needing that. 

Either way, before August could make another comment, William pushed away from the bar and headed into the crowd after you.

—

It felt like the first time you’d been alone all night. Maybe even all day, if you counted the airport.

The bathroom had been packed with women fixing their makeup and taking mirror selfies, so you'd escaped almost immediately afterward, following the curve of the terrace until you found a quieter corner tucked behind a row of potted palms and white stone walls.

For a few precious minutes, nobody needed anything from you.

No one dragging you onto the dance floor for another round of jumping to house music you didn't even like. No more well-meaning attempts to throw you at handsome French architects. Or Italian lawyers. Or whatever the hell that American stockbroker had been.

You rested your forearms against the railing and let your gaze drift toward the water. Below, the Mediterranean Sea rolled endlessly into darkness, black waves catching silver streaks of moonlight. Salt hung in the air alongside the lingering sting of vodka clinging to your breath.

Maybe you were drunker than you'd realized. The feeling seemed to collect itself all at once now that you'd stopped moving, settling behind your eyes and making the world sway gently back and forth. 

“You good, Sunshine?”

You smiled before you even turned around. William was walking toward you with his hands shoved into his pockets.

“Oh, yeah. I’m good,” you murmured. “Just needed a break from being a contestant on Lovisa’s personal dating show.” 

He laughed softly, leaning his forearms against the railing beside you.

“That’s fair.” 

Up close, you could smell alcohol on him too. Not to make him appear sloppy, just enough for the edges to soften around him. His smile lingering longer, his laughter a little more unguarded. Cologne clung to his warm skin too, mixed with the sweat from the crowded club. 

Fuck. You'd even missed the way he smelled.

For a while, neither of you said anything.

That wasn't unusual. One of the reasons you'd become friends in the first place was because silence never seemed to bother either of you. Or maybe it was just you who liked silence, and William had spent the last fifteen years learning to tolerate it.

He looked like the perfect Swede at first glance, but every now and then something gave away that he’d been raised in Canada. His inability to regulate the volume of his own voice was one of them.

Fourteen years old. The new kid at school. He'd had a terrible accent back then, constantly mixing English into his Swedish.

You still remembered the skating trip where you'd first really noticed him.

One of those bright winter days when the entire school got packed onto buses and driven to the local bandy rink. Kids spent hours skating in circles, drinking hot chocolate, falling over, and complaining about hand-me-down skates not fitting right. 

A group of boys had decided it was hilarious to skate as fast as they could toward girls before spraying them with snow or simply knocking them over like bowling pins.

One of them had caught you hard enough that you'd landed flat on your back in front of half the class. You remembered the taste of blood from accidentally biting your lip more than the fall itself.

The memory was fuzzy now. Maybe half concussed. 

Except for William. The memory of him was still crystal clear. 

You remembered him appearing seemingly out of nowhere, helping you up on your feet again. You also remembered him telling the other kid to fuck off in English, which was harsher than any curse word you’d known in Swedish at the time. At fourteen years old, it had sounded impossibly cool. It had landed him a reputation as a bad boy immediately. 

But William didn’t have a mean bone in his body. He still didn’t. 

He’d just skated with you towards the bleachers, and sat with you in silence until you stopped pouting about your bleeding lip. Not one word about the tears threatening to fall from your eyes, or how absolutely terrible you were at skating. He'd even shared the Oreos his mom packed for him, and only laughed a little when biting into one made you wince.

William still looked eerily similar to that boy sometimes. Especially now, standing beside you, content to leave the silence alone.

You watched the waves, and William appeared to be watching you. His eyes drifted toward your face properly for the first time since he'd walked over. And stayed there.

“What?” you finally asked. “Something wrong with my face?” 

His brow furrowed slightly like he was only just realizing he’d been staring. “Nothing.” His gaze flicked briefly toward your eyes again. “I like your, uh…" He rubbed a hand briefly against the back of his neck. “The makeup. The blue on your eyes.”

You'd almost forgotten about it.

Maybe it was the alcohol. Maybe it was the fact that you'd spent the last hours being pulled around a nightclub unwillingly. At some point, the dress and makeup had stopped feeling unusual.

You’d only briefly caught yourself in the bathroom mirror, and not really thought twice about your appearance. You'd gone back to feeling like your summer-self. Or as close to her as you could manage.

You blinked. “You do?” 

“Yeah, of course.” William’s expression tightened slightly. Almost like he'd realized halfway through the conversation that he wasn't explaining himself very well. “I mean, you don’t look like yourself, but it looks nice. I promise.” 

You stared at him. A full second passed. Then two.

Admittedly, the words landed a little strangely. Because, while he wasn't wrong, it also wasn’t the kindest thing to say. 

You didn't look much like yourself tonight. The dress wasn't something you'd normally wear. The makeup definitely wasn’t. That was all true. But hearing someone point it out felt like you were playing dress-up suddenly, masquerading as someone you obviously weren’t, to him at least. 

William groaned at your reaction. “That sounded worse than I meant it.”

A laugh escaped you. “Oh my God.”

“You know what I meant,” he insisted. 

“I’m not sure I do.”

“You're impossible,” he muttered.

The frustration in his voice only made you laugh harder. Because for someone who spent half his life talking to reporters, William was remarkably bad at explaining himself sometimes.

“You look good, Sunshine.” His voice softened slightly on the nickname. “That's what I meant.”

The warmth that spread through your chest felt entirely disproportionate to a simple compliment. Which was absolutely ridiculous. People complimented each other all the time. It was one of life’s easiest pleasures—people being kind just for the sake of it. 

You'd spent half the evening telling Alana she looked beautiful. Lovisa called everyone hot. None of it ever lodged itself somewhere beneath your ribs like this.

Maybe because William almost never noticed things like makeup. Maybe because he'd known your face for over half your life. Braces, Acne. Bad haircuts. Tear-streaked. Sunburned. Exhausted. Half-asleep and fully asleep, mouth wide open and drooling. 

William had seen every version of you that existed. And somehow this was the one he'd decided to comment on. The one that didn’t even look like you. 

“Oh,” you said, verbally stumbling. “Thanks. Alana did it.”

A small smile pulled briefly at the corner of his mouth. “Yeah?”

“She’s really good at it.”

“She’ll be happy you said that,” he said lightly.

The conversation should’ve ended there probably. Instead, William stayed beside you.

Close enough that your shoulders brushed once when someone pushed past behind you on their way back toward the club. Neither of you moved away.

“So,” he said eventually, voice a little quieter beneath the music now. “Is Lollo's dating show successful at least?”

“Not really,” you snorted. “I’m starting to think maybe I don’t like French men. Beautiful country, but rude and boring men.”

That earned a laugh from him. “Hm.”

His eyes drifted briefly back toward the main terrace. Toward where Jean-Luc—or Luc, or whatever his name had been—was presumably still inside somewhere. Waiting for you or maybe already talking to someone else. You honestly didn't know. You hadn't thought about him since leaving.

“That guy earlier seemed pretty interested, though,” William continued.

You glanced sideways at William. “He was fine,” you answered carefully.

“Just fine?”

A laugh escaped you. “Don’t sound so offended on his behalf.”

William looked away toward the water, hiding his smile behind his hand for a moment. You knew that expression, like he was physically having to stop himself from saying something, or just laughing way too loud. 

“I’m serious,” you continued. “I’m not exactly looking for a husband between the DJ booth and champagne buckets.”

“Good,” he said automatically.

The word slipped out so easily you weren’t even sure he realized he’d said it.

Your eyebrows lifted slightly.

William blinked once, and then seemed to catch up with what he'd actually said. “I mean,” he corrected quickly, “the guys here are usually assholes.”

Your first instinct was to point out that he’d historically been one of those assholes, but that wasn’t even true. 

Sure, he'd flirted when he was single. Most summers, though, William spent more time sitting beside you and Lovisa than he did chasing women around bars. While August, Alex and Rasmus had worked their way through half the female population of southern France through the years, William somehow always ended up by your side. 

He'd never really needed to try very hard anyway. If William wanted attention, he got it. That was how he landed girlfriend after girlfriend throughout his entire life basically. 

You turned toward him fully now. “I can handle myself, you know?” 

“I know,”he said,meeting your gaze without hesitation.

“Then stop worrying.”

A small crease appeared between his brows. “I wasn't worrying.”

“Right. Sure thing.”

William rolled his eyes. “I was just looking out for you.” 

His reasoning landed with frustrating familiarity. Because that was always the answer.

It was the same thing he’d said when you were just a kid, sitting on the ice trying not to cry because your lip was bleeding. The same thing he'd said when he started walking you home after school in the wintertime when it was pitch dark outside. The same thing he'd said over the phone when you failed your master’s thesis opposition and refused to speak to anyone for a week straight.

He was just… looking out for you. 

As if it was the most natural thing in the world. As if caring about you wasn't something he actively chose to do. As if it was simply part of who he was.

And maybe it was. Maybe he also looked after everyone else. There was nothing special about it. You always swallowed it down before it could become anything special in your mind, anyway. 

“Oh my god, William,” you sighed, flailing with your arms in frustration, bracelets rattling with the movement. “Go dance with your girlfriend or something!” 

His expression immediately shifted into one of exaggerated offense. “Wow.”

“No, seriously.” You nudged his shoulder lightly with your own. “We have two weeks to catch up. Don't stand out here with me like some loser.”

A surprised laugh escaped him. “I'm the loser here?”

“Yes. Biggest one I’ve ever seen.”

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

The next morning arrived exactly as every summer’s morning was supposed to. Very slowly, comfortably warm and breezy at the same time, and just a little too bright.

You woke up squinting at sunlight pouring through the curtains, your mouth dry, your head pleasantly hungover, and one leg tangled in the thin bedsheets that had somehow wrapped themselves around your ankle during the night. You hadn't yet reached the age where hangovers lasted three days and rendered you incapable of functioning as a human being, but you were getting closer.

That was a deeply unsettling realization.

You lay there for longer than you'd like to admit, basking in the comfort of the bed while trying to gather your thoughts from the day before. Being on this trip again was always fun. Hanging out with your friends was fun. Meeting Alana for the first time was fun. 

Everything waiting for you back in Stockholm was considerably less fun.

No matter how many times your parents had told you it was okay to leave for two weeks, it still felt wrong somehow. Temporary. Like putting a bandage on a wound much bigger and hoping it would magically heal while you weren't looking.

Ugh.

Couldn't things just sort themselves out on their own? Why were active decisions always the answer to making progress in life?

You rolled onto your stomach and buried your face in the pillow, muffling a groan.

Around you, the house had started waking up too. You noticed it by distant sounds, filtering through the walls. Flip-flops slapping down the stairs, a door closing somewhere downstairs, the microwave beeping. The low, comfortable murmur of conversation.

It was annoyingly nice to have people around. Even your fiercely independent self could admit that. Humans were so cute with all their little routines and idiosyncrasies.

You suddenly heard the scream of a familiar voice, followed by “August, I swear to God—” and the splash of Lovisa hitting the pool. 

You smiled to yourself. After all, you had a wonderfully beautiful thing to wake up to. 

By the time you finally made it outside—swimsuit on, sunglasses firmly in place, an iced coffee clutched between your hands alongside your chosen beach read—the rest of the villa was already in full operation. 

The boys occupied the pool. Or more accurately, the pool occupied the boys. It looked like a half-hearted attempt at water polo involving a blow-up beach ball, and a very serious attempt at drowning one another.

Alex was trying to drown August. August was trying to drown Alex back. Rasmus appeared committed to helping both sides simultaneously while laughing hard enough to become completely useless.

William was in the middle of it, which wasn't surprising. Every summer he started out pretending to be mature before inevitably reverting back into a teenage boy the second water became involved.

You watched him disappear beneath the surface after August launched himself at him. Three seconds later he emerged again, shoving August underwater with enough force to create a wave that sloshed over the edge of the pool.

“Good morning, idiots,” you muttered.

“Good morning, Sunshine.”

Lovisa glanced up at you from her sun lounger. She wore an oversized sunhat, enormous sunglasses, and an expression that told you yesterday’s drinks had hit her a little harder than they had you. Somehow she was almost completely dry despite having been thrown into the pool earlier. That was how hot it was outside. 

You collapsed into the empty lounger beside her, the warm fabric pressing pleasantly against your skin. Every inch of your body immediately approved of the decision to lie back down.

The stone patio radiated heat from the morning sun. Lavender grew from oversized terracotta pots scattered around the terrace, filling the air with that distinctly southern French scent that somehow made everything feel expensive, and faintly soapy. 

The Mediterranean glittered impossibly blue in the distance beyond the hillside.

The view was actually obscene. This entire house was obscene. The fact that this had somehow become your yearly tradition remained an absurd thought.

Across from you, Alana looked up from her book. “Alive?”

You laughed, lifting your coffee slightly. “I think so.”

The boys continued their ongoing attempt to commit manslaughter by pool game. Lovisa stretched out in the sun like a lizard on a warm rock. Alana disappeared back into her novel, so you decided to dive into yours too. 

The cover cast a shadow across your stomach as you settled deeper into the lounger, one knee bent, sunglasses slipping slightly down your nose. The book you'd chosen looked absurdly large resting against your lap. Infinite Jest, printed in bright neon lettering against a cloudy blue sky. You'd had several options in your suitcase. 

Naturally, you'd gravitated toward the longest one.

You barely managed three pages before Lovisa commented on it.

“Fucking hell, Sunny. Was your suitcase not heavy enough?” she laughed. “You had to pack a literal brick?”

“It’s not that bad,” you argued. 

You glanced down at the thick paperback. The spine was already creased in several places, multicolored tabs protruding from the pages like a thousand tiny flags. The thing looked diseased with the way you'd attacked it.

You saw no point in being precious about books. They were meant to be read.

“It’s the size of a microwave,” Lovisa laughed again. 

Alana leaned forward from her lounger, curiosity winning out over her book. “How many pages even is that thing?” she asked. 

“A little over a thousand,” you shrugged.

Both women looked mildly horrified. You couldn't really blame them. Books of this size were ridiculous. A feat to write and an even greater feat to finish. Probably a feat that could've been accomplished with several hundred fewer pages, if you were being honest. Even most language teachers would admit that.

“What could someone possibly write about for that long?” Lovisa groaned. 

“Tennis,” you said. “But also addiction and capitalism. It’s got it all.”

That somehow made her look even more annoyed. Maybe because the answer told her absolutely nothing. The truth was, you weren't entirely sure what the book was about yet either. You were only a couple hundred pages in. Practically a fraction finished.

You'd picked it up because of one of your students.

Back in the spring semester, a sixteen-year-old boy named Hugo had submitted a twenty-page analysis on the novel. Not the book report you'd actually assigned. An analysis. Thousands of words of densely packed observations, theories, references, and arguments that bounced somewhere between genuine brilliance and a teenager deliberately trying to rage-bait his teacher.

You'd spent half an evening reading it. Then another evening rereading it, trying to figure out what grade a paper like that was supposed to receive. Usually extra work annoyed you. Every now and then, though, you stumbled across something fascinating.

The best students often did that. They found cracks in books you'd never noticed yourself. They introduced you to authors you would've walked past in a bookstore. Sometimes they were completely wrong. Sometimes they discovered something remarkable. Either way, it was always nice to see a kid genuinely care about learning. It reminded you why you loved teaching so much.

“I had a student write about it,” you explained. “And it was either the most brilliant thing I've ever read or complete nonsense.”

“Well, which was it?” Lovisa pushed. 

“I genuinely do not know,” you admitted. “I could only grade him on the effort because I hadn't read it, so now I'm trying.”

That earned a laugh from Alana, and you smiled a little to yourself. 

There was something deeply satisfying about not knowing the answer to something. Most people seemed desperate for certainty. You'd built an entire career around asking questions that didn't have definite answers. Well, most of the time. Grammar, structure, and references still had rules for a reason.

Alana tilted her head, eyeing the book. “But you’ve already annotated it.”

“No, these are for the endnotes.” 

“The what?”

“The endnotes. There are about two hundred pages of them,” you continued, lifting the book slightly. You knew exactly how ridiculous it sounded. The grin spreading across your face only exaggerated it. “You have to flip back and forth constantly. The author did it on purpose. He wanted the reader to get distracted.”

“Why the fuck would he want that?” Lovisa asked, brows raised so high she looked incredulous. 

“So you end up losing your place, rereading sections, forgetting what you were doing, getting pulled into another side plot entirely—”

“That sounds awful,” she cut in. 

Your grin never left. “It’s actually kind of brilliant.” 

Because despite all the complaining you would undoubtedly do before reaching the final page, there was something immensely rewarding about a book that demanded your attention so aggressively.

It refused to let you consume it casually. And art should never be casual. 

You had to participate. You had to think to understand it. Maybe that was why you liked it so much. The same reason you enjoyed teaching literature to teenagers who would rather be doing literally anything else.

“You're actually insane if you enjoy that,” Lovisa declared.

You accepted that assessment immediately.

“It’s my job to be insane about writing. I chose this,” you laughed. “Besides, if one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.” 

“And who said that? Shakespeare?”

“Oscar Wilde, I think. Although he’s often misquoted,” you answered easily. “And Shakespeare didn’t even write books, so why would he mention them? Novels like we know now them didn’t really exist when he lived—” 

Lovisa groaned, cutting you off. “Sunny, I didn’t ask for a history lesson.” 

Across the pool, you heard someone bark out a laugh. William. It appeared he'd been listening the entire time. One arm hooked over the edge of the pool, wet hair pushed back from his forehead, looking far too pleased with himself.

“I think you kind of did, Lollo.”

“You’re a traitor, William,” Lovisa muttered.

A second later, the beach ball came flying out of the pool again, launched with enough force to clear the edge and bounce across the stone patio before rolling to a stop beside the row of sun loungers.

It had become a recurring problem throughout the morning. Every ten minutes or so, one of the boys inevitably sent it flying onto dry land, followed by the expectation that somebody else would retrieve it for them.

This time, however, nobody seemed particularly interested in volunteering. Lovisa didn't even lift her head from the lounger. You and Alana remained absorbed in your books. Still in the water, the boys stared expectantly, waiting for one of you to crack first. Eventually, the girls stared right back.

“Sunny,” Alex called. “Pass the ball back!”

You shook your head, smugly smiling. “I think I’m doing you a favor by not complying.”

A chorus of complaints followed. You ignored every single one. They could call you lazy, or a bad friend, or just lacking basic human decency—the ball still remained exactly where it had landed, abandoned on the warm stone patio a few inches away.

Eventually, the realization seemed to settle over them that nobody was coming to their rescue. William let out a long, suffering sigh and dragged a hand through his wet hair before pushing himself up from the edge of the pool.

“Fine,” he said. “I’ll get it.”

Water sloshed over the edge of the pool when he hoisted himself up, droplets falling down his body in little rivers as he crossed the patio barefoot.

You didn’t even get the chance to think before the slap of his feet against the stone got uncomfortably close to your lounger and his shadow cast a cold layer across your body. 

You pushed up your sunglasses just in time to see William bend down and scoop up the ball, and then he shook himself like an actual fucking dog so water flew everywhere. Mostly coming from his hair. 

“William, oh my god!” You jerked backward as cold droplets splattered across your arms, chest, and face. “The water's still cold, you dick—”

His laugh rang out immediately. Worth it, apparently.

“Sorry, Sunshine—”

You glared up at him, fully prepared to continue your rant, when something strange happened. William's breath caught, stopping whatever overly proud words he had planned to say from coming out. The grin plastered on his face faded quickly it almost looked like he was in pain. 

Then his gaze fell, going from looking at your face to looking at something very different. 

Why was he…

“Oh my God,” Lovisa squealed. The words came out far too delighted. “William, you could be a little less obvious while staring!”

Your stomach dropped, suddenly feeling like you’d swallowed chunks of ice even in this blazing heat. 

William looked around uncertainly. “I'm not—”

“Yes, you are,” Lovisa argued. 

“No, I didn't mean—”

His eyes darted downward again before he could stop himself. And then his entire expression changed again. He went back to total confusion after the quick flush of embarrassment. 

“When— When the fuck did you get your nipples pierced, Sunny?”

All that was left was utter silence. Even the boys in the pool stopped yelling. You felt every muscle in your body lock. Then, horrifyingly, of course every single head turned toward you.

Oh.

Oh, you were going to die.

Right here, on the spot. Your school would have to find another English teacher because you were throwing yourself into the Mediterranean and never resurfacing.

“L-like October?” you answered weakly. For some reason your brain had decided honesty was the correct response. “Back when I dated that guy who owned a tattoo studio.”

You wanted to rip out your own vocal cords after that. Because now everyone wasn't just staring at your chest—they also got a quick reminder of the last guy you’d dated. 

Daniel. 

The tattoo artist. The one with sleeves down both arms and enough piercings to set off airport security from three terminals away. The one who always smelled faintly of cigarette smoke even though you'd never actually seen him smoke, and who always tried to mansplain your favorite music to you. 

The one you'd spent a couple of months insisting wasn't serious before accidentally introducing him to half your friends.

You hadn't thought about him in ages. The relationship itself had been fine. Maybe even considered fun for your standards. Very short-lived, like most of your relationships seemed to be, but you had liked him, or aspects of him. At least enough to let him talk you into piercing you after closing one rainy evening.

William continued staring, and he didn’t even do it in a weird way. Not a sexual, lingering thing—it was just pure surprise. Like he'd just learned the… moon was actually made of cheese. Or that today was the day pigs learnt to fly. 

Today was the day William discovered you had secrets.

You sat up straighter on instinct, crossing your arms over your chest and covering the little bumps showing through your top. That was enough of a sign for him to finally tear his eyes away. 

“Didn't really think about how visible they'd be in a bikini,” you admitted. “Sorry if I'm going to be in your nightmares now.”

“The jewelry is heart-shaped if you want to visualize them even better, Willy,” August yelled from the pool.

“August, shut the fuck—” 

“How— why do you know that?” William asked at the exact same time. 

“I get tattooed by his coworker,” August shrugged, looking completely unbothered as he floated along on his back. “I finished up my sleeve the same time she got them done.” 

For a moment nobody said anything. August’s explanation was fully logical, and the truth of that was probably why everyone went speechless. You’d almost forgotten that he’d been there in the room next door, catching glimpses of a little too much. But only almost, because he and Lovisa never let you live this one down. It just wasn’t this public most times. 

“Wait,” Alana said, a nervous giggle escaping her as she glanced between all of you. “Lovisa, were you okay with your boyfriend seeing another girl's breasts?”

“I’m honestly so jealous,” Lovisa replied immediately.

You groaned. “Lollo.”

“No, seriously.” Lovisa pushed herself up onto one elbow, looking far more offended than the situation warranted. “Not because August saw them. I couldn't care less about that.”

“Thank you, babe,” August muttered.

“I'm jealous because apparently my boyfriend knows more about my best friend than I do.” 

A laugh escaped Alana, and Lovisa pointed accusingly between you and August. 

“They’re heart-shaped? I didn't fucking know they were heart-shaped,” she said. “I've asked to see them a million times but Sunny won't let me.”

“Because that would be weird, Lollo.” You dropped your face into your hands for a second. “Can we stop talking about this now?”

“Probably not,” Alana said.

“Definitely not,” Lovisa agreed, and you heard the boys uncomfortably chuckling in agreement too. 

You still considered walking directly into the ocean. Drowning couldn’t be that bad of a way to go, right? It would be better than whatever the fuck this was. 

The embarrassment slowly settled into something duller, but it lingered all the same. Your cheeks practically hurt from how hot they’d turned. Every time you looked toward the pool, there was still a tiny part of your brain screaming that William had somehow been the person to discover your nipple piercings.

If anyone else had discovered them—or if Lovisa just had announced them to everyone, maybe. That felt like something she could do—this would have only been a quick laughing matter. Now it made you feel disgusting for some reason. 

Thankfully, before anyone could continue tormenting you, Alana suddenly looked down at the paperback resting beside her. “Oh, shit.”

“What?” you asked.

She lifted the book slightly. “William totally drenched my book.”

The top corner of the book had curled from where William had showered half the patio with pool water. A few pages stuck together slightly, not enough to ruin the whole thing but enough that it would be unreadable if it didn’t dry properly first. 

Across the patio, William didn't look particularly guilty. He tossed the beach ball back toward the pool with one hand, entirely unbothered by the damage he'd caused. 

“Oops.”

“It’s nothing special anyway,” Alana said, waving it off. “Just stupid romance.”

“No, I, uh—” 

You stopped yourself for a moment. Alana looked at you quickly, instantly realizing she'd accidentally stumbled into territory you probably had opinions about. Unfortunately for everyone involved, she was absolutely correct.

Your eyes dropped to the cover in her hands.

People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry.

You’d read that one yourself a couple of years ago, actually—yet again after one of your students had handed in a book report on it. It had been half of what you’d assigned her and half of an emotional breakdown. The kind of paper that would have earned comments from stricter teachers about objectivity and supporting arguments.

Instead, you'd sat at your kitchen table at eleven o'clock at night reading it and unexpectedly ended up crying. Because somewhere between discussing character arcs and the friends-to-lovers trope, a sixteen-year-old girl had managed to articulate something genuine about how humans formed relationships and what they could mean to us. You remembered staring at the last page afterwards thinking, well, shit.

And if you’d cried multiple times more as you read the actual book, that was no one else’s business.

“No, I, uhm...” You shifted slightly in your lounger. “I like Emily Henry. I had a student write about one of her books once and the analysis made me cry.”

Lovisa immediately looked delighted. “You cried over homework?”

You decided to ignore her. 

“And romance isn't stupid, by the way,” you continued instead, looking back towards Alana. “That's an inherently misogynistic way of describing it.”

Alana's eyebrows lifted slightly. You could already hear Lovisa preparing to make fun of you.

“Just because predominantly women enjoy something doesn't make it less important,” you said. “Love is probably what stops all of us from spinning out into the void at the end of the day.”

You expected Lovisa to laugh at your surprisingly poetic statement, but instead her face went a little blank.

“But I thought you were thriving as single, Sunny?” she pointed out. 

“I am.” You shrugged. “I just think love can bring us joy in any shape. Doesn't have to be romantic.”

That answer felt more honest than most things you'd said lately.

Maybe because so much of your life was built around exactly that—love in all its shapes and sizes. Your students. Your parents. Lovisa. William and the boys. Even your grandfather, despite the ache his absence still left behind whenever you thought too hard about Stockholm.

Love had never been particularly scarce in your life. Just a little complicated. 

Across from you, Alana smiled softly. “I like that way of looking at it.” 

You smiled back automatically. The more time you spent around her, the harder it became to understand why everyone had already decided she wouldn't stick around. You certainly didn’t want her to leave. 

“Oh, by the way,” you said suddenly, glancing at the damp book in her lap again. “I have a bunch of books with me if you want something else while that dries.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.” You pointed vaguely towards the villa. “I brought way too many. I have the newest Sally Rooney if you like her.”

Alana's face lit up instantly. “Yeah, sure. I’ve been meaning to read that. Normal People is like my favorite book ever.” 

“Good pick,” you smiled, already pushing yourself up from the lounger. “I'll run in and grab it for you.”

Before anyone could volunteer additional commentary about your nipples, your questionable taste in men, or your apparent tendency to cry over student essays, you slipped away from the loungers and headed towards the villa.

You let out a long breath as you crossed the quiet hallway towards your room, feeling some of the lingering heat finally begin to leave your face.

The embarrassment still sat somewhere deep in your chest, but with every step away from the pool it became easier to laugh at. Easier to convince yourself that by dinner everyone would have found something else to talk about. 

Although, the laughing voices carrying in from outside made you doubt it still. 

What a fucking disaster you were.

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The rest of the day slipped away easily. 

The sun hung overhead for hours, eventually turning from blazing hot into something soft and indistinct. Time seemed to do the same. People drifted between the pool and the shade, books were opened and abandoned, and naps accidentally happened.

At some point, Alex had fallen asleep on a pool floatie, leaving a bright white handprint burned into his stomach where he'd apparently rested his own hand while tanning. The resulting sunburn had immediately become the next fun thing to laugh at. 

Nobody could quite agree on when exactly it became evening. One moment it was still unbearably hot. Next, shadows had started stretching across the terrace and you had to go inside and grab a sweatshirt to fight the breeze. 

By seven o'clock, the villa had collectively entered that strange, exhausted state that only seemed to happen after a day spent swimming, drinking, and lying in direct sunlight.

Nobody was exactly tired, but nobody seemed particularly interested in doing anything either. Even the boys had finally calmed down.

The water in the pool sat undisturbed now, reflecting streaks of orange and pink from the sky overhead. Somewhere beyond the garden wall, crickets buzzed lazily in the greenery.

August had naturally claimed the barbecue again. You’d be surprised if you ate a single dinner these two weeks that wasn’t cooked by him. He stood outside in a linen shirt and sunglasses despite the fact that the sun was actively setting, poking at a cut of meat with the concentration of a man performing surgery.

You had to admire the commitment. It had landed him a job at a restaurant with a star, for fuck’s sake. 

The rest of the group had scattered throughout the villa. Lovisa occupied one end of the outdoor sofa with her feet hooked over the backrest, pretending not to stare at her boyfriend every few minutes. Alex had surrendered entirely and fallen asleep on the couch inside, apparently losing a battle against mild sunstroke. Alana had disappeared upstairs to shower off the chlorine from the pool, and Rasmus was attempting to teach William a card game neither of them seemed to understand.

You had escaped to the kitchen—partly to get another moment alone, and partly to not leave August with all the work. You could shop vegetables for a garden salad and prepare drinks without completely failing. 

The villa's enormous kitchen glowed with warm evening light. Sun poured through the windows above the sink, turning the marble countertops gold. You thought of how you'd never cooked in a kitchen this expensive before, looking at the half-finished pitcher of sangria in front of you. The pale stone counters looked like they belonged in a magazine, and you were irrationally worried that one careless movement would send red wine splashing and staining everything. 

Slices of orange and apple accumulated beneath your knife one after another, the scent of them pleasantly hitting your nose. 

Your brain felt pleasantly quiet doing a mundane task. There was something comforting about work that had a clear beginning and end. Cut fruit. Put fruit in pitcher. Wash dishes.

It left no room for you to think about anything that might’ve happened today or yesterday. Or decisions waiting for you back in Stockholm. Those moments had already started dissolving, becoming memories of yet another France trip instead of current problems.

The sound of the patio door sliding open broke through your thoughts; looking up at William walking in through it. He seemed to have had enough of Rasmus’s terrible card game instructions. Instead, he wandered into the kitchen without saying anything at first, one hand settling against the counter as his eyes landed on your increasingly uneven fruit slices.

You watched his mouth twitch. That asshole was judging your knife skills.

You rolled your eyes, suppressing a giggle, and dumped the last of the fruit into the pitcher. Then you turned your back to him, washing off the knife and cutting board in the sink.

William stayed where he was. Not exactly hovering, but you could feel his eyes on you. The way he'd always done, and the way you always seemed to notice, even when you weren't looking directly at him.

“You sleeping okay here?” you asked softly, rinsing the knife beneath warm water. “Haven't asked you that yet. No tigers keeping you up at night?”

A laugh escaped him under his breath. The sound quieter than usual, worn soft around the edges by the lazy evening.

“No, no. I'm good. No weird dreams recently." He shrugged. “Maybe I just needed a vacation.”

You smiled to yourself. For months those dreams had somehow become your problem too. At least twice a week William had called with some new absurdity.

You'd spent entire lunch breaks listening to him recount dreams that sounded less like dreams and more like someone had shaken a snow globe full of random ideas and dumped the results into his subconscious.

And because you were apparently incapable of leaving things alone, you'd looked up interpretations for all of them. Or pretended to. Sometimes you genuinely checked your dream dictionary, other times you just made things up and sounded confident.

William never seemed to notice the difference.

“Or maybe the tiger finally got what it wanted,” you mused. Something about passionate feelings, wasn’t it? He’d be stupid to not feel that for Alana. 

His head immediately dropped, smiling down at the counter. “Shut up.”

For almost a straight year, your conversations had existed mostly through phone calls. Early mornings for him. Lunch breaks for you. The occasional late evening when one of you had too much time and the other happened to answer.

You'd gotten so used to hearing his voice without seeing his face attached to it that having him grinning like a kid right in front of you felt slightly strange. Not in a bad way, you just knew to not take it for granted. 

William rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. The movement immediately made you suspicious. It was never a good sign.

“Look, I'm sorry about earlier,” he said slowly. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. They were just there, in my eyesight—” 

“Please shut up,” you cut him off with a laugh. You stopped washing the knife and pointed it vaguely in his direction before remembering you were actually holding a knife and put it down again.

William looked mildly offended. “I'm apologizing.”

“Nobody asked you to,” you argued. “Honestly, we’re good. Just never mention them again.” 

He smiled again, pressing his lips together into a tight line. “I won’t.” 

You groaned and turned back toward the sink before he could see the abashed expression on your face.

Honestly, William noticing your piercings wasn't even the embarrassing part. The embarrassing part was that you cared that it was him. Way more than you should have over a cosmetic decision you’d made entirely by yourself. 

Which was exactly why the conversation needed to die immediately.

Luckily, August yelled from outside that dinner was ready right that second. 

Fortunately, the universe seemed willing to help you.

“Food's ready!” August's voice echoed in through the open patio doors. A second later came a louder, more offended addition. “And if anyone lets it get cold, I'm never cooking for you people again!”

You let out a relieved breath. You reached for the pitcher of sangria before the conversation had any chance of finding its way back. 

“Can you grab the salad from the fridge?” you asked him. 

William pushed himself away from the counter immediately. “Yes, chef.” 

The refrigerator door swung open with a soft hiss. For a moment, William simply stared inside. You could practically see the exact moment something terrible occurred to him. His eyes landed on the bottle sitting in the door shelf, then slowly shifted toward you.

“Do you think August will cry if I bring out ketchup?” 

You snorted. Professional chefs seemed to regard ketchup as a personal insult. Maybe it was the sweetness. Maybe it was pride. Maybe they simply hated joy. It was certainly unfortunate in this group of people, though, because Swedes treated ketchup like its own food group. You'd known boys when you were in school, and even some of your current students, who put it on everything, including pancakes. 

“Probably,” you admitted. “But I want some too.” 

His laugh escaped first. Yours followed immediately after.

—

Dinner passed smoothly around the long patio table as the sun continued its slow descent toward the horizon, painting everything in shades of pink and orange.

The heat from the day had finally broken. A cool breeze drifted in from the coast, carrying the scent of saltwater and umbrella pines. It was cold enough that sweatshirts appeared one by one. Then throw blankets. Then an argument over who was hogging whose blanket.

Nobody bothered moving inside. The view was too good, and this was always the best part of the day. Not the beach clubs, or yacht days, or even the sunny weather. Just everyone gathered around a table with nowhere else to be and no worries to think about. 

The citronella candles August had lit flickered softly between glasses of sangria and half-empty plates. Somewhere below the hillside, lights had started appearing along the coastline, little clusters of gold scattered against the deepening blue of the Mediterranean.

Conversation drifted lazily from topic to topic. Alex complained about his sunburn. Rasmus started planning a beach trip to some place where you could jump off cliffs. And while you grimaced at that, Lovisa instead said that the girls could hit up a farmers market not too far from there.

While you had mentally wanted to drown yourself in the ocean earlier today, you actually weren’t that keen on jumping from a twenty-meter height into a bunch of rocks and strong currents. Maybe weird fishes, too. Gross. 

August only made one comment about the ketchup. A single, wounded remark before realizing he was hopelessly outnumbered. Everyone except him and Alana promptly continued dipping their steak into it anyway.

The exhaustion from the day settled comfortably over the group. Nobody seemed particularly interested in getting drunk for a second night in a row. Nobody wanted to go out. Even Alex, who usually needed constant stimulation to survive, appeared content to remain seated and watch the sunset. His expression sometimes betrayed him and showed proof of his sunstroke and possible headache. 

It all felt strangely adult. 

At least until August threw a bread roll at Rasmus, and it bounced off his head with a comical sound and then fell onto the floor. Then it felt exactly like every other summer.

By the time dinner plates were cleared and glasses were refilled, darkness had fully settled over the villa. The terrace glowed softly beneath strings of warm lights overhead, the pool reflecting them back in rippling fragments.

Nobody moved to leave the table. The evening simply felt too comfortable to abandon.

Which was usually how the board game discussions started most years. Not because anyone was particularly eager to play one, but because eventually somebody looked around and realized there were still several hours before bed.

Then the debate began.

You somehow found yourself elected to search through the villa's cabinets for entertainment. Apparently being the only person willing to stand up made you responsible.

The owners had stocked an entire shelf of games in one of the living room cupboards. Most looked older than you were. You ignored a box of Trivial Pursuit that looked to be from the eighties, even if that was probably the game you’d be best at, and instead picked whatever things you could remember playing before with this group. 

You carried an armful back out onto the terrace and dropped them onto the table with a dramatic thud. “There’s Scrabble, Monopoly, card games, and Yahtzee.” 

A collective groan immediately followed the mention of Monopoly.

Good. At least everyone had standards. 

Or just really vivid memories of Rasmus once throwing the entire board of the table on a midsummer night at your grandfather’s house. Nothing said idyllic quite as much as verbally abusing each other for eight hours, or however ridiculously long it took for everyone but one to go bankrupt. 

“I demand a rematch in Scrabble,” Lovisa announced, pointing accusingly across the table. “Sunny can't possibly win for the millionth year in a row.”

The accusation would've carried more weight if Lovisa didn't make the exact same speech every single summer.

“I mean,” you said, picking the box up from the table, “we'd have to play in English, though. That's naturally an unfair advantage for Alana and me.”

August looked horrified. “You think I can spell in English, Sunny?”

“No,” you admitted immediately. “You can barely spell in Swedish, dude.” 

That earned a bark of laughter from everyone else.

“No, we'll play in Swedish like usual,” August declared. “I'm already struggling having to speak English all the time.” 

Across the table, Alana laughed too.

The sound was genuine, but you still caught the tiny hesitation behind it. The split second where she'd been reminded she was the only person here who couldn't simply switch back—how easily all of you could talk behind her back and she wouldn’t even know it. 

There was something about her expression that made you speak up. 

“That's just rude against Alana, August.”

Maybe because you'd spent the last two days getting to know her and you seriously had no complaints. Maybe because you saw it with students all the time—how awkward it could feel being the new person in an already established group.

Or maybe because she genuinely seemed to be trying. She'd listened patiently to stories that referenced events she'd never been present for. Laughed at inside jokes she couldn’t possibly understand yet. Followed conversations that constantly switched between Swedish and English without warning.

And she'd done it all without complaining once.

“How about Yahtzee instead?” you suggested. 

“Thank you,” Alana said with a laugh. “At least that's impossible to play in the wrong language.”

“Exactly.”

“Also,” Lovisa added, pointing at August, “less spelling means less opportunities for him to embarrass himself.” 

August threw a napkin at her, which she threw back.

You caught William watching the whole exchange for a second, as you sat back down at the table next to Alana. 

His expression softened briefly before he looked away again, reaching for the Yahtzee box. The moment disappeared almost immediately beneath the usual noise of the group. But it left something warm behind all the same.

And just like that, the decision was made. 

Dice were distributed. Arguments immediately started over rules nobody had even explained yet. You were put in charge of writing everyone's scores down because apparently you weren't only the person most capable of spelling around this table, but also the only one trusted with simple arithmetic.

A responsibility you took very seriously… for approximately seven minutes. After that, the game deteriorated in the way all games seemed to when this group was involved.

People forgot whose turn it was. Someone spilled sangria on the white table cloth. Rasmus accidentally rolled his dice dangerously near the pool. Lovisa accused August of cheating despite there being absolutely no way to cheat at Yahtzee.

The conversation wandered wherever it pleased, breaking away from the game entirely. At some point, Alana mentioned a disastrous family skating day from when William had first introduced her to his team. 

“I fell so hard Willy thought I'd broken my arm,” she admitted, laughing into her glass. “I spent the rest of the afternoon holding onto the boards.”

“I think that's a canon event for WAGs,” Lovisa said. “Most people aren't born with skates attached to their feet like these guys.”

“Sunny couldn't skate for shit when I met her either,” William added from across the table. “Now she's pretty solid.”

You didn’t understand why his first thought was to mention you and your learning curve with skating when Alana and Lovisa had obviously meant to bond over their shared experiences of being girlfriends to athletes, even if Lovisa only got a couple of years of that lifestyle before August retired.

You looked up from the score sheet. “That's an insane amount of confidence considering I haven't skated in years.”

William shrugged. “You'd survive.”

You paused, doing the math in your head. Actually doing the math was becoming alarmingly difficult as the sangria disappeared.

“I think the last time I skated was in Toronto with you,” you said. “And I haven't been back there since… before the pandemic or something equally insane.”

The realization felt strange. Somehow the years between then and now had compressed themselves into nothing. That trip to Toronto still felt recent, even though it absolutely wasn't.

“Because you stopped caring about hockey once we all went to different teams after juniors,” William argued. 

Your mouth fell open. “Oh, fuck off.”

Laughter immediately erupted around the table.

“I spent an hour every weekend on those god-awful commuter trains to see you play in Södertälje,” you informed him. “Don't tell me I wasn't invested.” 

William leaned back in his chair. “An hour?”

“Yes!”

“That's nothing compared to the inner-city traffic I had to survive getting to your side of town, Sunshine.”

You narrowed your eyes. “Oh, we're competing now?”

“We've always been competing.”

“I don't remember agreeing to that.”

A dozen years of friendship had made arguing with William almost effortless. Neither of you even sounded annoyed anymore. Probably because neither of you were. The words came automatically, polished smooth from over a decade of use. The same rhythm you'd fallen into as teenagers and somehow never grown out of.

“And you didn't come to a single SHL game,” William continued.

You stared at him. “Because you were six hours away, dumbass. Even Alex didn't see those games in person.” 

“Thank you,” Alex said, raising a finger from where he'd practically melted into his chair. “But please leave me out of this.”

“And don't even start about me not watching the games on TV,” you continued. “Because you know I did. I literally convinced my dad to pay for the streaming service because I was a broke student.” 

A grin tugged at William's mouth. He opened his mouth to argue, then visibly reconsidered. Because if he kept going, you were absolutely going to bring up his multimillion-dollar contract. He knew you would, and more importantly, he knew you'd win any argument once money was at play. 

You were an underpaid teacher with mountains of student loans, and he’d been pretty spoiled even before becoming a superstar athlete. 

His surrender earned a loud laugh from Alana.

The sound drew your attention toward her. She was smiling as she looked between the two of you, watching the exchange with an unmistakable joy in her eyes. You hoped it was because she saw a side of William he didn’t necessarily show often. 

That stupidly kind boy you'd met with a bleeding lip and bruised pride at a skating rink all those years ago. The one who'd shared his Oreos with you and who'd sat beside you without making a big deal out of your tears.

That boy still existed. You saw him all the time. Maybe Alana was finally getting to meet him too.

Because this was what happened whenever old memories came up. You and William disappeared into them for a while. Everyone else just got dragged along for the ride.

“Oh, oh, Sunny!” Lovisa suddenly snapped her fingers. “On the topic of being a broke student, how are the PhD applications going?”

The question hung in the air for a moment.

Around the table, voices faltered one by one. Even the dice stopped rolling as heads turned in your direction. You hadn't realized anyone besides Lovisa cared enough to keep track of your applications. Now they were forced to.

You glanced down at the score sheet in front of you before setting the pencil aside. The paper had already started to curl slightly from the humidity, or maybe it was from your warm hands.

“Uhm. No real updates,” you mumbled. 

Lovisa rolled her eyes. “What does that mean?”

“It means I applied and now have to wait until August to find out.” 

“Wait.” William looked up. “You actually applied?”

You frowned slightly. “Don't sound so surprised.”

“No, I just—” He sat back in his chair. “I didn't know you were doing it this year.”

Somewhere in there was a running joke that you’d had ever since finishing your master’s degree—that you’d apply for a doctorate position. It was just that it’d been close to five years now and it still hadn’t happened. Because you’d chickened out every time—saying you were comfortable with what you had.

Until this year, of course. You had nothing left to lose this year. 

“Well, I did.” You shrugged, trying to sound more casual than you felt. “Stockholm, Copenhagen, and a couple of places in the UK. I’ll probably get rejected, though.”

You laughed, but nobody tagged along. They must have more belief in you than you did yourself.

You looked down at the table, suddenly aware of how serious everyone seemed to be taking something you'd spent months trying not to think about. The applications had become one of those things you shoved into a mental drawer and only opened when absolutely necessary. You'd written statements, collected references, rewritten research proposals until your eyes hurt, and then sent everything away into the void.

Like you did with most things. 

“You’d actually move from Stockholm?” William asked. 

“If that’s what it takes, yeah,” you said, a little caught off guard by the question. “Easier at bigger faculties with more funding for research. Stockholm’s pretty small when it comes to that.”

You'd explained this before. To colleagues. To your parents. To students who asked why anyone would willingly spend another four years in university.

Research wasn't exactly a glamorous career path. Nobody did it for the money. You did it because the idea of spending the rest of your life reading, writing, and teaching people who actually had an interest in English literature sounded infinitely more appealing than being stuck forever doing what you did now. 

You had to at least try.

Something shifted across William's face. Not judgment exactly, but something uncomfortably close to it. “I didn't realize you were serious enough to move country for it.”

The words were harmless, meaning they shouldn't have bothered you. And yet something about them lodged beneath your ribs. This wasn't some sudden fantasy of yours. It was the plan.

“What's that supposed to mean?”

William rubbed at the back of his neck. “I just mean it's a big thing.”

“I want to work in academia, that was always the goal. You know that.” 

“Pretty drastic to leave Stockholm though, isn’t it?” 

The irritation arrived so quickly it surprised even you.

Maybe because you'd spent the entire year making difficult decisions. Maybe because every conversation back home seemed to revolve around what you were supposed to do next. Or maybe because William, of all people, should've understood what it meant to leave home for something you loved.

“Why does it matter?” you countered. “We only see each other for a couple of weeks every summer. It doesn’t make a difference if I fly in from Sweden or somewhere else.”

The words came out sharper than intended. You saw most people at the table glance between the two of you, unless you’d made them too uncomfortable already. 

William's jaw tightened slightly, but he remained quiet. 

“You do realize I’m the only one still living there, right? Lovisa and August are on the west coast. The rest of you are across the Atlantic. What reason do I have to stay?” you continued, pretty aimless now. 

“I don’t know—” William stuttered. “Your family, maybe?”

“My family?” you repeated quietly.

Your grandfather’s house flashed through your mind immediately, placed there in the tranquility of the archipelago. Nothing but ocean views and greenery as far as you could see. 

The butter-yellow kitchen that hadn’t been renovated since the sixties. The bookshelf in the hallway with all the best authors you could imagine. The dent in the armchair where he always sat. The slow realization that grief often looked less like crying and more like deciding what happened to someone’s collection of Moomin coffee mugs.

There was nothing left of that but boxes now. Nothing left of your family that hadn't already changed shape. Nothing left of the life you'd spent this entire year trying to hold together.

“There’s nothing left of it,” you exhaled, the words leaving your mouth at the same time tears started to fall from your eyes. 

For the first time all evening, William looked like he wished he could take a sentence back—noticing that the judgmental words he’d just spewed actually carried weight. 

“Why should I stay?” you asked. “So on the odd chance you make it home once a year, I’m just there waiting for you?”

“Sunny—” William tried. 

“No.” 

“That's not what I said.”

“But it is, though.” 

“You’re not being fair—”

Your chair scraped loudly against the stone as you stood.

Because the worst part was that even as the words left your mouth, you knew they weren't really about the PhD. They were about years of compromises so small they never seemed worth mentioning.

They were about missed phone calls because of time zones. A bunch of cancelled visits, you having to work and missing his playoff runs, and him missing things like Christmas and birthdays because he had games to play. 

The slow realization that loving someone platonically didn't make distance hurt any less. It didn’t make the frayed edges of your relationship feel any less damaged. 

“You only want me to stay because it's easy for you,” you said quietly. “Because then nothing has to change! It means you don't have to take responsibility for this friendship.”

William looked genuinely blindsided, but that didn’t make you stop. 

“You haven’t been there for me since the day you got drafted, William—”

You finally caught yourself, placing a hand over your mouth, muting both more harmful words from coming out and your streaming tears. The silence that followed was immediate and suffocating. The only sound came from the distant hum of crickets somewhere beyond the terrace.

Then you turned and walked away. Not because you were angry anymore, but because the second the words left your mouth, you knew exactly how cruel they'd been.

You shoved through the patio doors and disappeared into the house before anyone could stop you. Your pulse hammered in your ears as you crossed the kitchen, suddenly desperate to put walls between yourself and the stunned silence you'd left behind. 

Because most of what you’d said wasn’t true. Not even close, not even a little bit, not even at all. It was so painfully untrue; you felt like the worst person in the world for even speaking it into existence. 

William had been there through every version of your life. Through teenage wasteland, failed exams, panic attacks, and grief. He'd answered calls from hotel rooms and airport lounges and team buses. He sometimes remembered things about you better than you did yourself. He checked in when things got hard. He showed up whenever he could.

The problem wasn't that he hadn't been there. The problem was that sometimes you wished he could've been there more. And those were two very different things.

You stopped in the hallway and pressed a hand against your forehead.

God. What a horrible thing to say to someone who'd spent years just trying his best.

Back outside, August finally broke the silence.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” he whispered under his breath.

Lovisa looked around the table. “You know what I want to do right now?”

Nobody answered.

“I want to go for a night swim,” she declared. “And then I want to go to bed and not think about this. Who's with me?”

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