maria

Summary: They were never nothing—but John Logan made sure they were never something either. Until the night he sees her with someone else... and realises too late what he let slip away.

Warnings: none :)

Request:

heyy, first of all I wanted to say that I LOVE your writing, like to a next level hahahaha!!!

Do I was wondering if I could request a John Logan x reader fic based on moths of a flame by the weekend?? Like they have history, but nothing ever comes out of it (mainly bc of Logan) and he start hearing rumors that the reader started kinda seeing someone and it bothers him, but he decided to not do anything about it bc he thought that they were just rumors. Than the hockey guys throw a party and she went there with this “new guy” and they’re all close, laughing and hugging, and Logan notices and gets quite pissed and as soon as the guy leaves the reader’s side for a second he comes in, and yeah, that’s all I have hahahahahaha :)

again I totally understand if you don’t want to or sm, it’s just that I had this idea and I feel like you’d be the best person to make it come to life♥️♥️♥️

The bass from the speakers thumped through the walls, vibrating up your spine as you leaned back against the kitchen counter, laughing at something he said.

You hadn’t meant for it to look like this.

Okay—maybe a little.

Your hand rested lightly on his arm, his body angled toward yours in a way that made it obvious—too obvious—that he was interested. He was easy to talk to, warm, attentive. And most importantly?

He wasn’t John Logan.

Across the house, Logan stood near the living room doorway, red cup in hand, jaw tight enough to crack.

He’d noticed you the second you walked in.

Of course you came. You always came to the team’s parties. But tonight was different. Tonight, you didn’t walk in alone. You didn’t gravitate toward the usual group. You didn’t even look at him.

And now—

Now you were laughing. Touching. Smiling at some guy Logan had never seen before like he was something worth your time.

Logan tipped his drink back, but it didn’t dull the irritation crawling under his skin.

“Who’s that?” Dean asked, following Logan’s line of sight.

Logan shrugged, too quickly. “No idea.”

Lie.

He knew exactly who you were.

He knew the way you laughed when you were trying not to. The way you bit your lip when you were thinking too hard. The way your eyes would flick to him—always—no matter who else you were talking to.

Except tonight.

Tonight, you didn’t look at him once.

—

“Hey, I’m gonna grab another drink—want anything?” the guy beside you asked.

You shook your head. “I’m good.”

“I’ll be right back.”

And just like that, he was gone.

You barely had time to turn back to the counter before a familiar presence filled the space beside you.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

Your body went still.

You didn’t have to look up to know it was him.

“Logan,” you said flatly, finally turning your head. “Didn’t know you were still here.”

His eyes flashed. “Yeah, funny. I live here.”

You hummed, unimpressed. “Right.”

For a second, neither of you spoke. The noise of the party faded into the background, replaced by something tighter. Heavier.

His gaze dropped briefly—to your hand still resting where the other guy had been—and something in his expression darkened.

“So,” he said, voice edged, “this is what we’re doing now?”

You frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“This,” he gestured vaguely toward the room, but his eyes never left yours, “you and… whoever the hell that is.”

You let out a small, disbelieving laugh. “You mean me talking to someone? Yeah, Logan. Crazy concept.”

His jaw clenched. “Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Act like you don’t know what I mean.”

Something in your chest twisted, but you forced your expression to stay neutral. “I don’t owe you anything.”

The words landed harder than you expected.

He took a step closer.

“No,” he said quietly, “but you don’t get to pretend there’s nothing there either.”

Your heart stuttered.

“Nothing where?” you challenged, even though your voice came out softer now.

His eyes searched your face, frustration bleeding into something more raw.

“Between us.”

Silence.

God, you hated him for that. For saying it like it was simple. Like it hadn’t been months—years—of almosts and maybes and him pulling away every single time it got too real.

You let out a slow breath. “You mean that thing you never wanted to talk about? That ‘between us’?”

His expression tightened. “That’s not—”

“No, actually, it is,” you cut in, pushing off the counter so you were standing toe-to-toe with him now. “Every time something almost happened, you backed off. Every time it meant something, you acted like it didn’t.”

“That’s not fair.”

You laughed, sharp and humorless. “Fair? Logan, you don’t get to be mad now because I finally stopped waiting around for you to figure it out.”

His eyes flickered—hurt, anger, something dangerously close to regret.

“You think that’s what this is?” he asked, voice low. “You and that guy—this is you ‘moving on’?”

You lifted your chin. “Maybe it is.”

He scoffed, but there was no real amusement in it. “You don’t even like him like that.”

“And you would know?” you shot back.

“I know you.”

The words hit harder than they should have.

For a moment, neither of you moved.

Then, quieter now, almost rough, he added, “I know you don’t look at him the way you used to look at me.”

Your breath caught.

“That’s the problem, Logan,” you said, barely above a whisper. “I used to.”

The weight of it hung between you.

Heavy. Unavoidable.

Behind him, the guy you came with started making his way back through the crowd.

Logan noticed.

Of course he did.

His gaze flicked over your shoulder, then back to you—and something in him snapped.

Before you could react, his hand closed around your wrist, not rough but firm, pulling you just a fraction closer.

“Don’t,” he said, voice tight, urgent now. “Don’t do this just to prove a point.”

Your heart pounded.

“Then give me a reason not to.”

For the first time all night, Logan hesitated.

Really hesitated.

And in that split second of silence—

You saw it.

Fear.

The same fear that had always stopped him before.

Your expression hardened, even though it cost you.

“Yeah,” you said softly, pulling your hand from his grip. “That’s what I thought.

You stepped back just as the other guy reached you again, slipping easily back into his side like nothing had happened.

Logan stood there, watching.

And for once—

He didn’t come after you.

Summary: convincing John Logan to fake date you is apparently much easier then admitting you have feelings for the one guy you can't have.

wc: 842

Pairing: John Logan (Off Campus) x reader

A/N: I wasnt really sure what to do with this, i might do a longer part idk

Part 01: Fake Lies, Real Feelings

Masterlist

pairing: John Logan x readerfem

summary: When you confessed your love to the idiot on the hockey team and he rejected you like a coward… only to write you 22 letters later, ignore your silent treatment, and confess everything to you in the rain like he’s in a Nicholas Sparks movie. Because of course, talking like a normal person is too hard, but declaring eternal love while soaking wet is totally reasonable.

warnings: Prepare yourself for some angst with a happy ending, fueled by heavy pining and absolute emotional constipation. This story features miscommunication (but make it dramatic) and, yes, literal kisses in the rain. Expect Logan being a simp in denial, lots of crying in aprons and on shoulders, and friends who consistently give much better advice than the main characters actually listen to. Fair warning: you will experience severe secondhand embarrassment, endure excessive dramatic monologues, and encounter plenty of swearing along the way.

a/n: hey guys, I’m back! I hope you like it. You have no idea how fucking much I love kisses in the rain. Sending you a kiss — I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. xoxo

part one.

'Cause all I know is we said, "Hello" And your eyes look like comin' home All I know is a simple name And everything has changed

(Guys, you lost me.)

I don’t know what to do with this. With all this love I have for him. I don’t know where to put it now.

The world kept spinning like nothing had happened. And I hated it a little for that.

Every morning I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror of my room with that question stuck somewhere inside me, unanswered, with nowhere to go. Love doesn’t disappear just because you want it to. It doesn’t work like that. There’s no switch, no drawer where you can stash it and lock it away. It was just there, huge and useless, taking up space that no longer had anyone to belong to.

When was the last time I actually slept?

I couldn’t remember.

I wasn’t trying to be dramatic, but fuck, not talking to him had hit me hard.

I washed my face with ice-cold water until my cheeks burned to bring down the swelling, then I put on concealer under my eyes and a little blush so I wouldn’t look so dead. War paint, I told myself. As if calling it that turned it into something that required courage instead of just the small, sad act of trying to look like a functional person.

Today I finally decided to leave my cave—my incredible, comfortable bed—to dignify myself with going to work. One of the perks of your mom being the owner is that she really doesn’t care if you miss work. I think she’s even at peace when I’m not at the café. It must be exhausting to see me moving around like a ghost in an apron.

The walk was twelve minutes. Janis was still at the car wash, so I had no choice. I usually didn’t mind walking, but now I couldn’t stand those twelve minutes alone with my thoughts. Before, I’d spend them with music or my phone in my hand, answering Logan’s messages like a dumb teenager. Now I just wore the headphones without playing anything. Just the dead weight of them as an excuse for no one to talk to me. So I could be, for those twelve minutes, exactly as broken as I was before having to pretend I wasn’t.

I’d been replaying the same moments all weekend. The feeling of his lips against mine. His big, warm hands closing around my hips. The way he looked at me right before he kissed me, like he’d been holding back for years. The hoarse sound that escaped his throat when I kissed him back. Everything played on loop, sharp, cruel, perfect.

And then came the memory of the next morning. His voice in the kitchen.

“I fucked everything up.”

“I need you to leave.”

I shook my head and picked up my pace, as if I could leave the memories behind on the sidewalk.

“The only thing I learned that night,” I muttered, dropping my forehead onto the table with a dull thud, “was that I should’ve stayed home.”

We were sitting at one of the outdoor tables in the central courtyard at Briar, under a sun that felt way too cheerful for my mood. I had a coffee that had already gone cold between my hands. Sarah was nibbling on an apple with a bored face, and Alison was stirring her chocolate milkshake with a straw while listening to me repeat the weekend story for the thousandth time.

Sarah let out a snort and ran her hand down my arm in a caress that was supposed to be comforting but mostly looked like she was holding back laughter.

“What if he’s gay and just hasn’t realized it yet?” she whispered mischievously, leaning toward me.

Alison let out a short, dry laugh.

“Men,” she said ironically, clinking the ice in her drink. “Tell them you love them and you’ll never see them again. They disappear faster than my patience on a Monday morning.”

“God, my life sucks,” I lamented, letting out a pitiful groan against the cold wood of the table.

The silence lasted barely two seconds before Sarah leaned in closer.

“For God’s sake! You’re twenty-two years old, what do you know about life?” she exclaimed, though her voice had that protective tone she always used when she saw me like this. “You’re beautiful, smart, and never apologize for feeling things, for setting boundaries, or for having ambitions, babe. Got it?”

I lifted my head enough to look at her. Sarah had that kind of confidence I envied with all my soul: short hair, sharp gaze, and a tongue that could destroy male egos in less than ten words. Alison was the same, only more cruelly funny. Both of them were like a man’s ego put into the bodies of beautiful, fearless women. The exact opposite of me right now.

“Besides,” Alison continued, pointing at me with her straw, “if John ‘Eat Me’ Logan is dumb enough to let you go after you told him you loved him, then fuck him. There are more guys at Briar. Most of them are worse, but at least some know how to use their mouths for something more useful than babbling excuses.”

I tried to smile, but it only came out as a crooked grimace. I knew they were saying it to cheer me up. I knew their words came from a good place. But none of that took away the weight I felt in my chest.

“Who needs therapy when I have you guys? Hooray…” I said in a tired but sincere voice.

But then I saw him.

Logan was walking along the path that crossed the courtyard with that stride of his I knew by heart—not too fast, not too slow, that way of moving that had always felt somehow inevitable. Tucker was beside him talking about something, hands in his pockets, and Logan had his head slightly tilted toward him with no expression at all.

And then he looked up.

I don’t know if it was instinct or bad luck, but his eyes went straight to mine. Without searching. Without hesitation. Like he already knew exactly where I was before he looked.

His brown eyes locked onto mine.

And I saw everything on his face in the space of a second: the impact of finding me there, the tension that rose up his jaw, something that could have been relief or pain or probably both at the same time. He had dark circles. A tight line between his eyebrows that I hadn’t seen before, or maybe I had and just didn’t know what it meant at the time.

Now I did.

He stopped dead.

Tucker took two more steps before realizing and turning around. I saw the exact moment he processed the situation—his eyes going from Logan to me and back to Logan—and something in his face closed off with an expression that wasn’t exactly pity but was too close for my comfort. Logan watched me with a mix of pain, regret, and something else I didn’t dare name. He took an involuntary step toward our table, like his body reacted before his brain. Tucker, beside him, noticed immediately and grabbed his arm firmly, stopping him.

Logan didn’t even look at him.

His eyes moved quickly over mine, my mouth, the line of my jaw, scanning my expression with an urgency that almost hurt.

He didn’t even like me. Why was he torturing me like this?

His lips parted slightly and then closed. I could see him working inside, the tension in his shoulders, the way his fingers briefly clenched into a fist and then opened. His entire posture was a question. Almost a plea.

Give me something. Anything.

I felt my heart rise to my throat and stay there, huge and inconvenient, pulsing with a force that I’m sure showed on my face.

No. I’m not going to be the one who does it this time.

I can’t be the one again.

I looked away with effort, breaking the contact like I was tearing off a piece of my own skin. I lowered my head and tightened my fingers around my coffee cup until my knuckles turned white.

“I’m not taking the first step,” I whispered, more to myself than to them, though the words came out loud enough.

“Bravo girl, Bravo” Sarah said proudly, giving me a gentle pat on the back. “Let him crawl this time.”

----

J.L

I sat on the edge of the bed with my head in my hands, feeling like my chest was going to explode. In my head, the same image played on loop without stopping: the way her eyes filled with pain. And then she looked away. Like looking at me burned her. Like I was something she could no longer stand.

Like I was something she could no longer stand.

The three of them looked at me in silence. It was weird seeing the guys so quiet. Disturbingly weird. Normally Dean would’ve already said some shit to lighten the mood, but even he didn’t dare. Garrett had his arms crossed and his jaw tight, staring at the floor. Tucker was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, looking at me… with a lot of pity.

How fucked up was I?

“…I ruined everything,” I muttered, my voice hoarse.

Dean let out a dramatic sigh and threw himself onto my bed like it was his.

“Yeah, we already know that. The question is: what the hell are you going to do about it?”

I stayed quiet for a long time. The knot in my throat was choking me. I ran my hands through my hair, pulling harder than necessary, as if the physical pain could organize the chaos inside me.

“I’m in love with her,” I admitted almost angrily. “I love her eyes… fuck, I love the way she looks at me like I’m someone decent. I love her hair, the way it falls in her face when she’s focused. I love her smile when she hears the stupidest thing that comes out of my mouth… like I’m the best thing that’s ever happened to her.” My voice was shaking by the end. I stood up without really knowing why. I needed to move, I needed to do something with my body because if I stayed still I was going to explode. I stood in the middle of the room like an idiot. “She confessed everything to me… and I told her I couldn’t. What kind of son of a bitch does that? After what happened that night?”

Dean, for the first time in a long time, didn’t make a joke. He just looked at me seriously.

“Bro… you’re really fucked.”

Garrett moved.

He’d been silent the whole time, staring at some point on the floor, and that silence from Garrett was what had me the most nervous since they arrived.

He leaned forward. Looked straight at me.

“So what are you going to do now? Because avoiding her and looking at her like a lost puppy isn’t working.” He said it without cruelty, but without softening it either. “Listen to me, Logan. You’re a mess, I know. But you can’t go dump all of this on her at once.” He paused, choosing his words. “She’s hurt. Really hurt. If you go now and tell her everything you’re feeling, she’s going to think it’s pity or that you’re confused. You have to take it slow… but don’t drag your feet. Do it right. Approach her little by little. Start by asking for forgiveness. Be honest, but gentle. Give her room to breathe.”

Garrett continued:

“You know where she works. You should go. Not like an ambush, just you. Order a coffee, sit down… and talk to her. On her turf. No pressure.”

Tucker pushed off the wall. He nodded slowly.

“Fast, but careful. Show her with actions that it wasn’t a mistake.” His voice was calmer than Garrett’s, quieter, but just as firm. “That she wasn’t a mistake.”

-

-

-

I stood in front of the café door for almost ten minutes, hands in the pockets of my jeans, my heart pounding against my ribs like it wanted to get out. The smell of fresh coffee and sweet bread reached me from inside, but it didn’t calm me. It did the opposite. It reminded me of her. Of her hands moving with that calm motion behind the counter, of how she bit her lower lip when she focused on making a latte.

Breathe, Logan. Don’t fuck this up again.

I pushed the door open and the little bell sounded way too loud in my ears. There weren’t many people. A couple of occupied tables and her behind the counter, cleaning the espresso machine. She was wearing the black apron she always wore, her hair pulled back in a loose ponytail with some strands falling in her face. God… she looked beautiful.

I approached the counter with heavy legs. She looked up for a second, her eyes passing over my face without stopping, like I was just another customer. No surprise. No pain. Nothing. Just cold indifference.

Ouch. I deserve that.

“A black coffee, please,” I said, my voice rougher than I intended. 

She nodded without meeting my eyes and turned toward the machine. Her shoulders were tense. I knew that body language. She was holding herself back.

Say something, John. Now.

“…I need to talk to you,” I murmured, lowering my voice so only she could hear. “Alone. Please.”

She didn’t respond. The sound of the espresso machine filled the silence between us. She served the coffee with precise movements, placed the cup in front of me, and wrote something on the order slip like I hadn’t said a word.

“That’ll be four fifty,” she said, looking at a point over my shoulder.

“Hey… please,” I insisted, leaning a little over the counter. “Just five minutes. I know I don’t deserve even that, but…”

She took the bill I held out without brushing my fingers. She gave me the change with the same empty expression, like she was serving a stranger. Her eyes didn’t meet mine even once. It was worse than if she had screamed at me. That indifference was destroying me inside.

She’s hurt. Really hurt. Shit, Garrett was right.

“I understand that you don’t want to see me,” I continued, almost in a whisper. “But I can’t keep going like this. What I did… was shitty. I was shitty. I need to explain…”

“Here’s your change,” she cut me off in a neutral voice, placing the coins on the counter. Then she turned back to the machine and started cleaning again, giving me her back.

The knot in my throat tightened so much I thought I was going to choke. I stood there like an idiot, the coffee burning my hand and my chest on fire. I wanted to jump over the counter, grab her by the arms, and force her to look at me, to see everything that was eating me alive inside. But I couldn’t. Not after what I’d done to her.

I took the coffee and sat at one of the tables in the back, where I could see her. I wasn’t moving from there. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not for as long as it took.

I’m not giving up on you. Even if you ignore me. Even if you look at me like I no longer exist. I’m going to prove to you that you weren’t a mistake. That you never were. That you’re the only thing I want in this fucking life.

-

-

-

“Hey, kid!”

A strong, decisive voice snapped me out of my sleep. I blinked, confused, my cheek stuck to the table and a trail of drool that didn’t even embarrass me. The café was empty. The chairs were already up on the tables and the main lights were off. Only the dim light from the counter remained.

In front of me was her mom. And fuck… she was just as pretty as her daughter. The same expressive eyes, the same way of tilting her head when she was half amused and half serious, the same hair falling softly over her shoulders. Seeing her was like seeing a more mature, confident version of her. It hurt my soul.

“What, you think this is a hotel?” she said in a half-mocking, half-annoyed tone. “You’ve been sleeping there for like three hours, drooling on my table. We closed a while ago.”

I sat up quickly, wiping my mouth with my sleeve, my face burning. I looked around desperately.

“Did she… already leave?” I asked, my voice thick.

She let out a soft, almost maternal laugh and shook her head while picking up a rag.

“My daughter left a while ago. She said she had things to do.” She looked at me for a second longer, with that warmth she’d always had toward me. “You okay? You look… tired.”

Ma’am, I’m trying to prove to your daughter that I’m not a complete son of a bitch.

“Yeah, I’m… I’m fine,” I lied, standing up. My neck hurt like hell. “I just wanted… to talk to her for a bit.”

She pointed at the door with the mop. “Come on, out. I have to open early tomorrow and I’m not leaving you here as decoration.”

I got up unsteadily, still half-asleep and with a sore neck. I tried to keep some dignity, but it was hard with the table mark on my cheek and my hair a mess.

She took the mop and gave me a gentle but firm push toward the door, like she was shooing out a big, clumsy dog that didn’t want to leave.

“Ma’am, I just—”

“Out, out,” she cut me off playfully, opening the door. “I open early tomorrow and I’m not tripping over you drooling on my tables. I don’t know what happened between you and my daughter, but I hope you can fix it soon. It kills me to see her walking around like a ghost. Good night.”

The cold of the night hit me as I stepped out. The door closed behind me with that cheerful little jingle that now sounded like mockery.

I stood there on the dark sidewalk, running my hands over my face.

How pathetic. Ugh.

---

“Hi…” The low, close voice startled me so much I let out a small scream and nearly dropped the cup from my hands. I spun around, heart hammering in my throat.

Tucker took a step back and clutched his chest with one hand, eyes a little wide.

“Fuck… you scared me,” he muttered, breathing deeply, clearly surprised by my reaction. “Got a minute?”

I didn’t answer. Instead I stood there, pressing the cup against my chest like a shield. My pulse thundered in my ears.

He ran a hand over the back of his neck, uncomfortable, and looked down for a second before speaking. “I’m sorry,” he said simply, with that calm but heavy voice. “I’m sorry about what happened.”

I looked at him in silence. Tucker had always been the quietest. Seeing him here apologizing squeezed something in my chest.

“It’s not your fault, Tucker,” I answered quietly, forcing a weak smile. “Really. You didn’t do anything. You don’t have to apologize for something that wasn’t your responsibility.”

He frowned slightly, like he didn’t fully agree, and still insisted, but before he could say anything I beat him to it:

“It’s okay,” I added, trying to sound firmer than I felt. “I’m fine. I don’t need anyone carrying this. Not you… not anyone.”

What a huge lie. I’m not fine. Nothing is fine. But what else can I say?

Tucker nodded slowly, still with that pitying look I hated so much. He stayed one more second, like he wanted to add something, but in the end he just murmured:

“How are you feeling?” he asked quietly. “Don’t lie to me.”

Crack.

I couldn’t hold it anymore.

The knot that had been tightening in my throat for days, weeks, broke all at once. Tears flooded my eyes and I started crying uncontrollably, right there. Everything came out in a shaky, broken torrent.

“I really… I really didn’t want to like him,” I sobbed, covering my face with one hand. “I didn’t want to, Tucker. I tried not to… but it just happened. And now I miss him so much it hurts to breathe. I miss his stupid voice, the way he looks at me… I miss feeling safe with him. But he told me he couldn’t and… and I had to walk away. I needed to walk away. I don’t know how to keep pretending I’m okay when everything reminds me of him. He’s been coming nonstop, leaving these stupid letters I haven’t even bothered to open, and fuck, it complicates everything when I see him on campus… I’m drowning. I regret going to that stupid party. I regret confessing my feelings. If only… if only I’d held back a little.”

The tears kept falling, soaking my cheeks and my apron. I felt pathetic, exposed, but I couldn’t stop.

Tucker walked around the counter without saying anything. His steps were quiet, steady. Suddenly his arms wrapped around me carefully, pulling me against his chest in a warm, protective hug. I tensed for a second, but then I collapsed against him, crying harder into his sweatshirt.

“Shh… it’s okay,” he murmured against my hair, rubbing my back with slow, comforting strokes. “Cry as much as you need. You don’t have to be strong all the time.”

I felt pathetic. I admit I really tried not to cry, but I just couldn’t hold it back anymore.

When will this suffering end?

I had to rip it out by the roots.

Maybe not right now. When I’m ready.

“Eight days!?”

They said it at the same time. Both of them. With the same incredulous face that made the lady at table three look up from her newspaper and stare at me like I was the problem.

“Shh, lower your voices.” I leaned on the counter with my arms crossed and waited for the echo to fade. “Eight days in a row,” I confirmed, lowering my voice.

Alison and Sarah were sitting on the high stools in front of the counter, their half-finished milkshakes in front of them and that look on both their faces that meant they weren’t letting me out of this conversation easily. The café was quiet at that hour, only four tables occupied and my mom in the kitchen making muffled clattering noises from the back. It was the kind of afternoon I normally liked. Calm. Manageable.

Until they showed up.

“And what does he do?” Sarah asked, raising an eyebrow while pointing at Logan’s table with her straw.

“He writes.”

“He writes?” Alison repeated, like the word didn’t quite fit, looking at me with a “Seriously?” face.

“He sits down, takes out paper, and writes. At first I thought he was studying, taking notes, whatever. Something normal.” I grabbed the rag from the counter and unfolded it, wiping the drops of chocolate Sarah’s straw had left. “But then on the third day he slipped a folded letter into the tip jar when he left.”

Both of them looked at the jar. It was there in its usual spot next to the register, completely innocent.

“In the tip jar?” Sarah pointed out, still not believing it.

“In the tip jar.”

“Why there?”

“Because I was giving him the silent treatment and every time he tried to talk to me I found something super urgent to do in the kitchen.” I folded the rag. Unfolded it. “So he stopped trying and found another way.”

Alison turned her stool slightly toward Sarah. Then looked at me.

“And what do the letters say?” Sarah asked.

“I don’t know.”

Silence.

“What do you mean you don’t know?” Alison said slowly, her voice showing that something didn’t add up.

“That I haven’t opened them.”

“None of them?”

“None.”

Alison stared at me. Then at Sarah. Then back at me.

“How many letters total?” she asked, and something in her tone told me she was already bracing for the answer.

I wiped a part of the counter that was already perfectly clean.

“Twenty-two.”

The silence lasted exactly two seconds.

“Twenty-two,” Alison repeated, toneless.

“Sometimes he leaves me three in one day. He sits, writes, folds the paper, puts it in the jar, and starts again. Like he always has something more to say.”

“But why?” Sarah frowned, not in judgment but with the genuine confusion of someone trying to solve a puzzle. “I mean, what’s the point of him writing you letters if he’s the one who told you no?”

“Exactly what I keep asking myself.”

“And you have no idea what they might say?”

“None.” I shrugged, though the gesture came out a little forced. “Maybe it’s an apology. Or he wants us to stay friends and doesn’t know how to tell me in person. Or he just feels guilty and this is how he’s dealing with it. I don’t know.”

“Or maybe,” Alison said finally, measuring her words, “they say something that has nothing to do with any of those things?”

“Alison.”

“I’m just saying.”

“Well, don’t say it.” I grabbed the rag again. “He made it pretty clear where things stood. The letters will be what they are, probably something I don’t need to read, and when I get the courage I’ll open them and that’s it.”

Sarah rested her chin on her hand and looked at me with that calm of hers that always felt slightly destabilizing.

“Do you have them on you?” she asked.

Of course I had them on me. I’d been carrying the wad folded in my apron pocket since Monday, but I had no explanation that made me look good. I took them out and placed them on the counter between the two milkshakes.

Alison and Sarah looked at them.

“Can we take a look?” Alison asked.

I glanced sideways at the table in the back. Logan was sitting with Dean Di Laurentis, a ridiculously hot blond who had always seemed almost unfairly attractive. They both had muffins they’d ordered a while ago in front of them. Logan was saying something with his elbows on the table and Dean was listening, leaning back in his chair with that half-smile of his, like he found the world generally entertaining. Neither was looking at me.

I shrugged.

“Whatever you want,” I said, and turned to clean the coffee machine. “They’re probably just apologies or something. I don’t think they’re a big deal.”

I heard the rustle of paper unfolding.

Silence. More silence.

The kind of silence you notice because there should be some comment and worryingly there isn’t. There should’ve been an “aw how sweet” or “look at his handwriting” or anything, but there was nothing, and that nothing started to itch somewhere I tried to ignore.

I turned around.

Alison had the letter in her hands and an expression I’d never seen on her. It wasn’t exactly surprise. It was something quieter, deeper, something that had settled on her face while she read and hadn’t moved when she stopped. Her eyes were still fixed on the paper.

“Oh,” she said.

Just that.

Oh.

Oh?

She passed the letter to Sarah without looking at her, pointing to a specific spot with her finger. Sarah read. I saw the exact moment she reached that part because her shoulders dropped a centimeter, she let out a very slow breath through her nose, and then she looked at me with an expression that was half tenderness and half something pretty close to “oh, sweetie.”

“This…” she started.

“What?” I said.

“This is pretty…”

I leaned over the counter without realizing it.

“Pretty what?”

The two of them looked at each other like accomplices and let out a small laugh.

“Give it to me,” I said.

Alison picked up the letter from Sarah’s hands.

“No.”

“Alison.”

“Nope.”

“Come on, it’s probably just a long apology—”

“It’s not an apology.” She said it without thinking and then closed her mouth like she’d said too much. Sarah pinched her.

I stayed still for a moment.

“What do you mean it’s not an apology?”

“Nothing, forget it.”

“Alison, if it’s not an apology then what—”

“When you’re ready you’ll read it and that’s it.” She leaned on the counter with a firmness that left no room for negotiation. “And don’t look at me like that, I’m serious. This is something you have to read alone and at the right moment, not here in the middle of your shift because we pressured you.”

“But I didn’t even want to know—”

“And now you do, right?”

I shut up. She was right. Damn it, she was right, because ten minutes ago I was perfectly convinced those letters were probably some elaborate apology or a request to stay friends and I didn’t need to read them to know they’d hurt anyway. And now I was leaning over the counter with my heart doing weird things because Alison had said “it’s not an apology” in that voice and—

A shadow fell over the counter.

The three of us looked up at the same time.

Dean Di Laurentis was standing on the other side of the counter. He didn’t say anything. He simply reached out, took the letter from Alison with a calmness that left no room for argument, grabbed another from the stack still on the counter, and placed them in front of me with startling ease.

I looked at him.

He held my gaze for a second, nodded slightly like he’d just done the most reasonable thing, then turned his head toward Alison.

And winked at her. Slowly. With total and absolute premeditation.

And he walked back to his table with his hands in his pockets like he hadn’t just dropped a grenade, leaving calmly.

The silence he left lasted exactly three seconds.

Sarah and I looked at each other.

Alison’s cheeks were flushed. Alison, who had once told a guy trying to hit on her at a party that his technique was conceptually deficient. Alison, who in the three years I’d known her had never lost a millimeter of composure in front of any male human being.

She had flushed cheeks.

She picked up her milkshake. Took a long, absolutely deliberate sip while looking out the window.

“Don’t even think about it,” she muttered.

Sarah opened her mouth.

“Don’t. You. Dare,” Alison repeated without looking at her, with a calmness that didn’t match someone with cheeks that color.

Sarah closed it. But no one could wipe the smile off her face.

I looked down at the two letters in front of me on the counter. White paper, folded in three, nothing written on the outside. Just the paper. And underneath all of that, that phrase spinning nonstop: it’s not an apology.

If it wasn’t an apology, then what was it?

I didn’t want to know. Lies. Yes, I did.

It was past midnight. I was sitting on the floor of my room in my pajamas, with the twenty-two letters spread out on the rug around me in roughly chronological order of when Logan had left them in the tip jar. They formed a semicircle that completely surrounded me. From the outside it probably looked pretty bleak, but there was no one watching so it didn’t count.

I’d taken them out of the drawer where I’d been saving them one by one, with that weird mix of care and denial that didn’t make much sense if you analyzed it. I’d organized them. I’d been staring at them for a while, convincing myself that as soon as I opened them I’d find something manageable. An apology. Maybe several apologies, one per letter, with different wording because Logan had always been that meticulous when he wanted to be. Something that would hurt a little but that I could fold back up, put in the drawer, and move on with my life.

It’s not an apology.

Damn Alison.

I picked up the first letter.

I held it for a moment without opening it, fingers on the fold of the paper, staring at it like I could read through it. Logan had spent eight days sitting in the café writing things I didn’t understand why he needed to write.

He had told me no. He had chosen to reject me. Those were concrete, verifiable facts and there was no reason for any of this to mean something different from what I had already assigned it.

No reason.

I unfolded it.

Logan’s handwriting was exactly as I remembered, a little careless at the edges with some words crossed out and rewritten.

I read the first line.

I froze completely. This can’t be real.

“Oh, shit,” I said out loud.

Hockey.

I wasn’t really into hockey until I met Logan. Before, it was just that sport they showed on TV that my dad sometimes watched and that I completely ignored. Noise, ice, guys crashing into each other at speeds that made no sense. I didn’t get the appeal.

Now I know exactly how many points the team needs to advance to the next round. I recognize the plays. I can tell for sure when a referee is calling too many penalties and when a defenseman is being deliberately dirty. Which says a lot—and nothing good—about what John Fucking Logan does to a person’s critical judgment.

I sighed and sank deeper into my seat.

The stadium smelled of popcorn and that weird mix of sweat and excitement that exists in sports venues. The stands were full, Briar colors everywhere, and the noise was that constant, dull kind that after a while just becomes pressure. Sarah was gripping her soda cup with both hands like it was the only thing anchoring her so she wouldn’t lose her mind, while Alison had been taking pictures of a certain player wearing number sixty-six for twenty minutes.

Meanwhile, I just couldn’t stop looking at player number twenty-two.

You’re an idiot.

My conscience scolded me. We’ve hurt each other and I’m still sighing and staring at him like an idiot. Why can’t feelings have an off button? What’s the point of loving him if he doesn’t feel the same about me?

“You okay?” Alison leaned toward me with genuine concern that, in the three years I’ve known her, had never once fooled me.

“Perfect.”

“Sure,” Sarah said from my other side, without taking her eyes off the ice. “That’s why you have that face.”

I didn’t answer because I didn’t have a response that didn’t incriminate me. Technically, it was the idiot with number twenty-two skating on the ice who had unfinished business with me. Though “unfinished business” was a very generous way to describe a situation that basically boiled down to: I had made the huge mistake of feeling things I shouldn’t, he had told me he simply couldn’t (or didn’t want to) be with me, and since then I’d been trying to disappear from my own life as discreetly as possible.

I shouldn’t have come.

I knew it since this morning. I knew it the exact moment I opened the reminders app to see what I had pending and found “Briar Game — 8pm” marked in red. I’d written it down weeks ago, in another life almost, when Logan and I were still whatever we were before I ruined everything by being honest. And then, without meaning to, without looking for it, with that masochistic tendency I have and should probably work on with a professional, I went to the messages.

Just to see. Just to remind myself why what happened was the right thing.

And there it was, among three unanswered messages I had left on read with absolute cowardice. One that simply said: Hope to see you tonight.

The message that made me want to check my reminders list and the reason I was here tonight.

I should have ignored it. I should have stayed home with a movie, a pack of cookies, and some dignity intact.

Instead here I was, in the stands at Briar’s stadium, flanked by Alison and Sarah who were pretending—not very effectively—not to monitor me every thirty seconds, with my stomach in knots and my eyes fixed on one spot on the ice so I wouldn’t keep unconsciously searching for number twenty-two.

Because I was searching for him. That was the worst part. That despite everything, despite the days avoiding him and the speeches I’d given myself and the times I’d repeated that I was fine, my eyes found him on their own. Like they had their own memory. Like no one had told them the memo.

Logan skated well. That was the fundamental problem—that he was really good and knew it without being arrogant about it, and when he moved on the ice there was something about him that settled, that relaxed.

I looked away.

The scoreboard was two to one in favor of Briar and the atmosphere had that electricity of the final minutes of a close game. Alison had put her phone down and was standing without realizing it. Sarah was muttering something under her breath.

And then it happened.

Logan intercepted the puck in the offensive zone. He dodged the first defenseman with a turn that seemed physically impossible, the second with an acceleration that made the whole crowd collectively hold its breath, and shot.

Score.

The stadium exploded.

I stood up with everyone else. I clapped without thinking. Alison grabbed my arm screaming something I couldn’t hear over the shouts. Sarah whistled with her fingers in her mouth.

Then Logan raised his hockey stick.

He turned toward the stands with a smile—that smile I knew by heart and that right now was doing damage to me that had no name—and I saw it before I could prepare myself.

He pointed at me. What the fuck is that supposed to mean.

Straight. Unmistakable. With his arm extended and his eyes locked exactly where I was standing, like there weren’t three hundred other people in the stadium, like there was no chance he was pointing at anyone else, like he wanted to make sure there was absolutely no doubt.

The stands made that collective sound. That “oooh” people make when they smell drama from afar. And the commentator, the damn commentator, didn’t miss the moment:

“Looks like one of our favorite guys had his heart stolen tonight, ladies and gentlemen. Don’t cry all at once, girls—there are still more players on the ice—”

Heat shot up my neck to my ears in about half a second.

Alison let go of my arm.

Sarah turned her head toward me very slowly, still looking stunned at what had just happened.

They both looked at me. They didn’t say anything. They didn’t need to. And thank God they didn’t.

“No,” I said.

I grabbed my jacket from the seat. I put it on wrong, one arm inside out, and fixed it with more violence than necessary. My stomach was in a tight knot, my cheeks were burning, and my ears were ringing. I needed to get out of there.

“I’m going to the bathroom,” I lied.

“Sure,” Alison said, glancing sideways at Sarah, who returned a worried look.

Neither of them made a move to follow me.

I went down the stands almost tripping twice, dodged three groups of people still celebrating, pushed the exit door with both hands, and the cold air hit me in the face the second I stepped out. Honestly, it was a relief. I needed that hit. I needed something to remind me that it was real, that I was real, that what had just happened inside that sweaty, noisy stadium had also been real.

He had pointed at me. In front of everyone. What the fuck.

I’m overthinking this.

I shouldn’t let it affect me. I shouldn’t let it break my decision to stay away from him.

I closed my eyes for a second and the commentator’s voice came back like a horrible echo: “Looks like one of our favorite guys got shot by Cupid tonight, don’t cry ladies—”

I wanted to die. For real. Not metaphorically. I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me whole and not even spit out the bones.

I started walking fast. Then faster. The parking lot was dark and the streetlights made those blurry orange spots that multiplied on the wet asphalt, and I was only thinking about getting to the car, getting inside, and crying with dignity where no one could see me. I had parked Janis in the fifth circle of hell because I arrived late and there were no spots nearby, so when I finally found her I was going to be completely soaked.

Good. Perfect. Great. And it was raining.

Not just raining. Pouring. Like the entire universe had decided that tonight wasn’t humiliating enough and needed a little more drama. The water soaked my hair in seconds, ran down my neck, my shoulders, got into my shoes. Good. Perfect. Great.

I kept walking.

I had spent entire days convincing myself that what we had was just a friendship I had misinterpreted, that I had seen things where there was nothing, that when he told me no—when he simply told me he couldn’t give me what I wanted—it was the most honest truth anyone had told me in a long time. I had forced myself to accept it. I had forced myself to keep functioning.

And then he scored and pointed at me. Son of a bitch.

“Wait!”

I stopped.

I didn’t want to have stopped. It was a reflex, a betrayal by my own body recognizing that voice before my brain could tell it no, to keep walking, to pretend to be deaf, to die a little.

I turned slowly.

Logan was running toward me. With his hair completely stuck to his face and still in his team uniform darkened by the water, and his eyes—God, his eyes—searching for me with an urgency I didn’t understand, didn’t want to understand. Didn’t want to understand.

Wait.

Did he just leave his game? Just to talk?

“Stop,” he said when he reached me, breathing hard. “Please, stop.”

I looked at him. I tried to make my face say nothing. I tried to be a wall. I swear.

“Logan.” My voice sounded calmer than I felt. That was the only miracle of the night. “Seriously, you don’t have to do this. You don’t have to apologize or explain anything, okay? It was me. I misread things, I was stupid, and—” I swallowed. “And when you told me about Hannah and I felt this bad, that was my problem. Not yours. So really, seriously, you can go back inside and—”

“For God’s sake, shut up.”

I blinked.

“Excuse me?”

“Shut up.” He didn’t say it cruelly. He said it with something like desperation, jaw tight, eyes bright, rain running down his face like it didn’t exist. “Don’t regret anything. Please. Don’t.”

“Logan, I just—”

“I realized too late that she wasn’t you.” His skin was wet from the rain too (obviously), and one drop hung from the tip of his nose, about to fall. His brown eyes traced my face, moving over my eyes, my cheeks, and my mouth, before he said in a hoarse voice:

“I ruined everything.” He ran a hand through his soaked hair, a nervous, desperate gesture, like he didn’t know what to do with his own body. “I didn’t want Hannah. I never did. I just wanted someone to love, someone to spend the rest of my days with, and I was such an incredibly idiot, so completely blind, that I didn’t realize the person I actually loved was standing right in front of me.”

“Logan, stop—”

“It’s you.”

Oh God. My heart stopped. Literally. I swear it stopped.

“Stop—”

“And if your feelings are still the same, if you still love me, then right now—” his voice cracked a little there, just a little, but I heard it, I heard it clearly over the rain—“right now I’m telling you I want to spend the eight thousand seven hundred and sixty hours, the five hundred and twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes of every one of the three hundred and sixty-five days with you.”

The rain was starting to get heavier. The parking lot lights became orange and white spots behind him and I didn’t know if what was running down my cheeks was water or tears and honestly it didn’t matter anymore because no one was going to notice anyway.

“Don’t pity me,” I said, and my voice was no longer calm. “Don’t. You don’t have to—” I bit my lip. I was nervous, mostly because I really wanted to tell him how I felt and what I wanted. I took a deep breath and he cut me off instantly.

“Every single one,” he continued, like he hadn’t heard me, or like he had heard me perfectly and decided to ignore it. “No exceptions. No conditions. If I stay quiet, if I let another day go by without telling you that you’re the only thing that has made constant sense, I’m going to spend the rest of my life unable to forgive myself.”

“Stop, Logan, seriously, stop—”

“And I’m not going to let you give this story that ending.”

He took one step closer. Just one. But I felt it in my chest like he had closed miles.

“Nor will I allow myself to give our story an ending.” His voice had something broken and something completely certain at the same time and I didn’t understand how those two things could coexist. “A story that hasn’t even begun and that I’m already anxious to know the next chapter of. I’d rather die tomorrow knowing I loved you than live a hundred years wondering what it would’ve been like to be with you.”

I opened my mouth. Nothing came out.

“Even it would be an honor if you broke my heart. Over and over, as many times as it took. Because even broken, even in pieces—” he paused and looked at me, and in his eyes there was something I had never seen before, something I recognized because it was exactly what I had felt all these months—“my heart would come back to you. Thirsty. Without conditions. Without holding anything back.”

My hands were shaking.

“I’ve always been a better person when I’m near you.” He said that lower, almost to himself, and it was what hurt me the most because I believed him. I believed him without wanting to. “And that’s something I haven’t told anyone until now. Because my heart is yours. Not from today. From way before I had the courage to admit it.”

He closed the last few feet between us.

“Forgive me. I’m asking you please.”

I shook my head. I tried to articulate something coherent.

“Don’t… don’t do this to me.” It came out broken, fuck. “Don’t do this to me now that I had already… that I had already…”

“What do you want me to do?” he cut in, and there was something urgent in his voice, something bordering on a plea. “Do you want me to pull the fucking moon down for you? I’ll become an astronaut for you. Tell me. Tell me what you want and I’ll do it. I’ll do anything.”

The rain pounded my shoulders.

“But I love you,” he said. “And that’s not going to change.”

I don’t know how long I stood there without saying anything. It could have been ten seconds or ten years and neither would have surprised me. I only heard the rain and my own breathing and the beating of something I had been trying to kill for weeks by ignoring it.

It was still there.

Stubborn. Damn stubborn heart. Damn body that doesn’t listen. Damn it.

I threw myself at him, wrapped both arms around his neck, and pressed my lips to his. The smell of his cologne mixed with the rain and completely intoxicated me. John froze for a second, motionless while my mouth was pressed against his. I thought, too late, that maybe he didn’t.

Shut up. He literally just bared his heart to you.

But then, as if lightning had struck him, John took a breath and cupped my face with his hands. He was kissing me back. I was kissing John Logan and he was kissing me. I went from being scared and breathless to a fire burning inside me in an instant.

John tilted his head and kissed me the way John was supposed to kiss—wild, and sweet, and entirely too confident in himself, all at the same time. He knew exactly what he was doing when his big hands slid into my hair, but it was the shudder in his breath and the slight tremble in his hands that drove me crazy. The fact that he had lost control as much as I had.

John pulled me even closer until we were pressed together, chest to chest. For the first time in my life, I understood why people said they could forget where they were, and he gave me a little bite on my lower lip, and then I touched his face, felt the rigid solidity of his jaw, and he kissed me like it was his job and he wanted a raise. He made a sound when I sank my fingers into his hair, like he liked it, and I wished it would keep raining like this forever, and never stop. Until he said my name, until he whispered it against my lips three times, I didn’t come back to reality.

“Huh?”

I opened my eyes, but my vision was unfocused.

Logan laughed. Softly, with his forehead almost resting against mine, his thumbs still on my cheeks, he laughed in that way of his that crinkled his eyes and that I had secretly collected for months like they were worth something.

They were. God, how much they were worth.

“Your name,” he said, his voice still hoarse. “I was calling you by your name.”

“Yeah.” I blinked. “I know. It’s just…”

“What?”

I looked at him. With his hair completely soaked and stuck to his forehead and that expression on his face I had never seen and now couldn’t stop looking at. The rain kept falling on both of us with that absolute indifference water has, that doesn’t distinguish between the most important moment of your life and any other Tuesday.

I opened my mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

“Look,” I said, “I’m not… I mean, I’m not good at this. At saying things. The important things, I mean, the ones that really…” I made a vague gesture with my hand that meant nothing concrete. “You just told me a bunch of really big things and I’ve spent weeks convinced that this was all in my head and that you didn’t… that there was nothing and…” I breathed. “And right now my brain is completely fried and the words aren’t coming out in the right order.”

Logan didn’t say anything. He just looked at me.

“But I love you,” I blurted out, all at once, without elegance, without the firm voice I would have wanted. “I mean, I love you a lot. Too much, probably. For longer than I think is smart to admit out loud. And I tried to let it go, I really did, but it turns out I’m pretty bad at letting go of things that matter to me and you matter to me an amount that frankly seems excessive for my own well-being and—”

“Hey,” Logan said.

“What?

“Shut up.”

And he kissed me again. And for the first time I was glad I had parked Janis so far away.

.

.

.

Summary: John Logan can flirt with anyone for fun, but the second y/n ties his hockey jacket around her waist, it starts feeling dangerously less casual. Between stolen touches, teasing confessions, and a growing inability to keep their eyes—or hands—off each other, one night at Malone’s turns into the beginning of something neither of them is prepared for.

wc: 2870

Pairing: John Logan x Reader

A/N: I was going to split this into two parts but then changed my mind. Formatting is kind of everywhere. Not edited.

part 1 | part 2

in which a year has passed since you last saw john logan. you’re a freshman at briar now and desperately hoping to avoid seeing him, but when your roommate convinces you to come to a party with her, all those carefully constructed walls and plans of yours come crashing down.

pairing: john logan x f!reader

series summary: You and John Logan are childhood best friends. You share the kind of emotional intimacy only two people who have seen each other grow up can have, but now you’re no longer kids, you’re college students and trying to navigate the complex time between childhood and adulthood. Before joining John at Briar U a year after him, you were convinced your silly crush had faded, but now that you’re back in his orbit, you’re no longer so sure. You try your best to remain just friends, but watching him turn from the boy down the street to the big man on campus is harder than you thought. And you’re not sure how much more you can take of watching him overlook you time and time again.

contains: friends to enemies (sort of) to lovers, no use of y/n (logan calls reader by nickname: birdie), angst, pining and yearning, drunk logan, flirty garrett graham, sweet grace ivers

author’s note: i know the timeline and stuff is off from the books/show, but i’m taking creative liberties ok?? i love my girl hannah, but for the sake of the plot, we’re going to pretend like she doesn’t exist rn lol

You spent the first few weeks of your freshman year at Briar U completely dedicated to your studies.

You attended no sporting events, no parties, you hadn’t even gone on a single date since moving away from your hometown with a population of about 5,000 where you knew everyone. You were a model student…but as far as your social life went, it was sorely lacking.

It was Friday night and you were sat on your bed in your dorm room, your English Lit essay pulled up on your laptop while you had your oldest sister on the phone. You had already called your other sister who you were closer to in age, but since she was now a senior at a college across the state, her Friday night was likely being spent doing something age appropriate and fun.

“Birdie,” your sister sighed, the nickname having caught on to just about everyone you knew once John started calling you it. You’d loved it up until about a year ago. “As much as I love talking with you, shouldn’t you be doing something illegal and potentially life threatening, like getting plastered at a frat party?”

You picked at the comforter beneath you, the white fabric worn and fraying slightly from age. “Why would I want to do that when I can talk to my delightful older sister? Whom I love and miss?”

“Maybe because your sister is not delightful, she is boring and married and her bedtime is now nine PM on a Friday,” her deadpan makes you chuckle lightly, though the pathetic nature of your call was not lost on you. Even your roommate had plans tonight, and she was just as dedicated to her studies and quiet as you were.

“I mean, sleep is my favorite activity.”

“You’re eighteen, Bird.” You feel yourself shrink a bit when her tone borders on reprimanding. “You’re supposed to be going out and getting drunk and failing all your classes.”

“I cannot believe the perfect child is actually telling me this right now.”

“Oh please.” You can hear her eye roll through the phone. “I was nowhere near perfect. And the only reason why it may have seemed that way was because Mom and Dad never let me get away with anything. You’re the baby. Live it up. It’s your birth right.”

You snort. “You can’t just live vicariously through me.”

“I don’t need to. I had my time.”

You gasp dramatically. “Are you telling me Mom and Dad’s golden child actually broke the rules?!”

Her silence is pointed.

“I can’t believe what I’m hearing.”

“Birdie.” The seriousness of her voice makes you pause, knowing you likely won’t enjoy where this is going. “We both know why you’re really avoiding having a social life. Don’t let him take your college experience from you.”

“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” you reply primly, though it’s a stupid lie.

“I get he hurt you, but you’re letting him win. Why does he get to have all the fun? Why do you have to be the uncomfortable one? Be inconsiderate and go rub the fact that you’re young, hot, and not weighed down by him anymore in his pretty little face.”

It’s your turn to sigh now, knowing she’s probably right. The problem was, you were still weighed down by him. It had been over a year since last coming face to face with him and you still replayed that night in your head like it was scene from a horror movie.

Your judgement had never been solid when it came to John Logan, and you had decided space was the best cause of action. And the only side effect was your complete and utter loneliness.

The only person besides your family that you regularly talked to nowadays seemed to be your roommate, who coincidentally was walking through the door right this moment.

You sister must have heard the door to your dorm open as well because she shouted on speakerphone, “Grace, convince her to go out!”

Your sweet roommate immediately smiled, somehow managing not to be intimidated by your obnoxious sisters. You attributed her kindness—and her repetitive assurance to you that she enjoyed talking to them—to her being an only child.

One of the first times she had walked in to find all three of you on a facetime call together, it had ended with her wide eyed and with a look that resembled a kid at the zoo who just watched the animals do something funny.

“How do you all talk at the same time and still hear each other?” She had asked.

You laughed and gave a shrug. “With practice,” you replied.

“Grace, don’t listen to her.” You were smiling, but something in her expression gave you pause. “What?”

“Well…I was actually coming to ask you something.”

“Get her laid!” Your sister yelled before you hung up on her, throwing your phone over toward the end of your bed and closing your laptop.

“You know that the Maxwell-DiLaurentis party is tonight right?” You nod. Just about everyone on campus knew about Beau and Dean’s birthday party they threw every year. People practically killed to be invited. “Well…I was invited by this guy I’ve been seeing. And I really wanna go, except…it’s a costume party and the theme is famous duos. He’s already matching with a friend, and I can’t show up alone.”

“Grace.” You send her a look. If it had been another party, any other one, you might have taken the risk. But everyone—even those like yourself who had no social life—knew that Dean Di Laurentis lived in a house with three of his hockey teammates, one of them being none other than John Logan himself.

“I know, I know. I just don’t have anyone else to ask. Please.” She came over to grasp both of your hands, her blue eyes shining as she pouted. “Please.”

You don’t know if it was your sister’s earlier words or the desperate expression on your roommate face, but you caved and agreed.

Grace squealed with delight and tackled you onto your bed, hugging your neck so tight you were having trouble breathing. You told her so to get her to sit back up and let you free, her face luminous with happiness before you spoke again.

“What are we gonna wear though?”

“Oh,” was all she said.

-

The theater department was going to actually kill you if you didn’t replace these costumes before the Midsummer Night’s Dream production in a few weeks.

You were banking on the fact that little to no other theater kids would be in attendance to notice the various gold and silver outfit components you had borrowed and were using to make Grace and you vaguely resemble the sun and moon.

You could always count on there being copious amounts of body glitter, but you had truly lucked out on there being beautiful, fairy-like outfits as opposed to just the usual sweaty and smelly animal costumes and matching bin of broken and wonky ears and tails. You were this close to having to come dressed as a makeshift Winnie the Pooh and Piglet.

The only downside to choosing these beautiful, ethereal costumes was the glitter now covering the front seats of your old Honda Pilot the two of you drove up in. It was also in your bra, your hair, and somehow in your eyelashes. Beauty is pain and all that.

You and Grace arrived at the Maxwell Cape Cod estate about an hour and a half late, thirty minutes of that spent merely trying to find a parking spot, but it didn’t seem as though either of you had missed much of the fun. Cars were still lining the street while the windows and doors were open and loud music came pouring out.

You were wobbly on your heels as the both of you made your way up the front steps toward the door. There was already someone throwing up in the bushes, a hot dog to be exact, while the hamburger held her hair back.

Poetic, you thought.

The inside was even nicer than the outside, the house easily the biggest you had ever been inside—so nice in fact that the solo cups littering the mahogany wood and marble counter tops felt sacrilegious.

Your eyes scanned the crowd looking for one face in particular, but mercifully, you didn’t find him.

The sun to your moon took your hand and led you through the crowd of people toward the kitchen to find drinks, Grace likely just as skilled as you were at pumping a keg since the cup she handed you was about seventy percent foam. But you drank. You smiled. You danced.

It was the first time since coming to college that you felt like you lived. It was glorious. For a moment or two.

Then, you saw him.

In the corner of the kitchen, hidden amongst the chaos of his teammates all taking shots, was John Logan dressed—wait for it—like a bird.

He hadn’t seen you yet and you took the opportunity to watch him like you would if he were a stranger you were just meeting. You took in his toned arms, his perfect and soft looking hair, the curve of his lips and the light in his eyes.

You knew that even if you hadn’t grown up beside him, if you met him tonight, laughing with his friends and completely oblivious to how beautiful he looked, you would still fall in love with him. Your feelings for John felt as inevitable and devastating as a rising tide, just as susceptible to his pull as a sea shell in the current.

Funny how you seemed to dress up as each other.

When Grace turned to tell you she would be right back, you took that as an opportunity to slip away, knowing she was likely off to find the guy she had been talking to as of late.

You walked up the stairs to explore a little, also in search of a bathroom.

After using the first one you found, you peeked into a few of the bedrooms, finding little in them save for a bed and nice furniture.

“They hide the valuables in a safe downstairs.” The deep rumble of the stranger’s voice was so close you felt as though you jumped a mile in the air, clutching your chest as you whirled around the face whoever had caught you snooping.

You recognized him immediately, as you’re sure anyone attending Briar would.

Garrett Graham.

“Jesus Christ, you scared me.” You took a few steps further into the bedroom to put some more space between you, his tall form seeming to loom over you in the doorway. “I wasn’t…”

“Snooping?” He guessed correctly.

“Well, I was, but it was purely out of…decor fascination. Big wallpaper fan. I’m not trying to steal any faberge eggs or whatever.” You both laugh at your awkwardness, watching him inch closer into the room with you.

“Big wallpaper fan, huh?” His smirk is intimidating, and you can only imagine how other guys feel when he’s out on the ice holding a large stick and on skates that add a few unneeded inches.

“Why are you in here?”

“I followed you,” he confesses simply.

“Oh.” Your eyebrows furrow. “Well, that’s not creepy at all.”

He laughs. “I noticed you.” He shrugs, then walks towards the dresser against the wall and inspects some of the random trinkets atop a doily. “You’re in my Psychology class right?”

“Yeah,” you reply reluctantly, not expecting him to have recognized you. You usually sat toward the back, a few seats down from a kid who perpetually had his butt crack showing out of his pants. You didn’t really participate much either, not unless you had to.

“Thought so. I don’t think I’ve seen you around before.” He turns to lean against the dresser now, the wood creaking under his weight.

Of course he hadn’t seen you around before, seeing as you were a freshman. Although, to his credit he probably isn’t expecting that since freshman aren’t usually in a level 200 class, but you took a college level course in high school, hence your premature attendance.

“What are you supposed to be? A vampire?” You ignore his obvious attempt at flirtation. “Did you come with a werewolf or a clove of garlic?”

He snorts. “No. I’m a magician. My rabbit’s around here somewhere.”

“Where’s your wand?” You ask, cocking your hip and crossing your arms.

“Not all magician’s use wands.”

“Then where’s your hat?”

“Not all magician’s wear hats.”

“The shitty ones, sure.” When he laughs, you realize this is one of the first interactions you’ve had with a guy where you haven’t been completely stuttering over your words. Maybe it’s the alcohol, or maybe it’s the fact that he’s Garrett Graham and the idea that he might actually be flirting with you for any reason other than getting in your pants seemed extremely far fetched.

It felt fun to flirt. It felt good to be desired, even if it was just for a little while.

“We can’t all be the moon,” he tells you, his eyes scanning over your body. You keep eye contact until you find you can’t anymore and then move toward the picture frames on the wall across from you.

“What do you want, Garrett Graham?” You ask without looking at him.

“Your name, for starters.”

You recognize only two of the faces in some of the pictures along the wall. Most of Beau Maxwell, a few of a younger Dean Di Laurentis, one of the two of them standing on a dock and holding up a fish they had caught.

“I find it hard to believe you didn’t come here with someone. Are they somewhere waiting for you?” You turn back to face him, your back now against the wall. “Is your rabbit waiting? Are you late for a very important date?” His face scrunches in confusion, obviously not catching your Alice in Wonderland reference. You find you’re disappointed.

“I never said I didn’t have a date.”

“Well, then why are you up here talking to me?”

He stays where he is for a second before he pushes off the dresser, your breath coming quicker the closer he gets.

When he stands in front of you, he runs his fingers over your bare shoulder, collecting some of your silver body glitter and then looking at it now stuck to his finger tips.

“Because I go after what I want. And when I saw you dancing downstairs I realized I wanted you.”

His intensity almost makes you laugh. You roll your lips into your mouth to keep from doing so.

“You couldn’t have been very popular on the playground,” you whisper into the small space between you.

He laughs lightly. “Are you gonna tell me your name?” He whispers back.

“Birdie?” Before you can decide whether or not to offer it to him, the voice you’d been dreading hearing all night echos from the hallway.

Garrett moves away and reveals a furious looking John, his eyes snapping back and forth between you and Garrett.

“Shit,” Garrett curses, looking back at you. “You’re Birdie?”

You look between him and John confused before realizing Grace, your roommate, the sun to your moon, is holding John’s hand and staring at you wide eyed from over his shoulder.

“Grace?” John suddenly remembers she’s there when you call her name and lets go of her hand to allow her more room in the doorway. She looks just as confused as you.

“What the fuck’s going on here?” John asks, stepping further towards Garrett who is now holding his hands up like he’s surrendering.

“Dude, I had no idea who she was.”

“And who is she exactly?” You question bitterly, hating that they’re talking about you without actually acknowledging you.

“I should go.” Garrett moves to duck out, but you reach out to grab his arm and hold him there.

“No. Why does it matter if we’re in here together? We weren’t doing anything wrong.”

“Birdie.” John looks at you then, his dark eyes pleading like he’s in pain. “You know why you’re off limits.”

“Off limits?” You repeat incredulously. “No, John. Actually, I don’t know why you have deemed me off limits.”

He scoffs and looks around the room at you, then Garrett, then Grace like one of you will help him. When no one does, he says, “C’mon, Bird. You’re like a…like a sister to me.”

You stare at him for what feels like an hour, watching his throat bob like he’s choking on the lie. You hope he does.

“A sister?” You repeat again, like you can’t believe it.

You storm out of the room before he can say anything else.

-

You spend the rest of the party by the pool out back, watching the glitter slowly melt off your legs and disappear into the light blue water. There’s a couple making out on the diving board while two others float in the water with their clothes on, their faces illuminated by the pool lights.

You don’t know how long you’ve been sitting out here before Garrett comes to join you, his pants rolled up to his knees so he can stick his feet in. You both stare at the water ahead of you.

“Sorry about earlier,” he tells you as he swings his legs gently, the water lapping against the tile on the sides.

“For which part? You almost kissing me or for witnessing me embarrass myself?”

“For talking about you like you weren’t there. For Logan talking to you like that.” You had forgotten that everyone here calls him ‘Logan’ instead of his first name. It seems sort of fitting, he doesn’t seem like John here. Your John, at least.

“How much has he told you?” You ask as you use your finger to try and guide an ant away from the edge of the pool.

“Not much. At first, basically nothing.” You don’t look at him, but you listen intently. “He was in a funk when he first got here last year. He seemed distracted. Sometimes he’d start sharing some story and would falter on your name, get real sad all of a sudden. He almost lost his spot on the team. When coach threatened him, I finally got him to open up a little about what was going on. He didn’t go into details, but he told me he messed up, lost his best friend. He never once said anything that made it sound like you were more, but I knew. Just the way he talked about you. That’s why I reacted the way I did. I knew how badly it would hurt him if I made a move on you.”

You swallow thickly. “I’m not a toy.” Your voice is weaker, stringier than you hoped it would be. “He can’t just keep me on a shelf because he doesn’t want anyone else to play with me.”

“You’re right,” he agrees. “But I think mostly he just misses you.” Just then, Logan stumbles by with a beer bottle in one hand and a red solo cup in another. He doesn’t look at you, just walks toward the property line that’s lined with trees in lieu of a fence. “Exhibit A.” Garrett motions towards his friends retreating form with a tense chuckle.

He then pats your shoulder and stands to leave you alone along the pool wall. You think to stay there with your feet in the cool water, but as you notice John clumsily trying to climb one of the trees out ahead of you, you decide to intervene.

As you walk closer, you notice that the tree is too small and clearly too weak to handle his weight, but nevertheless, he seemed determined to try.

“I don’t think that’s the best idea,” you advise once you’re close enough for him to hear.

He freezes mid-climb at the sound of your voice, his hands still gripping the wood and his foot still propped against the trunk as he turns his head to look back at you.

“What are you, the tree police?” He grumbles sloppily. You snort at his poor attempt of a dig.

“No, me of all people, I am not the tree police.”

“Then join me. Let’s climb a tree together and talk. Like we used to.” His foot slips out of its hold in the base of the tree and he stumbles forward. You move quickly to grab him, steadying him with your hands on his bare arms. His skin is cold to the touch.

“I don’t think there will be any tree climbing tonight, big guy.” You gentle guide him away and luckily he comes with you.

”You’re no fun,” he complains before dropping to the grass beneath him rather ungracefully and then sitting criss-cross. His big brown eyes stare up at you like he’s waiting for you to join him and you find it hard to resist, as always.

With an eye roll and a sigh, you sink to the ground across from him. He curls his finger at you in a ‘come hither’ motion, but you turn down his silent request to get you closer with a shake of your head. His arm drops to his lap with a disappointed thump and then takes it upon himself to scoot closer and lay down beside you. You distract yourself by picking strands of grass and tying them into knots.

You can feel him playing with the ends of your hair as he lays behind you, staring at your back. Your scalp tingles at the sensation.

“Where’s Grace?” You ask, hoping to ruin the moment.

“Inside. Mad at me. Like everyone else.” His voice is soft and tired and not at all the ammunition you needed.

So you lay back to join him, hoping that with you side by side he’d stop touching you. Of course, he makes sure to scoot close enough for your shoulders to be touching.

You lay like that quietly for a while, the only breaks in silence when he decides to point out random constellations or shapes he sees in the clouds. It’s nonsense, of course, but you still nod like it’s truth.

”I don’t know what it is about you that always gets me to talk,” he says into the quiet night. You try to focus on the stars whose shine is diluted through the haze of clouds or the itchiness at your bare thighs as they press to the damp grass. Anything except the low rumble of his voice, made even deeper by his drunken sleepiness. “I don’t talk like this with anyone else. Ever.”

”Maybe you should,” you supply lightly, trying to diffuse the growing tension between you.

He blows a raspberry and shakes his head lazily. “Nah. It’s not the same.”

”Because you need trees around in order to spill your guts?” You joke.

His arm nudges yours playfully, your skin a tad tacky in the New England humidity, despite the cold. “No. It’s you.”

You dare to look over at him and find he’s already watching you. You then resist the urge to scoot closer as the dew from the grass soaks into your dress and the chill raises goosebumps on your arms. You sit up to curb the temptation.

“I’m sorry about earlier.” His voice is so quiet you wonder if maybe you imagined it. You turn around to look down at him. “I shouldn’t have said any of that.”

“No, you shouldn’t have,” you tell him as you turn back to resume your picking at the grass.

“I just miss you.” He tugs at the ends of your hair again in jest. “I miss seeing you every day. I miss living down the street from you. I even miss your mom’s god awful broccoli casserole.”

“Hey,” you turn around again, laughing despite yourself. “She tries.”

“She should stick to cookies,” he advises wisely.

“You’re probably right.” You chuckle lightly and imagine the warm chewiness of a fresh chocolate chip cookie from your mom.

“I still think about when you brought me some when I was sick with the flu a few years ago.”

“Yeah, and you didn’t tell Jules you had them and when they found out they were pissed at both of us.”

“They wouldn’t have been pissed if you hadn’t told them,” he reasons.

“How was I supposed to know you ate the entire tin in one sitting?”

“Because you know me. You know me better than anyone.” His eyes are soft. He’s giving you that look, the one that melts you down to your shoes.

Sometimes you find yourself tracing over his features and trying to remember which ones changed and how since he was ten. You do the same thing now, your eyes catching on the stubble along his jaw and wondering what it would feel like under your hands.

“I like the way you look at me,” he whispers. Your breath feels stuck in your throat suddenly, but you swallow and try to breathe.

“How do I look at you?” You tentatively ask, knowing you probably won’t like the answer he gives, but having to ask anyway.

He sits up, his face much closer now than you anticipated it being. He’s not looking at you when he replies, but your lips. “Like I’m worth something.”

He leans in slowly like he’s about to kiss you, and for a moment you’re frozen just watching his slightly parted lips get nearer to yours. But you pull back, and his alcohol-ridden brain is slow to process that you’re no longer right in front of him and moving to stand.

You wipe at the grass on your dress, praying there aren’t any stains that will need explaining when you bring it back in tomorrow, and nervously wring your hands out as you gather yourself before speaking.

“I’m not your mirror, John.”

His face crumples at this, his arm reaching out towards you. “Birdie, that’s not—“

You step further out of his reach. “I’m also not something you can use when you need to make yourself feel better. I’m a person.”

“I know—“

“I can’t be in your life if you’re going to keep jerking me around like this. One minute I’m your friend, and then I’m like your sister, and the next you’re trying to kiss me. Make up your mind. I’m not the little girl I once was. I won’t sit around waiting for any scraps you might drop on the floor.”

He stares up at you, his mouth opening and closing like he’s searching for the words but can’t find them. You can’t decide if you’re disappointed or grateful that he remains silent.

“Goodbye, John.”

And once again, when you turn to leave, he lets you.

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part 1

pairing: john logan x f!reader

summary: You and John Logan are childhood best friends. You share the kind of emotional intimacy only two people who have seen each other grow up can have, but now you’re no longer kids, you’re college students and trying to navigate the complex time between childhood and adulthood. Before joining John at Briar U a year after him, you were convinced your silly crush had faded, but now that you’re back in his orbit, you’re no longer so sure. You try your best to remain just friends, but watching him turn from the boy down the street to the big man on campus is harder than you thought. And you’re not sure how much more you can take of watching him overlook you time and time again.

contains: friends to enemies (sort of) to lovers, unrequited love, talk of childhood trauma (abandonment, addiction), no use of y/n, Logan calls reader by nickname (Birdie), cursing, kissing, angst, logan being a dummy

author’s note: inspired by one of my favorite songs :) this was stupid long, i got kinda carried away but i love writing about nostalgia <3 this was just the intro so we’ll get into the actual plot/current day next chapter! also, this is gonna be a series :))) i’m not exactly sure how many parts yet, but i’ll keep u guys updated! lmk what you think 💕

You remember the exact day that John Logan moved in a few houses down.

It was a seemingly unremarkable afternoon on an uncharacteristically hot Monday in June. You were only about a week into summer vacation and had already grown bored of the monotonous routine of your day without school.

The windows were open and blowing a warm breeze onto your wet toenails where the white-out you had painted on was still drying. You had positioned yourself on the window bench seat in your bedroom to be able to see down the street to where the moving truck currently was and were watching while the new neighbors slowly moved things in.

Your older sister suddenly whirled into your shared bedroom and flopped onto her bed on the other side of your space with a huff, her swimsuit likely still wet from swim practice and making the comforter beneath damp.

“Are they still unpacking?” She asked without looking.

“Mhmm,” you hummed.

In your small community, it was rare when something happened that the whole neighborhood didn’t know about, and the new neighbors who would be moving into the beloved Kershaw house were a hot topic. Especially for your oldest sister who’d had her first kiss with the oldest Kershaw boy, Josh.

She’d been devastated when Josh told her they were moving to Florida, hence her being shut away in her room all day. Apparently it didn’t matter that she and Josh hadn’t hung out in quite some time, she had explained to you that she and Josh shared a connection that transcended time.

She threw a pillow at you when you laughed.

And then, when your mom told you to go knock on her door afterwards and check to see if she wanted lunch, you tentatively obeyed, knocking the softest you could, though the eldest of you still screamed to go away through the door like you had banged on it.

You could faintly hear her strumming her guitar behind the chipped, white wood, only minor chords ringing out as her soft voice sung some heartbroken melody. You were tempted to sit outside and listen, but you knew if she caught you, you’d likely get kicked in the face.

“Did you catch what they look like?” Your other sister was now leaning over you to get a look for herself, her wet hair flopping onto your shoulder and you swatted at her to get her chlorine soaked body away.

“You’re dripping on me,” you complained instead of answering, wiping the droplets of moisture off your arms.

“Sorry,” she muttered distractedly, still staring out the window. You bent down to gently touch your freshly painted nails to check if they were dry and cringed when the white out stuck to your finger like glue and created a gap where the white liquid previously was. “I don’t know why you do that,” your sister commented. “We have white nail polish.”

“I saw it in a movie once,” you grumbled, leaning over to grab a tissue to wipe your finger off.

“Ooh, there’s a boy.” The both of you immediately stood up and squished together to be able to see out the window. And there he was, a boy likely somewhere between your ages carrying a large cardboard box into his new house. “Dibs.”

You groaned in protest. “C’mon, no fair.”

“Sorry, you snooze, you lose.”

“How do you even know he’s your age?” You questioned. Though there wasn’t that big of an age difference between you two, a few years felt like decades. You were a good bit younger than both of your sisters and it felt like it. While they were getting their first phones and having their first kisses, you were still playing with Barbie dolls.

While you were painting your nails with white-out, your eldest sister was writing sad love songs in her room about a real experience she had. You had yet to have any.

Unless you were to count Connor Gregory confessing his love for you on the playground in first grade before picking a cicada off the mulch and eating it.

So no, you didn’t count that.

And if either of your sisters continued to keep calling dibs before you, it would likely be a while before you had any.

“I guess we’ll see.” She wiggles her eyebrows at you before running from the room, still in only her swimsuit, and leaves you there sputtering and scrambling to follow.

You both run outside barefoot, the rough concrete of the sidewalk feeling familiar under your feet as you make your way toward the house with the moving truck and various cardboard boxes lying in the yard out front.

The boy you saw from your window was now carrying a box labeled ‘kitchen stuff’ and paused on the sidewalk as he watched you and your sister approach. A woman, who you assumed was his mother, passed by while carrying another box, and began shouting to someone inside to “help your brother.”

His smile warm and kind, his brown hair a little curly and flopping a bit in his eyes. You watched his attention flick back and forth between the two of you before landing on your sister who wasted no time greeting him in her usual fearlessness.

“Hi. What’s your name?”

“John.” You heard it echo in your head like he had shouted it into a tunnel and you let the word reverberate around you. “What’s yours?”

She told him and then introduced you, and when his gaze landed on you once again, you could feel your cheeks heating as you raised your hand in a shy wave. He returned it kindly, his brown eyes soft and curious.

“We live just a few doors down,” your sister explained. “The one with the yellow door if you ever wanna hangout.” She shrugged like she didn’t care either way and then left before hearing John’s response.

The two of you stood there in silence for a beat, the both of you a little struck by your sisters abrupt departure, your eyes looking anywhere but each other.

“Bye,” you blurted suddenly and turned to leave just as quickly as your sister had.

“Bye,” you heard John gently murmur from behind you, and you struggled not to turn back and look at him once again.

You didn’t see John again until a few days later, when the moving trucks were gone and the boxes were off of their lawn and finally inside of their new house.

It was in the evening, the street lights had just come on with a crackle and buzz to paint the street in an orange sort of glow to match the setting sun. You were sitting in one of your favorite pine trees; one that was easiest to climb and had the least amount of sticky sap drooling from its branches.

The rest of the kids had gone inside for dinner, including both of your sisters, but since your dad usually worked late, you wouldn’t actually eat until he got home, which wasn’t until another hour.

You enjoyed the solitude at the end of the day, when your only company was the chirping of insects and the rustling of the wind through the tree branches. You were humming some tune and watching as a daddy long leg crawled across your palms as you alternated hands.

You hadn’t seen him approach, so you jumped when you heard his voice call from down below to ask, “can I come up?”

The daddy long leg had begun to crawl around your hand and up your arm without your attention, the bug completely indifferent to the nervous fluttering in your chest, so you quickly redirected the eight-legged arachnid and croaked out, “uhm…sure.”

You made yourself wait to look at John until he was seated in front of you, his legs swinging from the branch where he sat and chest rising and falling rapidly from the excursion of his climb. You took in his sports jersey that you didn’t recognize and the worn fabric of his converse before finally meeting his gaze, his smile just as friendly as the first time you met him.

As you stared at each other, you scrambled for something—anything to say. But all you could think was that you weren’t your sisters. You weren’t good with your words.

Luckily, he spoke first. “I noticed you like climbing trees.” You could feel your mouth drying up. How did he know? Had he been watching you? “I saw you the past few days, always sitting in this one. It’s nice up here. I like it.”

“I like the view,” you heard yourself say, sudden and clumsy like you were having to rip the words out. He looked out between the branches and nodded, the field below bathed in the warmth of the sunset. “And one time I found a family of birds. They hatched and flew off last year. I left them alone because my mom told me the mama bird may not come back if I touch them, so I just watched. I was sad when they left, though. Sometimes I still think about where they went. If they ever come back. If birds can recognize people.”

When you dared to look at him again, he was watching you with that smile, the one that made your mouth feel dry and your hands clammy. You continued your nervous rambling and avoided eye contact once again.

“Sometimes I think about what it would be like to be a bird. I bet it feels really cool to fly. Freeing. Sometimes I wonder what clouds feel like, if they’re like cotton candy, if they taste like cotton candy. That’d be cool. But then your hands would probably feel sticky afterwards. That’s another reason why I like this tree. It doesn’t have as much sap on its branches. My mom is always getting mad at me for getting sap on my clothes and in my hair.” You pat down your hair then self consciously, knowing your face is likely as red as a tomato with how warm it feels. He’s still staring at you with that same smile and you almost want to yell at him to stop.

“You remind me of a bird.”

It’s the first time you go still since he came up here to join you.

“What?”

“Yeah. I mean, you sit up in trees like a bird. You’re kind of twitchy like birds.”

“Twitchy?” You repeat, deciding you do not like that word.

He laughs. “I don’t know. You seem gentle like a bird, too.” He shrugs, and this time you don’t totally hate the picture he’s painting of how he sees you. “Where would you go?” You look back up at him, unsure of what he means. “If you could fly. Where would you go?”

“Oh.” You think about it. “I don’t know. I haven’t been many places before.”

“Me neither,” he confesses, beginning to pick at his finger nails.

“Maybe somewhere cold?” You guess. “I like the cold.”

“You do?” He seems to perk up at this.

“Yeah.” You shrug. “I like the winter, when the lake freezes over and everything is kinda quiet. I like skating.”

He scoots closer toward the edge of the branch, his eyes wider and more excited. “You skate? Have you ever played hockey?”

“No, not really. I’m still learning how to not just fall.” You giggle.

“Maybe I could teach you.” You turn your head at his suggestion, a smile overtaking your face.

“Okay,” you agree. He smiles. You sit in silence for a few more moments before suddenly, you’re breaking it again. “How old are you?”

“Ten. How old are you?”

“Nine.” Then he asks you how old your sisters are. “Twelve and fourteen.”

He nods and then asks you to tell him about them and you wonder if you light up like he did when you brought up hockey. This was a topic you knew, this was something you could talk about for hours.

You tell him about Josh Kershaw and about your sister’s friends; the ones you like and don’t like. You talk about movies and TV shows and the music you like to listen to. He tells you about his younger sibling and his mom, how they had to move when his dad left them. You talk until you hear your mom calling from around the corner that dinner is ready, the both of you reluctantly pausing to climb down.

You think you talk more with him than you have with anyone else, outside of your family.

When you arrive at your front door, you both promise to meet back at the tree the next day, excited and grinning at each other.

And when he turns to leave, he offers a small wave, and tells you, “Goodnight, Birdie.”

You feel like you float home.

It wasn’t until about three years later that you realized what you felt for John Logan was not just friendship.

You were twelve, he was thirteen and already in middle school—as popular and talked about as any beautiful boy was in a small town. You were…not.

Your sisters had been, to a certain extent. But they were often mistaken for twins with them being closer in age and more alike with their tameable hair and lithe bodies. They were talkative and somehow always knew what to say. They made friends easily.

You weren’t the antithesis of those things, you were just…different. Something you didn’t previously know to be a bad thing, but somewhere, somehow that word had begun to morph into something else; something much less appealing.

For starters, you were big for your age. Your mom had told you that you were an early bloomer, whatever that meant. You felt like a weed; growing uncontrollably and unwantedly. Your limbs felt too long, your shins ached at night, and you had been made to start wearing a training bra that was itchy and uncomfortable.

The mirror had never been a place you would stand in front of for very long, but recently it seemed to be where your feet would often take you. And there, you couldn’t help but closely examine the parts of you that were foreign, and specifically, different from my sisters. You had messier hair, half because it was a different texture than theirs, and half because you hardly ever brushed it—despite your mother’s protests. You almost always had sap on your hands and dirt on your knees, and you were thicker in places your sisters weren’t. Your thighs were wider, your belly fuller, and your cheeks rounder.

You weren’t as into sports as your sisters were either; always preferring to write a story or play pretend in your head rather than compete in any sort of competition.

It was a year ago now that your mom suggested theater classes to you, which terrified you at first. The thought of having to stand up on a stage in front of a room full of people and talk paralyzed you.

It had taken you a few classes to like it, but not many more to fall in love with it.

It was just like playing pretend, just with someone else making the rules, and you found that you loved not having to think about what to say since someone had already written the script.

You loved the friends you made doing it. You loved who you were while doing it.

And you loved that it was yours and no one else’s.

And that had been another development in recent months that you had come to hate.

The jealousy.

Sometimes it felt like your world shrunk down to your neighborhood and you would forget all you were without it.

You and John had grown close, but that also meant he had grown close to your family as well, and more specifically, your sisters. And you did not like who you were with the two of them and John around.

The three of you bickered more with him there and it made you feel splayed open; your anger never something you felt comfortable displaying to anyone besides your family.

The biggest fight you and your sisters ever had was over John. He had come over to play some video game. You split up into teams and your middle sister kept picking John for hers. You told her she wasn’t being fair, then your eldest sister jumped in and threatened to involve mom, which only escalated the whole ordeal.

Then, the room finally exploded with, “you only want to switch teams because you have a crush on John!”

The basement was dead silent after that. You could feel your face getting hot and your eyes stinging. When your bottom lip started to wobble, your sister’s face crumpled and she immediately started apologizing.

You ran upstairs to your room, unable to look John in the eye. You cried so hard you felt sick and locked everyone out of your room. Your sister had to sleep in the other room that night and the three of you didn’t speak for a week.

Not until your mom made you all sit on the couch and stare at each other until you made up. It took an hour.

Your crush had begun to feel dirty and wrong more than anything else. You hated the feelings it gave you. You hated what it did to your sisters and you.

You didn’t understand why it seemed like you had to keep your worlds separate; one for John and one for your sisters. It didn’t make sense.

When it was just the three of you, you had so much fun. You loved the moments when you were inside playing rummy on a rainy day. You loved watching your favorite movies and quoting each line because you’d seen them countless times. You even loved fighting over who got to hold the popcorn bowl. You loved the rare nights when you would have sleepovers in your shared room, your eldest in the sleeping bag nestled between your beds. You loved how your stomach and cheeks hurt after a night spent laughing. You loved how warm you felt and how full your chest was. You loved the moments right before bed when you were all too tired to fake not liking each other and you could whisper, “I think you guys are my best friends,” into the dark quiet and not get only laughs in reply.

You wondered if this is what boys did to all girls. Made them isolate themselves in bedrooms and write sad songs, or compete with each other to win their affection but lose each other in the process.

Your crush had begun to resemble spoiled milk. It was sour and curdled in your mouth, and when you were alone you would take it out and examine it. You would shuffle through the mess and analyze your interactions.

But when John was in front of you, it was like you could see nothing else. You thought only of the good times. And there were many.

You thought of the nights when you’d laugh so hard you’d risk falling to the ground, out of your tree. You thought about how you didn’t need to speak, how you could communicate with a simple look and understand exactly what the other was thinking. You thought of how thoughtful he was, how kind.

Luckily, he never mentioned what your sister had said that day in your basement. You went on pretending like nothing ever happened, meeting in your tree each night when the rest of the neighborhood had gone inside.

You’re not sure when exactly it became your shared tree, but somewhere between then and now, it had become a ritual.

Most times, you’d sit in the quiet and listen to the bugs and birds and watch the sun set slowly. Even in the winter, you would bundle up in your coats and brave climbing the slippery, snowy branches to sit up where you had created a little break in the needles, your weight bending the branches slowly over time to create a larger window.

One Christmas, John had gotten walkie-talkies as a present, and he brought them to the tree excitedly, climbing up as high as he could, where the branches were thinner, to talk down to you through the small, handheld device. You’d pretend you couldn’t already hear him without it and listen to the crunchy sound of his voice coming through the speaker.

It was a chilly fall night when he climbed up to meet you, thoughts of the two of you swirling around your brain and leaving space for nothing else. His sweatshirt looked soft and warm. You had brought a blanket with you that your mom would undoubtedly be furious with you over later for bringing and getting sap on, but you liked the feeling of bundling up while leaning against the trunk of the tree.

Most nights, he would talk and you would listen, and somewhere between ten and thirteen, the topics got heavier. He would tell you about his mom, how she tended to drink so much she would fall asleep in random places. Then his dad, how he left and he hasn’t seen him since he was eight.

Sometimes you wondered if you were the only person he was telling this to. You wondered if there was a reason for that.

It was that very thought that made you interrupt his speech about the latest Boston Bruins game to ask, “do you think I’m pretty?”

You didn’t look at him, but you could tell he was surprised by the sudden question. He laughed nervously and then asked, “what?”

“Do you think I’m pretty? I know my sisters are pretty. I know my mom is pretty. But…I don’t really look like them, so I’m wondering if I’m pretty.”

You were poking the bubbles of sap in the tree bark as you awaited his answer, trying not to let it show that your breath was stuck in your throat and your cheeks had reddened in the night’s dark.

”I don’t know, you’re just…Birdie.” You looked at him then, unsure of his meaning. You’re not sure if he knew it either. “You’re something different.”

And there was that word again. The one that had begun to mean something much more ugly than it had before. You decided then that you wished you hadn’t asked at all, because somehow his answer was worse than if he had just said ‘no.’

You never allowed yourself to ask another question that toed the line of your friendship. You cherished you and John’s relationship too much to risk muddying the waters and fucking things up.

It wasn’t until the summer before he left for college that things shifted. And to your surprise, it wasn’t your doing.

You had been sitting up in your tree, dreading the coming of fall that meant not only your sisters leaving, but now John as well. And without your sisters around the past few years, the house felt hollow. Everything was too quiet. It was too easy to fill up all the empty spaces with John.

It was the night before he left, and he met you in your tree late, like he had so many nights before, climbing up with ease and then perching on his branch with a relieved sigh.

“I’m gonna miss this,” he confessed after a few beats.

You couldn’t help but smile. “There will be trees at Briar.”

“Yeah,” he conceded, sounded unconvinced. “But none of them will have you. I’ll miss our conversations.”

When you looked over at him, he was already looking at you with this expression you couldn’t quite name. The last few nights had been like this; heavy with something that lingered and left you feeling achy. You swallowed to try and moisten your dry throat, but you found you couldn’t.

You laughed lightly, trying to recover quickly from his confession, trying hard not to seem too affected. “You mean the ones where you talk and I listen?”

“Hey,” he fakes offense. “I listen plenty. When you have something to say.”

“Which is…not often.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” he reasons. You send him a look. “What? It just means when you do say something, I know it’s important. You don’t just talk to talk.”

Again, you’re stunned by his words and unsure what to do with them. You felt like you had been handed something you weren’t sure you were supposed to be carrying.

“Most times. Other times, I babble like an idiot.” He laughs fondly like he remembers the days before you were comfortable enough with him to allow the silences to stretch between you.

“A very cute idiot.” You’re almost angry with him for saying it, though you smile. You don’t understand when or why this shift between you happened. You wondered if it was because he was leaving. Was this some last ditch effort? You tried not to think on it too hard. “At least I won’t have to wait too long. Only a year before you join me at Briar.”

“I don’t know if I’ve got in yet,” you remind him softly, picking at some of the pine needles on the branch beside you.

“Oh come on.” He rolls his eyes. “We both know you’re getting in. If I got in, then you got in.”

“Yes, but you got a hockey scholarship. Briar doesn’t offer those for lowly theater kids like me,” you tease, only half kidding. He extends his leg across the space between you to lightly kick your shin in jest.

“You’ll get in.” He sounds so sure, and you wonder if he’s convincing himself or you. “You have to. I don’t know what I’ll do without you.”

“You’ll survive,” you tell him without doubt. “Briar U’s entire female student population will quiver at the sight of the great John Logan gracing their hollowed halls.”

He throws his head back in laughter, his eyes alight even in the dimmed hue of the evening.

Your chuckles fizzle out, and then you’re left with this heady sort of air between you, his smile soft and fond, his eyes hazy like he’s tipsy.

“What?” You ask him, though you’re scared to.

“Nothing.” He shrugs, though you know he isn’t finished yet and you wait with bated breath for him to continue his thought. “I just really want you there. I need my Birdie.”

His Birdie.

His.

You stare at him for what feels like hours, trying to find something in his face that would reveal the trick or truth. He stares back openly, like he has nothing to hide.

You find it hard to breathe.

Then, you eat up the space between you quickly, vaguely registering that it’s a miracle you don’t knock the both of you out of the tree with how quickly and forcefully you fling yourself at him to kiss him. You’re standing on the branch just below the one he’s sitting on, his hands immediately going to your hips while yours wrap around his neck.

His mouth is still beneath yours for a few beats before he starts to reciprocate, his mouth curving into a smile as he squeezes your hips. You don’t know how long you kiss for, but it feels like one second and one hour all at the same time.

You don’t climb down until your completely out of breath, your skin feeling tight and sensitive as his fingers find where your shirt has ridden up, or his lips at the hollow of your neck just above where your collar starts. When you do make it down, he’s standing at the bottom and reaching up to grab hold of you by the hips, keeping you suspended in the air there for a moment before kissing you again.

Your back hits the bark when he pushes you against the trunk of the tree and you instinctively wrap your legs around him, his hands moving to the backs of your thighs.

You don’t know how or when you finally make it home. You’d start the walk back and then pause again to kiss like you’re starved for each other. You’re giggling like idiots when you finally make it to your front door, his hand in yours tugging you into him to feel his lips again.

“So what does this mean now?” You hear yourself ask, letting your fingers tangle in the soft hair at the nape of his neck.

“What does what mean now?” You watch his swollen mouth move that now resembles a darker pink than usual from your attention. You fight the urge to feel your own then, your mind hazy and limbs heavy like you’re drunk.

“This, us.”

You don’t sober until he pulls back with a sort of concerned look. “What do you mean ‘us’?”

“Well—“ You find yourself at a loss, unsure what to say. “I thought…” you trail off again.

“Birdie,” he says it low, like you’re a child. A kid who got caught with their hand in the cookie jar. Your hands fall to your sides as you back away. ”I’m leaving in a few days.”

“I know,” you reply firmly, your hands balling into fists to keep yourself from reaching back out. You feel shaky all of a sudden, like you’re coming down too quick. You feel desperate to rewind and go back to a few minutes ago.

“We were just…it can’t mean anything.”

And just like that, you feel yourself completely deflate; the needle of truth popping your balloon and you’re yanked back down to reality.

“Why…did you do it then?” You don’t understand and you hate that you don’t. You feel like crying and you hate that you do.

“We were just having fun.”

“Fun?” You echo woodenly, not really sure how what you did constitutes as fun. Enjoyable? Yes. Mind-melting? Absolutely. But fun? Not really. And especially not now.

“I…look, I’m sorry. I just broke up with Janelle and I was feeling lonely. I probably shouldn’t have sought you out like that.” He’s running his hands through his hair, but it just flops back into his face and you itch to push it back but don’t.

“You think?” You laugh bitterly. You hadn’t even known he’d a girlfriend, let alone that her name was Janelle. You feel stupid. You feel used. “So, that’s what these past few days were? Your ego was bruised so you came to me to make yourself feel better? Bigger?”

“No, Birdie—“

“You knew I’d be waiting for you,” You cut him off. “You knew you could kiss me just for fun and I’d let you. That I’d want you to.” You’re not asking because you know. You know your crush hasn’t ever been a secret—not to him, not to anyone. You knew how vulnerable and sad that made you, and yet you didn’t stop him.

“You kissed me,” he corrects, passing blame.

“Because you told me I was yours,” you cry out. “And you knew for years that’s all I’d been dying to be.”

The tears are freely flowing now as you angrily swipe at them. John’s face is crumpled by guilt as he reaches for you but you step away.

“Bird, please. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize.” Your words lash out like a whip. “I gave you every reason to think you could.”

When you turn to go inside, he doesn’t stop you.

And the next day, he’s gone.

dividers by: @pixopix @koosuvi

comment if you’d like to be added to my taglist :}

part 1

pairing: john logan x f!reader

summary: You and John Logan are childhood best friends. You share the kind of emotional intimacy only two people who have seen each other grow up can have, but now you’re no longer kids, you’re college students and trying to navigate the complex time between childhood and adulthood. Before joining John at Briar U a year after him, you were convinced your silly crush had faded, but now that you’re back in his orbit, you’re no longer so sure. You try your best to remain just friends, but watching him turn from the boy down the street to the big man on campus is harder than you thought. And you’re not sure how much more you can take of watching him overlook you time and time again.

contains: friends to enemies (sort of) to lovers, unrequited love, talk of childhood trauma (abandonment, addiction), no use of y/n, Logan calls reader by nickname (Birdie), cursing, kissing, angst, logan being a dummy

author’s note: inspired by one of my favorite songs :) this was stupid long, i got kinda carried away but i love writing about nostalgia <3 this was just the intro so we’ll get into the actual plot/current day next chapter! also, this is gonna be a series :))) i’m not exactly sure how many parts yet, but i’ll keep u guys updated! lmk what you think 💕

You remember the exact day that John Logan moved in a few houses down.

It was a seemingly unremarkable afternoon on an uncharacteristically hot Monday in June. You were only about a week into summer vacation and had already grown bored of the monotonous routine of your day without school.

The windows were open and blowing a warm breeze onto your wet toenails where the white-out you had painted on was still drying. You had positioned yourself on the window bench seat in your bedroom to be able to see down the street to where the moving truck currently was and were watching while the new neighbors slowly moved things in.

Your older sister suddenly whirled into your shared bedroom and flopped onto her bed on the other side of your space with a huff, her swimsuit likely still wet from swim practice and making the comforter beneath damp.

“Are they still unpacking?” She asked without looking.

“Mhmm,” you hummed.

In your small community, it was rare when something happened that the whole neighborhood didn’t know about, and the new neighbors who would be moving into the beloved Kershaw house were a hot topic. Especially for your oldest sister who’d had her first kiss with the oldest Kershaw boy, Josh.

She’d been devastated when Josh told her they were moving to Florida, hence her being shut away in her room all day. Apparently it didn’t matter that she and Josh hadn’t hung out in quite some time, she had explained to you that she and Josh shared a connection that transcended time.

She threw a pillow at you when you laughed.

And then, when your mom told you to go knock on her door afterwards and check to see if she wanted lunch, you tentatively obeyed, knocking the softest you could, though the eldest of you still screamed to go away through the door like you had banged on it.

You could faintly hear her strumming her guitar behind the chipped, white wood, only minor chords ringing out as her soft voice sung some heartbroken melody. You were tempted to sit outside and listen, but you knew if she caught you, you’d likely get kicked in the face.

“Did you catch what they look like?” Your other sister was now leaning over you to get a look for herself, her wet hair flopping onto your shoulder and you swatted at her to get her chlorine soaked body away.

“You’re dripping on me,” you complained instead of answering, wiping the droplets of moisture off your arms.

“Sorry,” she muttered distractedly, still staring out the window. You bent down to gently touch your freshly painted nails to check if they were dry and cringed when the white out stuck to your finger like glue and created a gap where the white liquid previously was. “I don’t know why you do that,” your sister commented. “We have white nail polish.”

“I saw it in a movie once,” you grumbled, leaning over to grab a tissue to wipe your finger off.

“Ooh, there’s a boy.” The both of you immediately stood up and squished together to be able to see out the window. And there he was, a boy likely somewhere between your ages carrying a large cardboard box into his new house. “Dibs.”

You groaned in protest. “C’mon, no fair.”

“Sorry, you snooze, you lose.”

“How do you even know he’s your age?” You questioned. Though there wasn’t that big of an age difference between you two, a few years felt like decades. You were a good bit younger than both of your sisters and it felt like it. While they were getting their first phones and having their first kisses, you were still playing with Barbie dolls.

While you were painting your nails with white-out, your eldest sister was writing sad love songs in her room about a real experience she had. You had yet to have any.

Unless you were to count Connor Gregory confessing his love for you on the playground in first grade before picking a cicada off the mulch and eating it.

So no, you didn’t count that.

And if either of your sisters continued to keep calling dibs before you, it would likely be a while before you had any.

“I guess we’ll see.” She wiggles her eyebrows at you before running from the room, still in only her swimsuit, and leaves you there sputtering and scrambling to follow.

You both run outside barefoot, the rough concrete of the sidewalk feeling familiar under your feet as you make your way toward the house with the moving truck and various cardboard boxes lying in the yard out front.

The boy you saw from your window was now carrying a box labeled ‘kitchen stuff’ and paused on the sidewalk as he watched you and your sister approach. A woman, who you assumed was his mother, passed by while carrying another box, and began shouting to someone inside to “help your brother.”

His smile warm and kind, his brown hair a little curly and flopping a bit in his eyes. You watched his attention flick back and forth between the two of you before landing on your sister who wasted no time greeting him in her usual fearlessness.

“Hi. What’s your name?”

“John.” You heard it echo in your head like he had shouted it into a tunnel and you let the word reverberate around you. “What’s yours?”

She told him and then introduced you, and when his gaze landed on you once again, you could feel your cheeks heating as you raised your hand in a shy wave. He returned it kindly, his brown eyes soft and curious.

“We live just a few doors down,” your sister explained. “The one with the yellow door if you ever wanna hangout.” She shrugged like she didn’t care either way and then left before hearing John’s response.

The two of you stood there in silence for a beat, the both of you a little struck by your sisters abrupt departure, your eyes looking anywhere but each other.

“Bye,” you blurted suddenly and turned to leave just as quickly as your sister had.

“Bye,” you heard John gently murmur from behind you, and you struggled not to turn back and look at him once again.

You didn’t see John again until a few days later, when the moving trucks were gone and the boxes were off of their lawn and finally inside of their new house.

It was in the evening, the street lights had just come on with a crackle and buzz to paint the street in an orange sort of glow to match the setting sun. You were sitting in one of your favorite pine trees; one that was easiest to climb and had the least amount of sticky sap drooling from its branches.

The rest of the kids had gone inside for dinner, including both of your sisters, but since your dad usually worked late, you wouldn’t actually eat until he got home, which wasn’t until another hour.

You enjoyed the solitude at the end of the day, when your only company was the chirping of insects and the rustling of the wind through the tree branches. You were humming some tune and watching as a daddy long leg crawled across your palms as you alternated hands.

You hadn’t seen him approach, so you jumped when you heard his voice call from down below to ask, “can I come up?”

The daddy long leg had begun to crawl around your hand and up your arm without your attention, the bug completely indifferent to the nervous fluttering in your chest, so you quickly redirected the eight-legged arachnid and croaked out, “uhm…sure.”

You made yourself wait to look at John until he was seated in front of you, his legs swinging from the branch where he sat and chest rising and falling rapidly from the excursion of his climb. You took in his sports jersey that you didn’t recognize and the worn fabric of his converse before finally meeting his gaze, his smile just as friendly as the first time you met him.

As you stared at each other, you scrambled for something—anything to say. But all you could think was that you weren’t your sisters. You weren’t good with your words.

Luckily, he spoke first. “I noticed you like climbing trees.” You could feel your mouth drying up. How did he know? Had he been watching you? “I saw you the past few days, always sitting in this one. It’s nice up here. I like it.”

“I like the view,” you heard yourself say, sudden and clumsy like you were having to rip the words out. He looked out between the branches and nodded, the field below bathed in the warmth of the sunset. “And one time I found a family of birds. They hatched and flew off last year. I left them alone because my mom told me the mama bird may not come back if I touch them, so I just watched. I was sad when they left, though. Sometimes I still think about where they went. If they ever come back. If birds can recognize people.”

When you dared to look at him again, he was watching you with that smile, the one that made your mouth feel dry and your hands clammy. You continued your nervous rambling and avoided eye contact once again.

“Sometimes I think about what it would be like to be a bird. I bet it feels really cool to fly. Freeing. Sometimes I wonder what clouds feel like, if they’re like cotton candy, if they taste like cotton candy. That’d be cool. But then your hands would probably feel sticky afterwards. That’s another reason why I like this tree. It doesn’t have as much sap on its branches. My mom is always getting mad at me for getting sap on my clothes and in my hair.” You pat down your hair then self consciously, knowing your face is likely as red as a tomato with how warm it feels. He’s still staring at you with that same smile and you almost want to yell at him to stop.

“You remind me of a bird.”

It’s the first time you go still since he came up here to join you.

“What?”

“Yeah. I mean, you sit up in trees like a bird. You’re kind of twitchy like birds.”

“Twitchy?” You repeat, deciding you do not like that word.

He laughs. “I don’t know. You seem gentle like a bird, too.” He shrugs, and this time you don’t totally hate the picture he’s painting of how he sees you. “Where would you go?” You look back up at him, unsure of what he means. “If you could fly. Where would you go?”

“Oh.” You think about it. “I don’t know. I haven’t been many places before.”

“Me neither,” he confesses, beginning to pick at his finger nails.

“Maybe somewhere cold?” You guess. “I like the cold.”

“You do?” He seems to perk up at this.

“Yeah.” You shrug. “I like the winter, when the lake freezes over and everything is kinda quiet. I like skating.”

He scoots closer toward the edge of the branch, his eyes wider and more excited. “You skate? Have you ever played hockey?”

“No, not really. I’m still learning how to not just fall.” You giggle.

“Maybe I could teach you.” You turn your head at his suggestion, a smile overtaking your face.

“Okay,” you agree. He smiles. You sit in silence for a few more moments before suddenly, you’re breaking it again. “How old are you?”

“Ten. How old are you?”

“Nine.” Then he asks you how old your sisters are. “Twelve and fourteen.”

He nods and then asks you to tell him about them and you wonder if you light up like he did when you brought up hockey. This was a topic you knew, this was something you could talk about for hours.

You tell him about Josh Kershaw and about your sister’s friends; the ones you like and don’t like. You talk about movies and TV shows and the music you like to listen to. He tells you about his younger sibling and his mom, how they had to move when his dad left them. You talk until you hear your mom calling from around the corner that dinner is ready, the both of you reluctantly pausing to climb down.

You think you talk more with him than you have with anyone else, outside of your family.

When you arrive at your front door, you both promise to meet back at the tree the next day, excited and grinning at each other.

And when he turns to leave, he offers a small wave, and tells you, “Goodnight, Birdie.”

You feel like you float home.

It wasn’t until about three years later that you realized what you felt for John Logan was not just friendship.

You were twelve, he was thirteen and already in middle school—as popular and talked about as any beautiful boy was in a small town. You were…not.

Your sisters had been, to a certain extent. But they were often mistaken for twins with them being closer in age and more alike with their tameable hair and lithe bodies. They were talkative and somehow always knew what to say. They made friends easily.

You weren’t the antithesis of those things, you were just…different. Something you didn’t previously know to be a bad thing, but somewhere, somehow that word had begun to morph into something else; something much less appealing.

For starters, you were big for your age. Your mom had told you that you were an early bloomer, whatever that meant. You felt like a weed; growing uncontrollably and unwantedly. Your limbs felt too long, your shins ached at night, and you had been made to start wearing a training bra that was itchy and uncomfortable.

The mirror had never been a place you would stand in front of for very long, but recently it seemed to be where your feet would often take you. And there, you couldn’t help but closely examine the parts of you that were foreign, and specifically, different from my sisters. You had messier hair, half because it was a different texture than theirs, and half because you hardly ever brushed it—despite your mother’s protests. You almost always had sap on your hands and dirt on your knees, and you were thicker in places your sisters weren’t. Your thighs were wider, your belly fuller, and your cheeks rounder.

You weren’t as into sports as your sisters were either; always preferring to write a story or play pretend in your head rather than compete in any sort of competition.

It was a year ago now that your mom suggested theater classes to you, which terrified you at first. The thought of having to stand up on a stage in front of a room full of people and talk paralyzed you.

It had taken you a few classes to like it, but not many more to fall in love with it.

It was just like playing pretend, just with someone else making the rules, and you found that you loved not having to think about what to say since someone had already written the script.

You loved the friends you made doing it. You loved who you were while doing it.

And you loved that it was yours and no one else’s.

And that had been another development in recent months that you had come to hate.

The jealousy.

Sometimes it felt like your world shrunk down to your neighborhood and you would forget all you were without it.

You and John had grown close, but that also meant he had grown close to your family as well, and more specifically, your sisters. And you did not like who you were with the two of them and John around.

The three of you bickered more with him there and it made you feel splayed open; your anger never something you felt comfortable displaying to anyone besides your family.

The biggest fight you and your sisters ever had was over John. He had come over to play some video game. You split up into teams and your middle sister kept picking John for hers. You told her she wasn’t being fair, then your eldest sister jumped in and threatened to involve mom, which only escalated the whole ordeal.

Then, the room finally exploded with, “you only want to switch teams because you have a crush on John!”

The basement was dead silent after that. You could feel your face getting hot and your eyes stinging. When your bottom lip started to wobble, your sister’s face crumpled and she immediately started apologizing.

You ran upstairs to your room, unable to look John in the eye. You cried so hard you felt sick and locked everyone out of your room. Your sister had to sleep in the other room that night and the three of you didn’t speak for a week.

Not until your mom made you all sit on the couch and stare at each other until you made up. It took an hour.

Your crush had begun to feel dirty and wrong more than anything else. You hated the feelings it gave you. You hated what it did to your sisters and you.

You didn’t understand why it seemed like you had to keep your worlds separate; one for John and one for your sisters. It didn’t make sense.

When it was just the three of you, you had so much fun. You loved the moments when you were inside playing rummy on a rainy day. You loved watching your favorite movies and quoting each line because you’d seen them countless times. You even loved fighting over who got to hold the popcorn bowl. You loved the rare nights when you would have sleepovers in your shared room, your eldest in the sleeping bag nestled between your beds. You loved how your stomach and cheeks hurt after a night spent laughing. You loved how warm you felt and how full your chest was. You loved the moments right before bed when you were all too tired to fake not liking each other and you could whisper, “I think you guys are my best friends,” into the dark quiet and not get only laughs in reply.

You wondered if this is what boys did to all girls. Made them isolate themselves in bedrooms and write sad songs, or compete with each other to win their affection but lose each other in the process.

Your crush had begun to resemble spoiled milk. It was sour and curdled in your mouth, and when you were alone you would take it out and examine it. You would shuffle through the mess and analyze your interactions.

But when John was in front of you, it was like you could see nothing else. You thought only of the good times. And there were many.

You thought of the nights when you’d laugh so hard you’d risk falling to the ground, out of your tree. You thought about how you didn’t need to speak, how you could communicate with a simple look and understand exactly what the other was thinking. You thought of how thoughtful he was, how kind.

Luckily, he never mentioned what your sister had said that day in your basement. You went on pretending like nothing ever happened, meeting in your tree each night when the rest of the neighborhood had gone inside.

You’re not sure when exactly it became your shared tree, but somewhere between then and now, it had become a ritual.

Most times, you’d sit in the quiet and listen to the bugs and birds and watch the sun set slowly. Even in the winter, you would bundle up in your coats and brave climbing the slippery, snowy branches to sit up where you had created a little break in the needles, your weight bending the branches slowly over time to create a larger window.

One Christmas, John had gotten walkie-talkies as a present, and he brought them to the tree excitedly, climbing up as high as he could, where the branches were thinner, to talk down to you through the small, handheld device. You’d pretend you couldn’t already hear him without it and listen to the crunchy sound of his voice coming through the speaker.

It was a chilly fall night when he climbed up to meet you, thoughts of the two of you swirling around your brain and leaving space for nothing else. His sweatshirt looked soft and warm. You had brought a blanket with you that your mom would undoubtedly be furious with you over later for bringing and getting sap on, but you liked the feeling of bundling up while leaning against the trunk of the tree.

Most nights, he would talk and you would listen, and somewhere between ten and thirteen, the topics got heavier. He would tell you about his mom, how she tended to drink so much she would fall asleep in random places. Then his dad, how he left and he hasn’t seen him since he was eight.

Sometimes you wondered if you were the only person he was telling this to. You wondered if there was a reason for that.

It was that very thought that made you interrupt his speech about the latest Boston Bruins game to ask, “do you think I’m pretty?”

You didn’t look at him, but you could tell he was surprised by the sudden question. He laughed nervously and then asked, “what?”

“Do you think I’m pretty? I know my sisters are pretty. I know my mom is pretty. But…I don’t really look like them, so I’m wondering if I’m pretty.”

You were poking the bubbles of sap in the tree bark as you awaited his answer, trying not to let it show that your breath was stuck in your throat and your cheeks had reddened in the night’s dark.

”I don’t know, you’re just…Birdie.” You looked at him then, unsure of his meaning. You’re not sure if he knew it either. “You’re something different.”

And there was that word again. The one that had begun to mean something much more ugly than it had before. You decided then that you wished you hadn’t asked at all, because somehow his answer was worse than if he had just said ‘no.’

You never allowed yourself to ask another question that toed the line of your friendship. You cherished you and John’s relationship too much to risk muddying the waters and fucking things up.

It wasn’t until the summer before he left for college that things shifted. And to your surprise, it wasn’t your doing.

You had been sitting up in your tree, dreading the coming of fall that meant not only your sisters leaving, but now John as well. And without your sisters around the past few years, the house felt hollow. Everything was too quiet. It was too easy to fill up all the empty spaces with John.

It was the night before he left, and he met you in your tree late, like he had so many nights before, climbing up with ease and then perching on his branch with a relieved sigh.

“I’m gonna miss this,” he confessed after a few beats.

You couldn’t help but smile. “There will be trees at Briar.”

“Yeah,” he conceded, sounded unconvinced. “But none of them will have you. I’ll miss our conversations.”

When you looked over at him, he was already looking at you with this expression you couldn’t quite name. The last few nights had been like this; heavy with something that lingered and left you feeling achy. You swallowed to try and moisten your dry throat, but you found you couldn’t.

You laughed lightly, trying to recover quickly from his confession, trying hard not to seem too affected. “You mean the ones where you talk and I listen?”

“Hey,” he fakes offense. “I listen plenty. When you have something to say.”

“Which is…not often.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” he reasons. You send him a look. “What? It just means when you do say something, I know it’s important. You don’t just talk to talk.”

Again, you’re stunned by his words and unsure what to do with them. You felt like you had been handed something you weren’t sure you were supposed to be carrying.

“Most times. Other times, I babble like an idiot.” He laughs fondly like he remembers the days before you were comfortable enough with him to allow the silences to stretch between you.

“A very cute idiot.” You’re almost angry with him for saying it, though you smile. You don’t understand when or why this shift between you happened. You wondered if it was because he was leaving. Was this some last ditch effort? You tried not to think on it too hard. “At least I won’t have to wait too long. Only a year before you join me at Briar.”

“I don’t know if I’ve got in yet,” you remind him softly, picking at some of the pine needles on the branch beside you.

“Oh come on.” He rolls his eyes. “We both know you’re getting in. If I got in, then you got in.”

“Yes, but you got a hockey scholarship. Briar doesn’t offer those for lowly theater kids like me,” you tease, only half kidding. He extends his leg across the space between you to lightly kick your shin in jest.

“You’ll get in.” He sounds so sure, and you wonder if he’s convincing himself or you. “You have to. I don’t know what I’ll do without you.”

“You’ll survive,” you tell him without doubt. “Briar U’s entire female student population will quiver at the sight of the great John Logan gracing their hollowed halls.”

He throws his head back in laughter, his eyes alight even in the dimmed hue of the evening.

Your chuckles fizzle out, and then you’re left with this heady sort of air between you, his smile soft and fond, his eyes hazy like he’s tipsy.

“What?” You ask him, though you’re scared to.

“Nothing.” He shrugs, though you know he isn’t finished yet and you wait with bated breath for him to continue his thought. “I just really want you there. I need my Birdie.”

His Birdie.

His.

You stare at him for what feels like hours, trying to find something in his face that would reveal the trick or truth. He stares back openly, like he has nothing to hide.

You find it hard to breathe.

Then, you eat up the space between you quickly, vaguely registering that it’s a miracle you don’t knock the both of you out of the tree with how quickly and forcefully you fling yourself at him to kiss him. You’re standing on the branch just below the one he’s sitting on, his hands immediately going to your hips while yours wrap around his neck.

His mouth is still beneath yours for a few beats before he starts to reciprocate, his mouth curving into a smile as he squeezes your hips. You don’t know how long you kiss for, but it feels like one second and one hour all at the same time.

You don’t climb down until your completely out of breath, your skin feeling tight and sensitive as his fingers find where your shirt has ridden up, or his lips at the hollow of your neck just above where your collar starts. When you do make it down, he’s standing at the bottom and reaching up to grab hold of you by the hips, keeping you suspended in the air there for a moment before kissing you again.

Your back hits the bark when he pushes you against the trunk of the tree and you instinctively wrap your legs around him, his hands moving to the backs of your thighs.

You don’t know how or when you finally make it home. You’d start the walk back and then pause again to kiss like you’re starved for each other. You’re giggling like idiots when you finally make it to your front door, his hand in yours tugging you into him to feel his lips again.

“So what does this mean now?” You hear yourself ask, letting your fingers tangle in the soft hair at the nape of his neck.

“What does what mean now?” You watch his swollen mouth move that now resembles a darker pink than usual from your attention. You fight the urge to feel your own then, your mind hazy and limbs heavy like you’re drunk.

“This, us.”

You don’t sober until he pulls back with a sort of concerned look. “What do you mean ‘us’?”

“Well—“ You find yourself at a loss, unsure what to say. “I thought…” you trail off again.

“Birdie,” he says it low, like you’re a child. A kid who got caught with their hand in the cookie jar. Your hands fall to your sides as you back away. ”I’m leaving in a few days.”

“I know,” you reply firmly, your hands balling into fists to keep yourself from reaching back out. You feel shaky all of a sudden, like you’re coming down too quick. You feel desperate to rewind and go back to a few minutes ago.

“We were just…it can’t mean anything.”

And just like that, you feel yourself completely deflate; the needle of truth popping your balloon and you’re yanked back down to reality.

“Why…did you do it then?” You don’t understand and you hate that you don’t. You feel like crying and you hate that you do.

“We were just having fun.”

“Fun?” You echo woodenly, not really sure how what you did constitutes as fun. Enjoyable? Yes. Mind-melting? Absolutely. But fun? Not really. And especially not now.

“I…look, I’m sorry. I just broke up with Janelle and I was feeling lonely. I probably shouldn’t have sought you out like that.” He’s running his hands through his hair, but it just flops back into his face and you itch to push it back but don’t.

“You think?” You laugh bitterly. You hadn’t even known he’d a girlfriend, let alone that her name was Janelle. You feel stupid. You feel used. “So, that’s what these past few days were? Your ego was bruised so you came to me to make yourself feel better? Bigger?”

“No, Birdie—“

“You knew I’d be waiting for you,” You cut him off. “You knew you could kiss me just for fun and I’d let you. That I’d want you to.” You’re not asking because you know. You know your crush hasn’t ever been a secret—not to him, not to anyone. You knew how vulnerable and sad that made you, and yet you didn’t stop him.

“You kissed me,” he corrects, passing blame.

“Because you told me I was yours,” you cry out. “And you knew for years that’s all I’d been dying to be.”

The tears are freely flowing now as you angrily swipe at them. John’s face is crumpled by guilt as he reaches for you but you step away.

“Bird, please. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize.” Your words lash out like a whip. “I gave you every reason to think you could.”

When you turn to go inside, he doesn’t stop you.

And the next day, he’s gone.

dividers by: @pixopix @koosuvi

comment if you’d like to be added to my taglist :}

summary: The thing about Logan is that he always knew what to say. He just kept finding reasons not to say it.

or: the five times Logan almost confessed and the one time he did.

notes: hii!! lazy sunday inspiration, this one is like sabrina short and sweet, hope you guys like it! enjoy your reading!!

warnings: childhood friends to lovers, fluff, happy ending.

word count: 4k

I've been afraid of changing because I've built my life around you

You had met Logan at a rink.

This was, in retrospect, the most inevitable thing about you, that two people who had built their entire lives around ice would find each other on it. You had been eleven, in the middle of a spin sequence that wasn't working, frustrated enough that you had stopped and put your hands on your hips and glared at the ice like it had personally wronged you. He had been eleven too, sitting in the penalty box with his helmet off, watching you with the focused attention of someone who had forgotten he was supposed to be somewhere else.

Line Drive

Pairing: John Logan  x Reader

Word Count: 1014

Request open!

Off campus masterlist

John had seen you in a lot of settings.

At parties, where you were easy to find by the sound of your laugh. In the kitchen of the hockey house, usually stealing one of the guys’ fries while pretending not to. On the couch, half-asleep under a blanket with a book in your lap. But seeing you on a softball field was different.

You looked like you belonged there.

He knew that the second he and the guys walked up to the bleachers and found a spot halfway down the row. Garrett was already talking too loud, Tucker was trying to read the schedule on his phone, and Dean was making fun of the snack prices at the concession stand, but John barely heard any of them.

He was looking at you.

You were in Briar’s colors, hair pulled back, glove tucked under one arm while you stood near the dugout listening to your coach. Even from the stands, John could tell you were focused. Calm in that special way athletes got right before a game. He had seen that look on his own face enough times to recognize it.

Garrett followed his gaze and grinned. “There she is.”

John didn’t look away. “Yeah.”

Tucker nudged him. “You’re staring.”

“I know where she is.”

Dean laughed into his drink. “That’s not what he meant.”

John finally looked at them. “You all gonna be annoying the whole game?”

“Absolutely,” Garrett said.

John shook his head, but the corner of his mouth twitched anyway.

Down on the field, you glanced up toward the stands and spotted them. Your expression changed immediately, all surprise and then all warmth when you saw John. You lifted your hand in a small wave, and he answered with a quick one of his own.

Garrett made a sound like he was watching a rom-com unfold. “Oh, this is sickening.”

“Shut up,” John muttered, but he was smiling.

You turned back toward the field, and John settled in with the strange, focused kind of pride that only showed up when someone you loved was doing exactly what they were meant to do.

When the game started, he became even more aware of you.

The first inning went fast. Too fast. You were everywhere at once: calling for plays, shifting in the infield, talking to teammates in quick bursts. The first time the ball came your way, John sat up straighter without meaning to. You fielded it cleanly and threw to first with a sharp, confident motion.

Garrett immediately clapped like an idiot. “That’s my girl!”

John shot him a look. “No.”

Garrett grinned. “What?”

“She’s not your girl.”

Tucker nearly choked laughing.

Garrett leaned back smugly. “Okay, then.”

John shook his head, but he couldn’t stop watching you.

By the third inning, the guys were loud enough that people around them kept looking over. Dean kept making comments about your form. Tucker had become weirdly invested in the score. Garrett was offering absolutely useless commentary at all times. John, meanwhile, was mostly quiet except for the occasional muttered, “Good,” or “Nice catch,” whenever you did something worth noticing.

And you did something worth noticing a lot.

When you finally got up to bat, John went still.

You adjusted your grip, rolled your shoulders once, and stepped into the box with the kind of calm that made his chest feel oddly full. The pitcher wound up. The ball came fast. You swung and connected cleanly, the crack of the bat sharp enough that John felt it in his ribs.

The ball sailed.

The entire row of Briar guys erupted.

Dean was on his feet first. “Oh, that’s gone.”

Tucker was laughing. “That’s absolutely gone.”

Garrett cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, “Go, babe, go!”

John didn’t even glare at him this time because he was too busy watching you sprint down the line with a grin breaking across your face.

Home run.

The crowd got loud. Your teammates were cheering. You rounded the bases with your ponytail bouncing and your expression pure joy, and John found himself standing too.

He didn’t mean to.

He just did.

When you crossed home plate, someone slapped your helmet and you laughed, breathless and bright. Then you looked up toward the stands again, and this time your eyes found him immediately.

John didn’t bother trying to look casual.

He smiled right at you.

You smiled back, and for a second it felt like the whole field had gotten quieter.

Garrett noticed, because of course he did. “This is disgusting.”

John didn’t even look at him. “You’re still talking.”

After the game, you came off the field sweaty, flushed, and grinning like you’d been chasing that high all day. John was already waiting near the fence when you reached the side gate.

“You were loud,” you said, approaching him with a smile.

He gave you an innocent look that fooled no one. “Was I?”

“Very.”

Garrett called from behind him, “He was the worst of us.”

John finally looked back. “You were screaming too.”

Garrett pointed at him. “Because I was being supportive.”

You laughed and moved closer to John, and the second you did, his hand found your waist on instinct.

“You played really well,” he said.

Something soft flickered across your face. “You came.”

He looked mildly offended. “Of course I came.”

Dean made a noise behind him. “That sounded bad.”

John ignored him and looked only at you. “Wouldn’t miss it.”

That made your smile widen in a way that did something dangerous to his chest.

You shifted closer and lowered your voice. “Even with those three?”

John glanced over your shoulder at the guys, all of whom were pretending not to listen and failing miserably. “Especially with those three.”

You laughed, and John kissed your temple without hesitation.

Behind him, Garrett gagged dramatically. Tucker laughed. Dean shook his head like he’d known this would happen eventually.

John didn’t care.

john logan x reader

warning: mentions of sexual harrasment.

summary: angst/hurt comfort. logan finds you crying in the bathroom during a party. short fic. requested here and here!

Logan isn’t there when it happens, but he certainly hears the commotion around it through the grapevine. The whispers dancing around the party, spreading the news of a girl slapping a Sig Tau frat’s face after he tries (or rather, forces) a move on her, your name mixed within them.

He shares a brisky look with Tucker, who quickly mumbles something among the lines of “I’ll take care of it. Go.” before pushing him back inside the house. Logan runs through the crowd of people, eyes scanning every face, then up the stairs storming a bunch of rooms occupied by couples who definitely should’ve locked the door. He only finds you when he starts banging on the locked doors of the upstairs bathroom.

“Go away!” You yell from the other side. 

“It’s just me.” He answers, loud enough for you to hear but never to scare you, “Would you open the door, please?”

There’s a beat of silence, then the sound of the lock turning.

Logan opens the door to find you sitting on the bathroom floor, hiding your face behind your hands. “I’m so embarrassed.” You say, voice muffled by your own palms, “I didn’t know he’d– I didn’t mean to–”

“Hey, no– You’re good. You did nothing wrong, ‘kay?” He cuts you off, crouching down to sit by your side on the floor, hand going for your shoulder in a comforting move, asking in a lower voice, “Wanna tell me what happened?”

You lift your head up, and Logan sees your tear-streaked face and wobbly underlip, feeling almost light-headed with the sudden flush of emotions. He feels ready to go out there and give a proper finish to the damage you’ve started on the guy’s face, yet, he knows that there’s no way in hell he’d ever leave you alone in those cold bathroom floor tiles — especially when he feels your hand curving around his upper arm, seeking his assurance. 

“I was just grabbing a drink.” You say, voice cracking in such a way that makes his ribs hurt. “In the kitchen. Then this guy– I don’t know, I turn around and suddenly he’s too close, and– And he’s trying to push me against the wall, so I–”

You start growing antsy and take a moment to breathe, eyes closing. You drop your head into his shoulder, “I wasn’t thinking. I just had to get him away from me.”

“You did good.” Logan repeats himself, his arm tentatively going around your shoulders, careful not to startle you. You curl up against him, and he goes on saying, his low voice a litany of assurances, “You got him away, yeah? That’s what matters. You did great, honey.”

You breath in, staying still where your head lands on his shoulder, and Logan won’t dare to move either until you do. A knock on the door is the sole reason for your disturbance.

“Occupied.” Logan says, but the voice that comes out the other side is from Garrett.

“Everything okay there?”

“Fine.” You say, “Just– Yeah. We’re good.”

“Okay. Uh, the girls are waiting in the car. We’re, uh, ready to leave if you are.” His voice says.

Logan turns to face you, your eyes blinking slowly like you’ve just been pulled out of sleep. “You ready to go?” He murmurs.

You nod, “Yes, please.” 

He lifts himself off the floor, offering you a hand. 

When he opens the door, Garrett isn’t the only one on the other side. Dean and Tucker stand there, one on each side of him, all three standing like guards waiting for orders. Logan’s eyes fall down to their hands, and if you notice the redness around each their knuckles, you don’t mention it. None of them really say a word other than a quick “c’mon” and know that you understand it exactly as they mean to — as in “We got you too.”

It’s a quiet drive in the backseat of Garrett’s car. 

There’s a silent agreement, reinforced by you saying that you don’t wanna go to your dorm, that everyone’s staying the night at the boy’s house, and Logan doesn’t care if he has to sleep on the couch, or rather force Garrett out of his own room so you can share the bed with Hannah, but he knows is that you’re not staying alone tonight. 

You keep your head on Logan’s shoulder, hands intertwined with his. He closes his eyes, focusing solely on the softness of your fingers as he calms himself down. There’s a lot of emotions to unpack and possibly hard conversations to get through in the following days. Right now, all he cares about is keeping you safe by his side, fast asleep on the road home. 

notes: quick psa, if you or anyone you know has ever been affected by sexual harrasment, please know that it's not your fault and finding support is always the best choice. thank you for reading <3

summary: You've been filming John Logan for many months. Forty seven saved clips, only eleven of them for work. You know his tells, his angles, his best light. You know him better than you probably should for someone who is just the social media girl. What you don't know is that the night he finally asked you out, there was a check involved. A thousand dollars. And three months of the most real thing you've ever felt sitting on top of a secret that was always going to cost someone.

notes: hii i'm back!! after a week of writing between breaks this one finally came to life and i really hope you guys enjoy it, also i've been informed that puck flying accidents are not very common but we're all going to pretend together, also may contain some hockey inaccuracies, i love the game but i'm definitely not a pro. as always thank you so much for reading and please let me know what you think, your comments genuinely keep me writing!!

warnings: swearing, a bet that was a terrible idea, one thousand dollars, dean being dean, forty seven saved clips, angst with a happy ending.

word count: 12.2k

When you started working on the social media position for the hockey team at Briar U, you didn't understand how it was possible for people to take you even less seriously than you already took yourself. But then there would come the moment that they needed you, and things would change, and you would think oh, how the tables have turned.

summary: the rules are strict—you must date for two months, you must act convincingly in public, and whoever catches feelings first automatically loses.

pairing: john logan (off campus) x fem!reader

warnings/tags: 18+ content (read responsibly!) fake dating trope, enemies to lovers if you squint, mild swearing, emotional constipation, sexual tension/suggestive banter, basically the deal but make it john logan with a few changes (requested by anon who asked for a fake dating trope)

The bass vibrating through the floorboards of the hockey house felt less like a party and more like a localized seismic event.

Standing in the corner of the living room, a red plastic cup of lukeward beer held loosely in your hand, you observed the chaos with the detached scrutiny you usually reserved for your political science seminars.

It was only eleven on a Friday night, but the house was already operating at maximum capacity. Bodies pressed together in the dim ligthing, moving to a track that threated to shatter the windows.

"You're doing the thing again," Hannah said, appearing at your shoulder. She smelled like expensive vanilla and whatever fruity drink Garrett had given her.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," you replied.

pairing: John Logan x readerfem

Summary: She's been in love with her best friend for longer than she'd like to admit. He's been hung up on someone he can't have. One Halloween party later — everything falls apart in the best and worst way possible.

Some lines were never meant to be crossed.

Warnings: Alcohol consumption, mutual pining, angst with no immediate resolution, best friends to lovers, and a staircase scene that will genuinely mess you up.

a/n: Hey guys!! I really hope you enjoy this 🤍 I wrote this originally in Spanish and honestly it just hits different in Spanish, but I hope the English version does it justice anyway.

Also John Logan lives in my head rent free and has for a very long time. He is one of my obsessions and I will be taking request!

"You know I'm such a fool for you..."

( Oh sure, because nothing screams self-respect like still being hung up on someone who looks at you like a mistake he already regrets by morning)

I hated parties.  

I always thought of them as dreadful, dark, and horrible… College parties.  

Well, actually, the problem wasn’t the party itself. The problem had brown eyes, had a smile —fuck, it made your panties slide off like butter— and was labeled as my best friend, which made him a problem on most days of the year.  

John Logan was, with complete objectivity, the worst thing that had happened to me since Janis —my little and beloved 2009 Civic, named that way for the pure chaotic energy of her personality— decided that a pole was her archenemy and crashed into it at twelve kilometers per hour. 

It had been an ordinary Tuesday afternoon. I was coming from my shift at my mom’s café with cinnamon flour still on my cheeks and a carton of whole milk in the passenger seat, and suddenly, bam. Janis against the world, the world winning as always.  

And then he appeared.  

I don’t really know how it happened. I guess he was parked on the same block, or walking by, or emerging dramatically out of nowhere like he usually did. The only thing I remember is that a very tall guy in a hockey team hoodie planted himself in front of Janis, crouched down to inspect the damage, and said, with a voice that sounded like honey spilled over hot asphalt:  

“Hey, that’s fixable. Do you know anyone at Mike’s ?” He looked at me quite attentively, his brown eyes scanning me up and down a second longer than necessary. I felt my cheeks burn. I didn’t know if it was Janis that was slightly steaming from the radiator or if it was me who was about to melt right there.  

“No,” I murmured.  

“I do.” He took out his phone as if he already knew he was going to solve the problem. “What’s the model?”  

“What?”  

“The car.”  —“The car,” he repeated, pointing at Janis with his chin.  

I blinked, feeling completely out of place.  

“Janis. It’s a 2009 Civic.”  

He looked up from the phone he had just taken out and stared at me for a long second, as if he were evaluating whether I was very weird or the kind of weird he found entertaining. Then he let out a soft, genuine laugh, shaking his head.  

“Janis,” he repeated, savoring the name. “Well chosen.”  

His smile tilted only on one side, but it was enough. A direct hit to my cardiovascular system. Something in that arrogant and amused expression made my stomach do a dangerous flip.  

That’s how it all started. That stupid, that insignificant, that definitive. 

It had been his idea to dress up as Snoopy and Charlie Brown.  

Mine, I mean. My idea. Which, in retrospect, should have given me a clue of how completely gone I was, because who voluntarily suggests spending Halloween stuffed into a black and white dog costume when I could have been, I don’t know, a sexy witch like any mentally stable person?  

Me, apparently.  

And now I was standing on the threshold of a Halloween party in a Snoopy costume that made me look like a white sausage with ears. Logan had gotten lost in the crowd a while ago; right now he was on the other side of the room. There he was, leaning against the back wall in his yellow zigzag shirt that should have made him look ridiculous but somehow made him look like the most attractive guy in the room.  

“Snoopy, what the fuck?” Dean appeared beside me with his typical shit-eating grin, dressed as something that looked like a sexy demon, quite sexy. “Was that your idea or did Logan force you? Because if it was your idea, I need to know how drunk you were when you had it.”  

“It was my idea,” I admitted, falling under the Di Laurentis effect.  

Dean burst out laughing.  

“Poor Logan… having to put up with a best friend with such bad taste in costumes.” He winked at me. “Though the snout looks good on you.”  

“Go to hell, Dean.”  

“With pleasure, but first I’m going to find someone who wants to sin tonight.” He patted me on the head as if I were a real dog and disappeared into the crowd. Tucker followed behind him, shaking his head.  

“Hey, Snoopy.” Tucker leaned against me with a beer in each hand, looking me up and down with a little smirk that meant he was about to say something awful. “Great costume, wrong place.”  

“Thanks, Tucker. What would I do without your insightful observation.”  

“I’m just saying that if you’re trying to get someone to see you as something more than the best friend, going dressed as a pet might not be the best strategy—”  

“Can I?” I interrupted him, taking one of the cold beers from his hand without waiting for an answer.  

“That was Logan’s,” Tucker replied, raising an eyebrow.  

“Yeah.” I took a long, deep swig, feeling the icy liquid go down my throat. “Perfect.”  

Tucker watched me in silence for a few seconds, with that look of his between worried and resigned that he had been perfecting for months. That look that said “I know you’re about to do something stupid and I don’t know how to stop it.”  

It had all started one night of absolute weakness, after seeing Logan flirting with a girl at the café. In a drunken attack of honesty, I confessed to Tucker that I was in love with his best friend. To Tucker. Of all the people in the world, I told one of John’s best friends that I was dying for him. I still regretted it every time I remembered.  

The Hannah Wells thing was the reason Logan needed this party.  

He never mentioned it to me, of course. Logan didn’t say things like that; he already felt like shit for liking his best friend’s girl. And he carried it all in silence, as if admitting it out loud made it more real. What he said was: “I need to get drunk and forget about everything for a few hours,” which translated from Logan language meant exactly the same.  

Hannah Wells. 

Garrett’s girlfriend.  

She was pretty, smart, and had a quiet sweetness that made Logan look like a lost puppy every time she was around. I couldn’t hate her. Hannah wasn’t to blame for anything. The problem was him, who had fallen in love with the wrong girl without being able to help it, and now he punished himself for feeling something he never planned to act on.  

He told me while I was decorating pumpkin cupcakes. His voice came out low, almost defeated.  

“She loves Garrett, I’m really very happy for my friend but… I’m still here, feeling like a son of a bitch for not being able to get her out of my head.”  

I continued spreading the frosting in perfect circles, swallowing the bitter knot that had formed in my throat. And I thought, with a shame that burned me alive: maybe if I were enough… maybe if he looked at me that way.  

God. What a disgusting thought. What a disgusting me.  

“Are you okay?” Tucker asked, pulling me out of my thoughts. His voice sounded softer than usual, as if he already knew the answer.  

“I’m fantastic,” I answered automatically, with a smile so forced my cheeks hurt.  

Tucker looked at me a second longer than necessary and let out a sigh.  

“You lie terribly.”  

“Tucker.”  

“What?”  

“Shut up.”  

I said it without force, almost in a murmur. I didn’t have the energy to argue. He just shook his head, leaning his shoulder against the wall next to me, watching me as if he feared I was going to break at any moment.  

“You don’t have to do this, you know?” he murmured after a while, giving me a comforting pat on the arm before leaving.  

The problem with getting drunk at a Halloween party while trying to forget your crush is that it requires an alcohol consumption that no sensible liver would approve. And the additional problem with doing that next to your best friend who is secretly in love with you is that it generates a level of built-up tension that no sensible nervous system would approve either.  

We were somewhere in the second hour when the situation got complicated.  

Not suddenly. It’s never sudden. It’s gradual, like the temperature of the water when you raise it little by little: you don’t realize you’re boiling until it’s too late to jump.  

“Hey,” Logan said, leaning his shoulder against the wall next to me. His glass was almost empty and his cheeks had that typical red. “Are you okay?”  

“Perfectly,” I answered, and took a long sip of my drink. It was too sweet, it had too much alcohol… and it was too good.  

Logan studied me for a second. His hair was slightly messy, his face sweaty from the heat of the party, and yet —and yet, which was the central problem of my existence— he was still the most ridiculously handsome guy in the room.  

It was a cosmic injustice.  

“You don’t look perfectly,” he said.  

“And you look very interested in my emotional state for someone who’s been avoiding looking toward where Garrett is for two hours.”  

Shit. Silence.  

Too direct. I knew it the moment I said it, but alcohol has this horrible thing of removing my filter and well, it wasn’t like I was doing great either.  

Very bad idea coming. I shouldn’t have come.  

Idiot. Idiot. Idiot.  

“God…” I murmured, closing my eyes for a second. “That was wrong. I shouldn’t have said it like that. I’m sorry,” I added quickly, feeling the annoyance with myself rising in my chest. “It wasn’t for me to throw it in your face. You told me in confidence and I…”  

“No,” he cut me off softly, running a hand over the back of his neck. “You’re right.”  

We both stood looking at the same wall in front in an uncomfortable silence. On the other side, two girls dressed as cats were arguing about something the music wouldn’t let us hear. The plastic spiderwebs on the ceiling had started to come loose and hung crooked, just as pathetic as I was in that moment.  

“You know what I need?” he said, cutting the tension, and turned with that crooked smile that always disarmed me.  

“More alcohol?” I answered, half joking.  

“To dance.”  

I looked at him, surprised. I had barely opened my mouth to respond when a guy walked past us with a tray full of shots. Logan didn’t think twice: he reached out, grabbed two glasses and handed me one without saying anything.  

“Cheers,” he said, and downed it in one gulp.  

I hesitated for half a second, but the alcohol had already won the battle. I drank it in one go too. The liquid burned my throat and warmed my chest instantly.  

Without waiting for a response, Logan closed his fingers firmly around mine. His hand was warm, a little rough, and that simple contact accelerated my pulse more than the shot I had just taken.  

“Come on, we’re the most ridiculous duo at this party.” He extended his hand. “Perfectly matched.” he murmured, and pulled me toward the center of the room without giving me a chance to protest.  

It was a mistake.  

Let me say it clearly: it was a big mistake, and I should have seen it coming from the first note of the song. Because the universe, that son of a bitch, has an absolutely incredible sense of humor and decided to play Don’t Stop the Music right at that moment.  

We were already quite drunk. The shot we had taken in one gulp had hit us fast, and the heat of the party made everything feel more intense, closer, more dangerous.  

Logan pulled me to the center of the makeshift dance floor and started moving with me. At first it was something clumsy and fun, laughing at how badly we danced. But when the chorus came and Rihanna sang that part…  

Your hands around my waist…

oh shiiiiit.

He didn’t think about it. Or maybe he did. His hands slid down naturally and closed around my fluffy waist, pulling me toward him until our bodies were pressed together. The contact was electric. His fingers pressed gently against the fabric of my costume, firm, hot.  

I looked up and found him staring at me. There was no laughter in his eyes anymore. Just that drunk intensity that makes everything blurry and too sharp at the same time.  

Without realizing it, my hands went up to his chest, feeling how it moved under the shirt. We swayed together, slow and sensual, as if the music were giving us permission to cross a line we had never crossed. His breath brushed my temple. My hips responded against his almost by instinct, following the rhythm and the heat growing between us.  

This is wrong, I thought, even though my body said the complete opposite.  

It’s Logan.  

But in that moment, with his hands around my waist and his body pressed against mine, none of those reasons seemed to matter.  

“Hey,” Logan murmured, his voice hoarse and low, almost lost in the music.  

“Hi,” I replied.  

Completely useless as a response.  

Perfectly honest as a response.  

And then he kissed me.  

It wasn’t a soft or sweet kiss. It was hot, desperate, as if he had been holding it in for years and the alcohol had broken all the barriers. His hands moved from my waist to my back, pulling me hard against his body while his mouth claimed mine. He tasted like alcohol and something sweeter, more dangerous. His lips were demanding, almost aggressive, and I responded with the same intensity, tangling my fingers in his messy hair.  

The world disappeared. There was only the heat of his mouth, the way his tongue brushed mine, the low moan that escaped his throat and vibrated against my lips. We kissed as if we were drowning and the other was the air. His hands moved a little lower, pressing me against him, and I melted into that kiss, completely forgetting that this was a line we shouldn’t cross.  

He pulled away for barely a second, just the time for a ragged breath. His forehead stayed pressed against mine, eyes closed, and he murmured something that sounded like my name halfway, like a question he didn’t dare finish.  

I responded by standing on my tiptoes and kissing him again, harder.  

Logan let out a low sound, almost a growl, and pulled me against his body with more force. His lips became slower, more deliberate, as if now he wanted to learn every detail of my mouth. As if he had all the time in the world to do it.  

I don’t even know how we got to his room.  

I remember laughter in the hallway, his clumsy hands searching for the keys while I laughed against his neck, and then the door slamming shut behind us. The world was still spinning a bit, but it didn’t matter anymore. Only we mattered.  

Logan gently pushed me against the door as soon as we entered, kissing me again with that drunk desperation that had consumed us on the dance floor. Our mouths crashed between laughter and ragged breaths. We kissed badly, with teeth, with tongue, with desire. Every time one laughed, the other silenced them with a deeper kiss.  

“Turn around,” he murmured against my lips, his voice hoarse and amused.  

I obeyed between laughs, still with the Snoopy ears crooked on my head. I turned, placing my hands against the door. I felt his clumsy fingers struggling with the zipper and buttons of my costume. He was too drunk. We both were.  

“Shit… how the fuck does this open?” he growled, frustrated, while pulling without success.  

I laughed, resting my forehead against the cold wood.  

“Logan, you’re a mess…”  

“Shut up,” he said, laughing too, and gave another harder tug.  

A clear and satisfying riiiiiip was heard.   The costume tore down the back from the shoulder almost to the waist. The cold air hit my exposed skin and I let out a surprised laugh.  

“Logan!”  

“Oops,” he murmured, not sounding sorry at all.  

Instead of apologizing, he leaned in and started kissing my bare back, moving down my spine with hot, wet kisses. His big hands slipped through the opening he had just created, circling my waist and moving up my ribs. His mouth returned to my neck, biting gently while I sighed and arched against him.  

“I’ll buy you another one,” he whispered against my skin, his voice thick. “Tomorrow… or next week… I don’t know.”  

I turned in his arms, still laughing, and kissed him with the same urgency. My hands pulled at his shirt while he kept touching me as if he couldn’t believe this was happening. The torn costume hung ridiculously from my body, but neither of us had the coordination or desire to take it off properly.  

Logan pulled away just enough to look at me. His eyes were dark, glassy from alcohol and desire. Without saying anything else, he slowly knelt in front of me, his hands sliding down my hips, dragging what was left of the costume to the floor.  

He looked at me from below for a second, with that expression of pure desperation, as if he had been waiting for this all night… or all his life. His hands trembled slightly when he opened my legs.  

“John…” I whispered, not knowing if it was a warning or a plea.  

He didn’t respond with words. He just let out a low moan and buried his face between my thighs, kissing me with the same desperate urgency he had had in my mouth seconds before.

The next morning, the sun was a crime against humanity.  

I woke up with my eyes still closed, on that threshold of consciousness where you know exactly where you are but still have the fraction of a second to pretend you don’t. The sheets were thick cotton. The smell was different: wood, something that was only from this room, him.  

I reached out my hand. Cold.  

The side of the bed where he should have been was cold.  

I opened my eyes.  

Logan’s room, which I knew from being here at his desk helping him review papers, from being here on his floor watching hockey games, felt completely different with the morning light coming through the blinds. The Snoopy costume was on the floor, perfectly ironic in its abandonment. My shoes by the door, very neat for the result of something so messy.  

I sat up slowly.  

There were no immediate noises. Just the party that still echoed downstairs, muted, the sound of people who hadn’t left yet or had decided to sleep where they fell.  

I dressed in one of his hoodies. I tied up my hair as best I could. I grabbed my shoes, the Snoopy costume folded under my arm because it was the only thing I had to carry, and opened the door.  

I told myself: go out, go down the stairs, open the front door, leave.  

Simple. Executable. One foot after the other.  

I reached the landing of the stairs.  

And then I heard Logan’s voice.  

It came from the kitchen. Clear under the muted murmur of the party, with that tone of someone speaking in a low voice but too agitated to control it completely.  

I should have kept going down.  

I know.  

I knew it then too, on the landing, with my hand on the railing and my feet on the first step. I should have gone down the sixteen steps that separated Logan’s bedroom from the ground floor, crossed without looking and gone out into the November morning without hearing anything else.  

But I heard my name.  

And I froze.  

“I don’t know what the fuck happened, Tucker.” Logan’s voice, tense, low. “I woke up and… God. I fucked up. I fucked everything up.”  

A pause. Tucker responding something I couldn’t hear.  

“Yes. I know I was drunk, but that doesn’t…” A dull sound, as if he had leaned something against the counter. “If she comes down, tell her I went for a run or something. That I won’t be here. I need her to… I need her to leave before I have to—”  

I didn’t hear the rest.  

Not because it stopped. But because something in my chest made a noise that wasn’t literally audible but should have been. Like something giving way in an orderly manner: one line first, then another, then another, like the structure of something that had been held up for too long with too little.  

I need her to leave.  

I fucked everything up.  

Sixteen steps. I counted them one by one because it was the only thing I could make my brain focus on without slipping toward the rest. Tucker was with his back to me when I reached the kitchen, and he turned when he heard me. His face said an entire paragraph: the beginning of an apology, something he wanted to tell me and didn’t know how to start.  

I didn’t let him.  

I went down the last steps, crossed the house without looking at Tucker and walked out the front door.  

“Hey,” Logan called behind me.  

I stopped.  

“Wait,” he said, approaching. “Please.”  

I turned around.  

“You don’t have to say anything,” I said. “We were drunk, I was drunk, something happened that neither of us planned and we both know it.”  

Logan stayed silent. And that silence hurt me more than any words.  

“I’m in love with you,” I blurted out suddenly. The words came out without permission, but I couldn’t stop them anymore. “I’ve been in love with you for a long time. And I know this is the worst possible moment to tell you, I’m really sorry if it sounds weird to you,” I kept my voice steady out of pure stubbornness. “But I needed you to know.”  

I saw how his eyes widened, confused, almost scared. He opened his mouth. Closed it. “What? Well, I… I… I can’t.”  

I felt my face burning, but I continued:  

“I’m not asking you to feel the same. I just… needed you to know. Because after last night I can’t go back and you have no idea,” I started.  

“Don’t do that.”  

“…of what your friendship means to me,” I said anyway. “I’m sorry for misinterpreting things. I’m very grateful to have met you. But I can’t do this.”  

The November cold got into my bones. I felt everything we had built falling apart in front of me and I had just accelerated it.  

Logan ran a hand through his hair, visibly lost.  

“I… I can’t,” he murmured. “I don’t know what to tell you. I can’t give you what you want.”  

You can’t. Of course you can’t.  

I nodded, swallowing the knot in my throat.  

“I understand,” I said quietly. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to force you into anything. It’s just… I can’t lose you, Logan. But I also can’t keep destroying myself pretending I’m fine.”  

I turned around and started walking.  

“Wait,” he called, following me. “Please, just a second.”  

“No,” I answered without stopping. “Don’t ask me to stay so you can give me explanations you don’t feel. I don’t need your pity.”  

I left him there, in the middle of the sidewalk, with my heart in pieces and the feeling that I had just lost my best friend and the boy I loved in a single morning.

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Summary: convincing John Logan to fake date you is apparently much easier then admitting you have feelings for the one guy you can't have.

wc: 3265

Pairing: John Logan (Off Campus) x reader

A/N: there will probably be a part 2 for this