bee

He stares at the number beneath it, then at the downward arrow, then swipes into their messages so quickly he almost fumbles the phone into the stick rack.

Garrett: baby. eat something Garrett: now please Garrett: your dexcom’s yelling at me

The little delivered line appears. Nothing else. He waits three seconds. Four. Five. The ice keeps making noise behind him, bodies turning, sticks tapping, Coach’s whistle cutting once through the air so sharply it makes Garrett’s shoulders tense before his brain catches up. 

He types again.

Garrett: hey Garrett: answer me

Still nothing.

“Graham,” Coach calls again, closer this time, irritated but not fully pissed yet. Garrett can feel the whole team’s attention starting to swing toward him in little pieces, because he doesn’t do this. He doesn’t check out mid-practice. He doesn’t stand at the bench breathing hard with one glove off and his hair damp at his temples, staring at his phone like it’s threatened him.

He looks up. “Sorry– my girlfriend– her blood sugar’s low.”

It comes out blunt. Too blunt, maybe, because Coach’s face shifts a little. He jerks his chin toward the locker room. “Text her. Then get back out here if she’s fine.”

Garrett nods once and steps off the ice enough to call her. It rings so long that every second feels stupidly personal.

By the fifth ring, he’s already seeing her dorm room in his head with unpleasant clarity: the lamp on, laptop burning her eyes out, notes everywhere, highlighter uncapped on the comforter, some coffee she definitely shouldn’t be drinking instead of eating, her tucked into one of his hoodies like that counts as a balanced meal. 

He can picture her Dexcom stuck to the back of her arm, doing its job, screaming into his phone because she's once again decided that studying until her brain leaks out of her ears is a reasonable use of a human body.

She answers on the sixth ring. “Hi,” she says, tiny and slow, like the word has been wrapped in cotton before leaving her mouth.

Garrett’s chest tightens so hard he nearly gets angry from the relief alone. “Baby.”

“Mhm?”

“Did you get the alert?”

There’s a pause. A soft rustle. Then, distantly, like she has turned her head toward her own phone and found it personally disappointing, she says, “Oh.”

Garrett closes his eyes for half a second. “Yeah. Oh. Eat something.”

“I was gonna.”

“You were not gonna. You didn’t even know it went off.”

“I knew,” she says, with absolutely no conviction and the faint offended dignity of a girl who’s been caught being medically unserious in her own home. “I was just… looking at it.”

“At what?”

“My phone.”

“You just found your phone.”

Another pause. Then, smaller, “Maybe.”

Garrett presses the heel of his hand to one eye and breathes out. Behind him, the team is still skating. Someone laughs. A puck hits the boards hard enough to make the glass jump. The whole rink smells like ice and sweat and rubber and old adrenaline, and all he wants, suddenly and viciously, is to be in her stupid little dorm room putting sugar in her hand himself.

“Okay,” he says, forcing his voice down because she gets embarrassed when people fuss too loudly and because snapping at her when her brain is running on fumes would make him the kind of asshole he’d like to punch. “Do you have your hypo stuff?”

“Mm.”

“Words, baby.”

She sighs. “Yes.”

“What do you have?”

“Lollies.”

“Where?”

“My drawer.”

“Which drawer?”

“The drawer drawer.”

Despite himself, a laugh punches out of him, short and disbelieving. “Jesus Christ. The drawer drawer. Very helpful.”

She makes a small sound, half whine, half laugh, and he can hear how thin it is. How tired. How not fully her. “Don’t be mean. I’m low.”

“I’m aware, since your robot tattled on you.” He shifts his phone to the other ear and looks toward Coach, who is watching him now with a patience Garrett suspects has a hard expiry. “Get the lollies. Right now.”

She whines softly. “I’m comfy.”

“Baby.”

“I know.”

He huffs. “Move.”

She grumbles something under her breath that sounds a lot like bossy hockey bitch, and Garrett would enjoy that more if he wasn’t currently imagining her trying to walk across her room with low blood sugar and the coordination of a newborn deer.

There’s a shuffle, then a thump soft enough to be a drawer and not a person, thank fuck. Plastic crinkles near the speaker.

“Got them,” she says.

“Good. Eat some.”

She groans softly. “How many?”

“Enough for fifteen grams.”

Another silence.

Garrett looks at the ceiling. “The packet, baby. Read the packet.”

“I’m doing it,” she mutters, and then the line fills with the sticky little sounds of a packet being opened badly by someone whose fingers are probably trembling. Garrett hears one fall, hit the desk, roll somewhere. She sighs like it has betrayed her.

“Don’t chase it,” he says immediately.

“I wasn’t gonna.”

“You absolutely were.”

“I’m eating the other ones.”

“Good girl.”

It slips out before he thinks better of it, softer than the rest, and the line goes quiet in that particular way that means she’s heard it and tucked it somewhere warm even through the fog in her head.

Coach blows the whistle again. Garrett’s whole body twitches. “Stay on the phone with me,” he says.

“I’m fine.”

“Didn’t ask.”

“Bossy.”

“Yeah. Eat.”

She does. He listens. It should be boring, standing half-off the ice while his girlfriend chews gummy lollies into the phone like a mildly annoyed possum.

It’s, objectively, not a romantic moment. There’s nothing cinematic about glucose tabs or jelly snakes or Garrett Graham in full gear with one glove hanging from his teeth, telling a girl in a dorm room to keep chewing while his coach considers whether love is worth disrupting defensive drills.

Still, his hand stays tight around the phone until the Dexcom number nudges up a little and her voice starts coming back from wherever the low had dragged it. Enough that when she says, “You’re breathing like Darth Vader,” there’s a faint smile in it.

“Because I’m at practice.”

“Hot.”

“You’re hypoglycemic.”

“So sexy that you know that word.”

He laughs then, low and relieved in a way he tries not to let her hear too clearly. “Recheck in fifteen.”

“I know.”

“Text me the number.”

“I know, Garrett.”

That sounds more like her, annoyed and soft and there. It loosens something under his ribs by a degree. He looks back at Coach again, then at the ice, then at his phone. He should go back. She’s eaten. She’s talking. The number’s not beautiful, but it’s moving. 

This is the whole point of the app, technically, to know and respond and then not act like every alert is a national emergency. She has diabetes. She handles this all the time. She has handled it before him, will keep handling it after every practice, every class, every exam week, every stupid stretch of time where Garrett cannot physically be within arm’s reach putting food in her mouth.

That’s the rational version. The other version is that his girlfriend answered the phone sounding small and floaty and alone, and now every cell in his body is pointing toward her dorm. “Alright,” he says. “I’m coming over after practice.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I know.”

“Garrett.”

“I’m coming over after practice.”

She sighs, but it turns into a little pleased hum at the end, the kind she probably doesn’t know she makes when she’s too tired to pretend she doesn’t want him. “Fine.”

“Text me in fifteen.”

“Mhm.”

“Promise.”

“I promise.”

“And eat actual food if you can.”

She huffs. “Bossy hockey bitch.”

“There she is,” he says, smiling despite himself. “Text me.”

She does, fifteen minutes later, while he’s back on the ice and only pretending not to check his phone every time he gets within ten feet of the bench. The number's come up. Safe enough that the ugly tight thing in his chest finally stops trying to chew through bone.

She adds a blurry photo of the lolly packet on her desk like evidence in a trial, one thumb half covering the lens.

Garrett: proud of you Garrett: even though you eat like a raccoon during finals week.

Her reply comes after a minute.

raccoons are resilient

Garrett grins down at his phone so hard Logan skates past and says, “Dude, you’re disgusting.”

Garrett flips him off and gets back to practice.

By the time he gets to her dorm, his hair is still damp from the locker room shower and the collar of his hoodie smells faintly like clean soap and rink, which he's been told is not a scent so much as a warning. 

He has his backpack slung over one shoulder, two granola bars from the vending machine shoved into the front pocket because he panicked after practice, and a bottle of orange juice he stole from Tucker, who had looked at him once and decided not to ask questions.

She opens the door before he can knock a second time. For one second, Garrett just looks at her. She’s in his Briar hoodie, obviously, because at some point every item of clothing he owns has become part of her little emotional support system. 

The sleeves hang over her hands. Her hair's a mess, half pulled up and half surrendered around her face, and there’s a faint crease on her cheek from what looks like a notebook spiral. Her eyes are a little heavy still, sleepy around the edges, her whole body soft and slower than usual as she blinks up at him from the doorway.

“Hi,” she says.

Garrett’s mouth does something stupid before he can stop it. Fond and worried and annoyed, all at once. “Hi.”

“I ate.”

“Yeah?”

She nods, very seriously, then steps backward to let him in. “I ate the lollies. And half a protein bar.”

“Half?”

“It tasted like shit.”

“Protein bars usually taste like that.”

He shuts the door behind him and drops his bag by her desk, already scanning the room in a way he knows makes him look insane and cannot quite bring himself to stop.

Lolly packet open on the desk. Water bottle half full. Textbooks spread across the bed like she’s been trying to summon a degree through paper-based witchcraft. Laptop still open, screen dimmed. The air smells like highlighter ink, laundry detergent, and the sour little remains of coffee gone cold.

He turns back to her. “What’s your number now?”

She points vaguely toward her phone. “Better.”

“That’s not a number.”

“It’s a vibe.”

He raises his brows at her. “Your blood sugar is not a vibe, baby.”

“It kind of is, actually.”

“Phone.”

She rolls her eyes, but there’s no real heat in it, and hands him the phone. He checks because she lets him. Because they’ve had this conversation before, clumsy at first and then easier.

The line between care and hovering. The difference between him helping and him acting like diabetes is a thing that happened to him because he loves her. He still gets it wrong sometimes. He knows that. His worry has bad manners when it gets scared.

But she’d added him to Dexcom Follow herself, sitting cross-legged on his bed with her phone in one hand and his in the other, saying, “Okay, this is not permission to become extra annoying,” while he’d promised, with a straight face, to be only normal amounts of annoying.

Now he looks at the number and the arrow, watches the trend flatten out, and hands it back with a nod. “Better.”

“Told you.”

“Yeah, yeah. You’re a medical genius.”

“I am, actually.”

“You also forgot to eat.”

She makes a face and immediately looks away, which tells on her more than any confession would have. “I didn’t forget.”

Garrett’s eyebrows lift.

“I… delayed,” she says, which is such a committed piece of academic bullshit that he almost respects it.

“You delayed food.”

“Temporarily.”

“Until your blood sugar dropped and an app screamed at your boyfriend during practice.”

She pulls the sleeves of his hoodie over her hands and rubs at one eye with the cuff. “When you say it like that, it sounds bad.”

“Because it was stupid.”

“Garrett.”

“Baby.”

She looks up at him then, and the argument thins out before either of them can turn it into one. There’s still a little tremor in her fingers when she lowers her hand. Barely there, but enough. Enough that all the teasing in his mouth rearranges itself into something quieter.

He steps closer. “You scared me.”

Her face shifts, the soft defensive tilt of her mouth giving way to something smaller, less arranged. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m not saying it so you’ll feel bad.” His hand comes up to the side of her neck, thumb resting under her jaw, checking because he can’t help himself, touching because that’s the only language his worry knows how to speak without turning sharp. Her skin is warm. A little clammy still at the edge of her hairline. “I just– don’t do that shit alone if you’re dropping, okay? Text me back. Eat first, be stubborn after.”

Her mouth twitches faintly. “That order seems unfair to my brand.”

“Your brand needs snacks.”

“My brand is very mysterious.”

“Your brand is half a bag of gummy worms and a hoodie you stole from me.”

She leans forward then, slowly, until her forehead lands against the middle of his chest. A soft, tired little surrender into the nearest solid thing, which happens to be him.

Garrett’s hand slides automatically around the back of her head, fingers spreading into her hair, and the rest of him goes quiet around her.

“Still feel weird?” he asks.

“A little,” she says, voice muffled into his hoodie. “Mostly tired now.”

“That happens?”

“Mhm. Sometimes after.” She shifts closer, cheek turning against his chest. “And I stayed up too late. And had coffee. And forgot dinner.”

“Yeah,” he murmurs, kissing the top of her head. “Figured.”

He can picture her last night at two in the morning, hunched over notes, telling herself one more chapter, one more diagram, one more lecture recording, the whole slippery student lie of just a bit longer until suddenly the body that’s been politely asking for basic maintenance starts knocking things over to get attention. 

She does that sometimes. Gets so focused the rest of her becomes an inconvenience. Food, sleep, water, all of it demoted beneath whatever exam or paper or assignment has started living behind her eyes.

Garrett hates it in a way that feels embarrassingly tender. He likes her focused. Likes her smart mouth and her colour-coded notes and the little frown she gets when she’s trying to force information into her brain. But he hates the part where she forgets she’s not a machine built for academic suffering and caffeine.

“Bed,” he says.

She tilts her head back just enough to look at him, chin still pressed to his chest. “You’re very annoying when you’re worried.”

“I’m very annoying all the time. You knew that going in.”

“Yeah,” she says, and the tiny smile that comes with it makes something in his ribs unclench. “I did.”

He gets her onto the bed with the kind of careful bossiness she complains about but obeys when she feels like this, all heavy limbs and delayed reactions and stubborn little noises made purely for the dignity of it. 

He clears the textbooks first, stacking them onto her desk badly enough that she makes a wounded sound from behind him. “That’s not the system.”

“What system?”

“My system.”

He ignores that and pulls back the blanket. She climbs in, still wearing his hoodie, still with the sleeves eaten over her hands, and watches him from the pillows with that floaty, softened look that would be cute if it didn’t also make the protective part of his brain start dragging furniture in front of doors.

He finds the other half of the violent protein bar and holds it up. “More shit?”

She groans. “Please don’t make me.”

“You need something longer-lasting, right?”

“I had half.”

“Baby.”

She groans. “I hate when you use the reasonable voice.”

“Because it works?”

“Because you sound like Tucker.”

“That’s the worst thing you’ve ever said to me.”

She smiles properly then, small but real, and reaches for the bar with great personal suffering. “Fine. But I’m doing this under protest.”

“Noted.”

She takes two bites and chews with the expression of someone enduring a great injury. Garrett sits on the edge of the mattress and watches her because he’s become the sort of guy who monitors protein bar consumption with the intensity of a playoff game. 

If Dean saw him now, Garrett would never hear the end of it. If Logan saw him, he would make a face and call it love in the most annoying possible tone. Tucker would probably approve, which remains devastating.

When she’s done enough that he decides not to bully the rest of it into her, Garrett sets the wrapper on the nightstand and kicks off his shoes. She lifts the blanket immediately, wordless, like she has been waiting for the exact second his hands are free.

“Oh, now you want me,” he says.

She gives him a look from under heavy eyelids. “I always want you.”

She attaches herself to him before he’s even fully settled, curling into his side with her cheek over his chest and one knee sliding over his thigh under the blanket. It’s clingier than usual, or maybe just less disguised. 

Her hand sneaks under the hem of his hoodie, palm finding the warm skin over his ribs like she has been assigned a location and intends to remain there.

Garrett lets out a slow breath and wraps his arm around her, hand spreading between her shoulder blades. For a while, he just rubs up and down her back in the quiet, steady rhythm he knows she likes, over the thick cotton of his hoodie and the delicate line of her spine beneath it.

Her room feels softer now with the lamp low and the laptop finally shut, the whole anxious mess of studying pushed to the edges for at least twenty minutes. Outside the door, someone laughs down the hall. Campus keeps moving with absolutely no respect for the fact that Garrett Graham’s just aged six years over a glucose alert.

He kisses her hair. “Feeling better?”

She nods against him, slow. “Mhm.”

“Less weird?”

“Less weird.” Her fingers flex once against his ribs. “Just sleepy.”

“That’s okay.”

“I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“I know.” His hand keeps moving. Shoulder to waist. Waist to shoulder. Again. “Just text me back next time.”

“I will.”

“And keep stuff by your bed.”

“I do.”

“Stuff you can reach without going on an expedition to the drawer drawer.”

A tiny laugh shakes against him. “The drawer drawer was perfectly clear.”

He smiles into her hair despite himself. “You’re lucky you’re cute when your brain’s offline.”

“My brain’s online.”

“Baby, you called me a bossy hockey bitch and then argued that blood sugar is a vibe.”

“It is a vibe.”

He tips his head back against the wall and lets himself laugh quietly, relief finally loosening properly through him now that she’s warm and fed and heavy against his side. “You’re impossible.”

She hums, pleased by that for reasons that are between her and whatever sugar is currently making its way through her bloodstream. “You love me.”

“Somehow.”

She pinches his side without lifting her head, weak but accurate. “Mean.”

He catches her hand under his hoodie and holds it there, thumb moving over her knuckles where they rest against his skin. “Yeah,” he says, softer. “I love you.”

After a second, she tilts her face enough to press a kiss to his chest through the hoodie. It’s barely a kiss. More a warm little contact. A thank you she’s too tired and too proud to make formal.

“Love you too,” she mumbles.

Garrett looks down at the top of her head, at the messy spill of hair over his arm, at the Dexcom app still open on her phone on the nightstand, the graph inching back into safer territory one small dot at a time. 

His body still has the leftover adrenaline in it, the rink alarm echoing faintly somewhere behind his ribs, the ugly little flash of her not answering when he called. But here she is, tucked into him like she has no plans to be anywhere else, breathing warm against his chest, one hand under his hoodie and the other curled into the blanket.

So he stays. Practice can keep its exhaustion. His homework can rot. The rest of campus can do whatever people do when they’re not pinned beneath a sleepy diabetic girlfriend with a talent for making his whole chest feel like it has been bruised open in the best possible way.

He rubs her back until her breathing goes heavier. Every few minutes, his eyes flick to her phone. The number steadies. Climbs. Holds. He lets out a breath he hadn’t realised he was still keeping.

Then, very softly, mostly because she’s almost asleep and because he likes saying things when she’s too tired to make fun of him properly, he murmurs, “Gonna start packing snacks in my hockey bag like a dad.”

Her mouth curves faintly against him. “Hot.”

“Yeah?”

“Mhm. Dilf behaviour.”

Garrett freezes, then looks down at her. “Don’t call me that when you’re half asleep after a medical incident.”

She laughs once, tiny and muffled and pleased with herself, and curls closer.

He shakes his head, smiling despite every effort not to. “Jesus Christ.”

“Snacks are hot,” she whispers.

“Go to sleep.”

“Bossy.”

He kisses her head again, slower this time, and settles his hand warm at the centre of her back. Her breathing has evened out, her body gone loose and trusting against his, the last of the low-blood-sugar fog giving way to real sleep. 

Garrett stays awake a little longer anyway, watching the graph, listening to the hallway quiet down, feeling her heartbeat through the layers between them.

When the number stays steady, he finally sets her phone facedown, tucks the blanket higher over her shoulder, and lets his eyes close with his mouth pressed to her hair.

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Lucy, sitting on her left with her knees angled toward her and a cup of something hot steaming between both hands, made a sympathetic little noise that had absolutely no sympathy in it. “Of course.”

“He isn’t.”

“Right,” Monique said. “He just kissed you goodbye in front of half the hockey house and gave you his jacket because you shivered once.”

“I was cold.”

“And he, famously, is the only man at Briar with access to outerwear.”

She huffed, sinking her chin into the collar because the arena was freezing and because, unfortunately, Garrett’s jacket was stupidly warm. It smelled like cold air and detergent and that clean, sharp soap from the bathroom at the hockey house, with something underneath that was just him in a way she was trying very hard not to examine in public. 

“You’re both being unbearable.”

Lucy brightened. “Because we love you.”

“Because you’re obsessed with my downfall.”

“Same thing.”

Down on the ice, the team was warming up, bodies cutting through the pale scratch of skate marks, pucks snapping hard off sticks and boards, the sound ricocheting up into the stands like little bursts of thunder. 

It always amazed her a little, how different Garrett looked out there. Like someone had taken the boy who sprawled across the couch at the hockey house with his knee nudging hers, stealing fries from her plate, and sharpened him into something clean and fast and almost vicious. He moved like he belonged to the rink. Like the cold had been made for him.

She spotted him before he spotted her, which felt like winning something small and embarrassing. He was skating backward near centre ice, helmet tipped enough that she could see the dark mess of his curls escaping beneath it, mouth moving around something he was saying to Logan. 

Logan shoved him lightly with one gloved hand, Garrett shoved him back harder, and then Garrett’s gaze drifted up toward their section like he’d felt her looking. It was ridiculous, how quick his face changed.

One second he was all hockey captain focus, jaw set, shoulders loose, stick held easy in one hand. The next, his grin cracked open bright enough that Lucy made a tiny gagging sound beside her. He lifted his chin at her, smug and warm at the same time, and she gave him a wave that was supposed to be casual and came out entirely too fond. 

His eyes dropped, caught on the jacket around her shoulders, and the grin did something worse. Softer. More private. Like he was trying to pretend he didn’t like it and failing so badly he should’ve been embarrassed.

“Oh, babe,” Monique said under her breath. “That is a boyfriend.”

“Shut up.”

“He saw you in his jacket and almost forgot he had legs.”

“Shut up.”

Lucy leaned over her knees, waving down at the ice with a wide grin like she was trying to get them married before the first whistle. “Garrett! We think you’re very brave for not having a girlfriend!”

Her stomach dropped straight into her shoes. “Lucy.”

Garrett, mercifully too far away to hear, only pointed his stick up in their direction before turning back toward the drill. But he was still grinning. The asshole.

By the time warmups started winding down and the arena filled properly, the air had shifted into that restless pre-game buzz that made even the metal railings feel charged. Students packed into rows with painted faces and cheap signs, somebody behind them was already yelling at a player who hadn’t done anything yet, and the announcer’s voice came in and out over the speakers while the lights washed everything in cold white. 

She had just turned her head to answer Monique, who was asking if she wanted to split fries at intermission, when an older couple paused at the end of their row.

The man looked familiar in the vague, unsettling way people did when you’d seen their face somewhere but couldn’t place the context. He was tall, broad through the shoulders even under his coat, with a square jaw, silver threaded through his hair, and the kind of presence that made space feel like it ought to rearrange around him. 

The woman beside him was polished, pretty in a neat, expensive way, her smile already prepared before she’d fully made eye contact.

“Oh– sorry,” she said automatically, shifting toward Lucy to make room. The jacket bunched at her elbows as she moved. “There’s space here.”

The man shook his head once, not dismissive, but close enough to it that her body noticed before her brain did. “It’s fine.”

He stepped past her, his knee brushing the edge of the row, then stopped halfway through lowering himself into the seat when his eyes landed on the jacket. The Briar lettering, Garrett’s number stitched into the sleeve.

Something in his expression flickered. Recognition, maybe. Possession, almost, though that was a strange thing to think about a jacket.

“Graham?” he said.

Her hand tightened slightly around the cuff before she realised she was doing it. “Mhm.”

He looked at her properly then. It was a quick look, assessing, the kind of look she’d seen from attending physicians when they walked into a room and decided in half a second whether you knew what you were doing. It didn’t feel rude enough to call rude, which made it worse somehow.

“Phil,” he said, holding out his hand. “Garrett’s father.”

For a second her brain went perfectly blank, like someone had dropped a sheet over every thought she owned. Phil. Garrett’s father. Garrett’s father, sitting next to her, with his hand out, while she was wearing Garrett’s jacket and had spent the last twenty minutes arguing that he wasn’t her boyfriend.

“Oh,” she said, and immediately wanted to walk into traffic. “Uh. Hi.”

His hand was firm around hers. Too firm, maybe, or maybe she was being ridiculous because her nervous system had just been handed a situation it hadn’t studied for.

She gave him her name, then remembered to smile, then hated that she had to think about smiling, because there was nothing actually wrong. People met parents. Normal people met parents. Girls met the parents of boys who were not their boyfriends all the time, probably. Maybe. Fuck.

Phil repeated her name like he was filing it away. “This is my fiancée, Cindy.”

Cindy leaned forward slightly, her smile warmer than his but still careful around the edges. “Lovely to meet you.”

“You too,” she said, and meant it enough. Cindy seemed nice. She had a gentle voice, pretty earrings, a hand resting lightly in her lap. Normal. Fine. Everything was fine.

Lucy, to her credit, had gone unusually still beside her, which meant either she was trying not to say something insane or she had also felt the temperature around them change by a few degrees. Monique gave a polite smile and then looked at the ice with the laser focus of someone pretending very hard not to eavesdrop.

The lights dropped. The crowd roared. The starting lineup began. She did what she always did when Garrett’s name came over the speakers. She cheered, because she liked seeing him win and because he was impossible not to cheer for when he skated out with his chin lifted and that loose, cocky glide like the entire arena was a room he’d already talked his way into owning. 

He came over the boards with his stick in one hand, shoulders squared, helmet low over his eyes, and she cupped her hands around her mouth, yelling loud enough for Lucy to laugh beside her. “Graham!”

Garrett looked up. For half a second, he found her and everything was exactly the way it had been during warmups. His face opened, instinctive and bright, because he had seen her. Then his gaze moved one seat over.

The grin fell off his face so fast it barely looked like an expression changing. It looked like something had been cut. Her hands lowered slowly from her mouth. 

His body went wrong in this tiny, awful way, one shoulder tightening, his stick hand flexing once, jaw locking hard beneath the cage of his helmet. From this far away, with the arena loud and the lights sharp and bodies moving everywhere, nobody else would’ve noticed, but she noticed. 

She noticed because she had watched Garrett relax under her hands on a couch, had watched him half-asleep in a kitchen at midnight, had watched him come back from games buzzing and smug and high on adrenaline. She knew the way his confidence usually sat in his body.

This wasn’t that. His eyes flicked back to her. Sharp. Caught. Like he’d walked into a room and found a door missing. She lifted her hand a little, uncertain, the motion barely more than a question.

Garrett’s mouth moved around something she couldn’t hear. Then Logan skated into his shoulder, saying something to him, and Garrett snapped his head away like he’d been caught staring. The anthem started. Everyone around them stood.

She stood too, because her body knew what to do even if the rest of her had gone strange and cold.

“You okay?” Lucy murmured, so low it barely made it past the noise.

“Yeah,” she said, eyes still on Garrett. “I just– yeah.”

Phil didn’t say anything. He stood with his hands folded in front of him, looking down at the ice with a flatness that made the fine hairs at the back of her neck lift.

The first period was bad. Bad in the way Garrett wasn’t where he was supposed to be inside his own body. His skating was still sharp, his passes still clean enough that anyone else might not have caught the seams coming loose, but she could see it in the half-second too late he turned his head, the unnecessary shove after the whistle, the way he kept taking contact like he wanted it to hurt. 

He was playing with his shoulders too high, jaw too tight, head whipping up toward the stands every time the puck moved out of his reach. Toward her. No, not toward her. Toward the seat next to her.

The first time he slammed another player into the boards hard enough to make the glass rattle in front of a whole section of screaming students, Lucy jolted beside her and muttered, “Jesus Christ.”

Monique’s mouth pressed into a line. “That was… a lot.”

She didn’t answer. Her fingers had found the edge of Garrett’s sleeve and were worrying at the stitching, rubbing the seam back and forth under her thumb until it started to feel raw. 

She kept waiting for Phil to react like a father. To lean forward. To swear under his breath because his son was losing his head. To look worried, even annoyed in a normal sports-parent way. Phil only exhaled through his nose.

It was quiet, almost nothing beneath the noise of the crowd, but she was close enough to hear it. Then he shook his head once, slow and disappointed, like Garrett had missed an open net in a peewee game instead of driving himself visibly off the rails in front of everyone.

Cindy glanced at him. “Phil.”

“He knows better,” Phil said, eyes still on the ice.

The words came out too controlled, worn smooth by use, like they belonged in a room where nobody else was supposed to hear them.

On the ice, Garrett clipped someone behind the play and got shoved back for it. The whistle blew. A ref’s arm went up. The crowd erupted into boos before the penalty was even fully called.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Logan barked from somewhere near the boards, loud enough that she caught it more by shape than sound.

Garrett didn’t look at the ref. He looked up. Right at her.

His face was flushed from exertion, mouth open around a hard breath, but his eyes were too dark from here, too fixed, and something in them made the noise around her go thin and far away. She could feel Lucy watching her now. Monique too. Phil was perfectly still beside her. The ref pointed Garrett toward the box.

Phil’s mouth tightened. “Undisciplined.”

It landed in her chest in a way it shouldn’t have. One word. Nothing, really. But her body did that quiet, clinical thing it sometimes did on placement, when a patient said something that didn’t match their injury, or a family member answered too quickly, or a bruise sat in the wrong shape under someone’s sleeve. Her brain started lining up details without asking permission.

Garrett didn’t talk about his dad. Garrett joked about everything until he didn’t. Garrett, who let her steal his hoodies and his food and half his bed, had never once said, You should meet my father.

Garrett, who could take a chirp from Dean, a shove from Logan, a full-body collision from a six-foot-three defenseman and grin through it, had looked up at the stands and gone pale under the arena lights because his father was sitting beside her.

The penalty clock started. She swallowed, and it felt like trying to get down a mouthful of cotton.

“I’m gonna…” she started.

Lucy touched her wrist under the jacket, gentle and immediate. “Yeah.”

Monique nodded once, already shifting her knees aside. “Go.”

She slipped out of the row with the awkward, whispered apologies of someone trying to move through packed seats without making a scene. Phil didn’t stand. He didn’t even really move his legs. She had to squeeze past him, Garrett’s jacket brushing his coat, and the whole time she could feel his attention on the side of her face.

“Nice meeting you,” Cindy said softly, and it was the first thing anyone in that little pocket had said that sounded human.

“You too,” she managed, then kept going.

The stairs down from the stands felt longer than usual, steeper, the concrete humming with the crowd above her. The arena had always seemed fun from the seats – cold and loud and bright, full of ritual and noise – but underneath it, past the ushers and the concession smell and the taped signs pointing toward restricted areas, it became something else. More industrial. Cinderblock walls, rubber mats, the metallic tang of skate blades and old ice, the sour-sweet smell of sweat and gear drifting from the corridor that led toward the locker rooms.

She wasn’t technically supposed to be there. She knew that. She also knew enough of the arena by now, had been kissed against enough back hallways and walked past enough equipment carts with Garrett’s hand warm at the small of her back, that nobody stopped her when she hovered near the mouth of the corridor and tried to look like she belonged.

The first period ended with the buzzer tearing through the building. A few seconds later, the team came off the ice in a rush of blades and noise and male anger, helmets shoved up, sticks clattering, voices overlapping. Someone slammed a glove into the wall. A coach barked something she couldn’t make out. 

Logan came through first, red-faced and furious, snapping, “What the fuck is up your ass, G?” over his shoulder.

Garrett followed behind him. He looked worse up close. He wasn’t hurt, not physically, anyway, aside from the usual flush and damp curls plastered to his forehead and the little nick at his cheek where someone’s glove must’ve caught him. 

But there was something too tight about him, something barely leashed beneath the pads and jersey, his breathing hard enough that his chest moved like he’d been sprinting. His eyes were flat with anger until they hit her. Then it all broke at the edges.

He stopped so abruptly Dean nearly ran into the back of him. “Jesus, Graham–”

Garrett shoved his gloves and helmet into Logan’s chest without looking at him.

Logan caught them on instinct, still scowling. “Yeah, sure, I’ll just hold your shit. Great talk.”

Garrett was already moving. She barely had time to step forward before he was in front of her, too close and somehow not close enough, his hands coming up like he wanted to touch her everywhere at once and couldn’t decide what was allowed. 

He settled on her waist first, then her elbows, then the sides of the jacket like he was checking that it was still around her. His palms were damp through the sleeves. His breathing was loud between them.

“Hi,” he said.

It was so wildly, heartbreakingly wrong as an opening that she almost laughed. 

“Hi,” she said, much softer.

His eyes moved over her face, quick and frantic in a way he was clearly trying to hide and failing. “You okay?”

That made her hand come up on its own. “Me?”

“Yeah.”

“Garrett.” Her fingers slid into the damp curls at his hairline, pushing them back from his forehead the way she had done half a dozen times in rooms where his biggest problem was pretending he didn’t like being fussed over. “Baby, what happened?”

His eyes shut for a second when she touched him, like his whole body had been waiting for permission to unclench and could only manage it in pieces. When he opened them again, they were still too bright, too focused.

“Please move.”

Her stomach dropped. Her hands started to come away from his face. “Oh. Yeah, sorry–”

“No.” His hands caught hers immediately, fast enough that she startled, but he softened his grip the second he realised. He brought her hands back to his face himself, pressing her palms to his cheeks like he could anchor her there. “No, not– fuck. Not you. Seats. Don’t sit there.”

She stared at him. “What?”

“Get your friends and move. Don’t sit there.” His voice cracked around the last word, barely, but she heard it. Garrett heard it too; she watched the flash of frustration cross his face, aimed inward, sharp and embarrassed. “Please.”

Behind him, the corridor was still moving. Players filing past, coaches calling, Dean hovering near the locker-room door with his helmet tucked under one arm and his brow furrowed in a way that looked too serious on him. 

Tucker had slowed a few feet away, his mouth set, eyes flicking between them like he was noticing more than he wanted to. Logan, still holding Garrett’s gloves, had gone quiet.

She tried to keep her own voice low. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. He just sat next to me, and then he saw the jacket, and I didn’t–” Her fingers tightened slightly against his jaw. “I didn’t mean to overstep if you didn’t want me to meet him.”

Garrett shook his head before she’d even finished. “It’s not that.”

“I swear, I wasn’t trying to make it a thing.”

“I know.” He said it too quickly. Fierce, almost. His thumbs moved once against her wrists, a small, restless stroke, like he was trying to reassure her while standing there with every muscle in his body pulled tight enough to snap. “I know. I don’t care that you met him. I mean, I care, but not like that. I just–” He stopped, jaw working. His eyes cut toward the tunnel that led back to the ice, then back to her. “I don’t want you sitting next to him.”

The fluorescent light overhead hummed. Somewhere down the hall, a coach yelled, “Two minutes!”

She looked at Garrett’s face. Really looked. There were things she could ask. A normal girl might have asked them. What do you mean? Why? What happened with your dad? 

But she wasn’t standing in a normal moment, and she wasn’t stupid, and the body learned its own language when you spent enough time reading other people’s fear in hospital beds. 

She knew what a person looked like when they were angry because anger was easier to hold than panic. She knew the tiny, devastating difference between protective and afraid. She knew what it meant when a grown man couldn’t stop checking the location of another grown man in a crowded building.

Her mouth went dry. She didn’t let her face change too much. That felt important. Garrett was watching her like he expected something to happen if she understood too quickly.

“Okay,” she said.

His shoulders moved with a breath he didn’t quite release. “Okay?”

“Yeah.” She nodded, slow and steady, because something in him needed steady more than it needed questions. “I’ll text Lucy and Monique. We’ll move sections.”

His fingers flexed at her waist. “You don’t have to leave the game.”

“I know.”

“I just don’t want–”

“I know,” she said again, and she didn’t know the details, not really, but she knew enough for now. Enough to understand this wasn’t about him being embarrassed. Enough to understand that whatever Phil Graham was, whatever he had been, Garrett didn’t want him beside her in a place where he could see but not reach. “We’ll move. I promise.”

Garrett’s mouth pressed shut. He turned his head just enough to kiss the centre of her palm. The gesture was so soft it hurt.

He shuddered on the breath after, barely visible under all the pads and noise and anger, and she had the sudden, awful urge to take him somewhere quiet and lock every door between him and the rink. 

Instead, she brushed her thumb over the cheekbone beneath his eye, feeling the damp heat of him, the faint scrape of stubble, the hard pulse ticking at his jaw.

“Graham,” Dean called from the locker-room doorway, voice rougher than usual. “We have a fucking game to play, man.”

Garrett didn’t look away from her. “Yeah.”

“Now would be good.”

“Yeah, I heard you.”

Dean’s eyes flicked to her. For once, he didn’t make a joke. That, more than almost anything else, made her chest tighten.

She lifted her brows at Garrett, trying for something like normal because normal was a gift she could give him in pieces. “You okay?”

The answer was obviously no. They both knew it. Garrett nodded anyway, because he was Garrett and because there was a game and because whatever had just opened between them was too raw to put words inside with half the team watching.

“Yeah,” he said, then swallowed. “We’ll– tonight, okay? I’ll–”

“Don’t explain now.” Her thumb moved once more over his cheek, and she let her voice soften around the command, because he listened better when he thought she wasn’t letting him off the hook entirely. “Just go win.”

Something in his face loosened by a fraction. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He bent before she could decide whether that was a terrible idea in the middle of a hallway full of hockey players and coaches and fluorescent lighting, and kissed her properly.

It wasn’t the kind of kiss he usually gave her in public, quick and obnoxiously smug, designed to make her roll her eyes and make his friends groan. 

This was quieter. Messier at the edges. His mouth warm and urgent on hers, one hand sliding up to the side of her neck, the other still fisted in the side of his own jacket around her. She kissed him back because there was nothing else to do with all the feeling in her chest, because if he needed to come back to himself through her mouth for three seconds in a cinderblock corridor, she could give him that.

When he pulled back, he didn’t go far. His forehead rested against hers, helmet gone, hair damp, breath warming her lips. “Thank you,” he said, so low it barely existed.

She swallowed. “Go, babe.”

His mouth twitched. It was tiny. Barely there. But it was Garrett enough that she felt her own lungs remember what they were for.

“Graham,” Dean snapped, but there was relief threaded through it now. “I swear to God, if you make me drag you into this room by your jockstrap–”

Garrett huffed, the sound scraping out of him half-laugh, half-breath. He kissed her forehead once, quick and hard, then stepped back. His hands lingered until the last second, fingers sliding off her wrists like he hated letting go, and then he turned, caught his gloves when Logan shoved them at his chest, and jogged toward the locker room.

Logan watched him go, then looked at her. For a beat, neither of them said anything. Then Logan lifted Garrett’s helmet slightly, like a sad little toast. “He’s gonna be less of a dick now, right?”

She let out a breath that nearly became a laugh. “God, I hope so.”

“Cool. Because he was doing the whole tortured captain thing and it was fucking up the vibe.”

“Logan,” Tucker said quietly.

“What? It was.”

Dean, from the doorway, pointed at her with two fingers. “You. Move seats. Tell your friends too.”

“I know.”

His expression softened, quick and uncomfortable, like sincerity made his skin itch. “Good.”

Then they were gone, swallowed by the locker room and the burst of voices inside, the door swinging shut behind them.

For a few seconds, she just stood there in the corridor with Garrett’s jacket heavy around her shoulders and the cold from the rink crawling along the floor. Her hands drifted up to the top of her head, fingers interlocking there, elbows out, like she needed to physically hold herself in place. The breath left her in one long, uneven puff.

“Holy fuck,” she whispered to no one.

“So that’s…” Garrett’s voice thinned out before it reached the end of the sentence, like it had snagged somewhere behind his ribs. He was sitting with his back against the headboard, one knee bent under the covers and one stretched out in front of him, still in the black sweatpants he’d pulled on after his shower, his hair damp and curling messily over his forehead. The bruising around his left eye had darkened since they’d left the arena, blooming purple-black beneath the bone, the skin there swollen enough to make him look a little unfamiliar if she stared too long. “Yeah.”

The hockey house had finally settled beneath them, the late-night noise thinned down to the occasional creak of floorboards, the muffled thump of someone closing a cabinet downstairs, the low murmur of voices from the living room that would rise for a second and then sink again like the boys were trying, badly, to be subtle about giving Garrett space. 

His bedside lamp was the only light on, soft and yellow across the rumpled sheets, catching on the water glass on his nightstand, the edge of his phone, the pile of discarded gear near his closet that still smelled faintly like ice and sweat and the metallic air of the rink.

She was sitting beside him with one leg folded underneath herself, close enough that her hip pressed into his thigh. Her hand had been in his hair for the last few minutes, fingers moving slowly through the damp strands at the back of his head, not because she had any real plan for comforting him, but because stopping felt impossible. Like if she stopped touching him, the room might tilt too far in one direction and take him with it.

She took a breath, careful and quiet, then leaned in and pressed her mouth to the bare slope of his shoulder. His skin was warm beneath her lips. Too warm, maybe, or maybe her body was just paying attention to everything now – the tension in his neck, the way his hand was curled loosely against the sheet, the uneven drag of his breathing as he stared at the wall opposite his bed and looked like he was seeing something that wasn’t there.

“Thank you for telling me,” she said.

Garrett nodded once. His throat moved. “Yeah.”

She let her mouth rest against his shoulder for another second before lifting her head. There were a hundred things she could have said, and almost all of them felt either too small or too big. I’m sorry felt thin. That’s awful felt obvious. You didn’t deserve that felt true, but she didn’t know if truth was something he could hold yet without flinching. 

So she stayed beside him, fingers still working gently through his hair, and asked the question that had been sitting carefully in the back of her mouth since he’d started talking. “Does anyone else know?”

His eyes flicked down to the duvet. The corner of it was caught beneath his hand, twisted tight in his fingers now, white-knuckled in a way he probably didn’t even realise.

“Logan,” he said after a moment. “Just Logan. I mean…” He swallowed, the sound rough. “The guys know I don’t–” His mouth pulled in a faint, humourless line, like even the phrase felt ridiculous for the size of it. “They know I don’t get along with my dad. They know he’s a dick. That’s all.”

She nodded, because that made sense in a way that made her chest hurt. Garrett could live with people thinking Phil Graham was an asshole. He could live with sharp jokes, with vague references, with a clean, manageable version of the story that didn’t require anyone to look too closely. 

He could live inside the gap between what the guys knew and what had actually happened, because Garrett was good at taking pain and turning it into something people could stand to be near. A chirp. A closed door. A shrug that said nothing to see here.

She pressed another kiss to his shoulder, softer than the first. “Okay.”

Garrett made a sound that was barely a breath. At first she thought he was going to speak. His mouth opened slightly, his brow drawing together, and she felt him pull in air against her side like he was trying to push something down before it could come up. 

Then his face changed. A crack through the careful flatness he’d been holding since the words had started coming out of him. His eyes squeezed shut, his lips pressed together, and his chin dipped toward his chest with this tiny, defeated shake like he was angry at himself for not being able to stop it.

“Oh, Garrett,” she whispered, and that was all it took.

He broke quietly. His shoulders folded inward first, as if his body was trying to make itself smaller despite every inch of him being built like a wall, and then the first sob dragged through him so hard she felt it before she heard it.

He turned toward her like he wasn’t fully deciding to, like some older, younger part of him had simply reached for the nearest safe place, and she caught him before he could apologise for needing it.

“Come here,” she murmured, already pulling him in.

Garrett went with a kind of helplessness she’d never seen from him. His forehead dropped into the curve of her shoulder, his arms coming around her waist, fingers fisting in the back of her shirt like he needed something to hold onto and hated that he did. 

She wrapped herself around him as much as she could, one hand sliding up to the back of his head, palm firm over the damp curls, the other across his shoulders where all that muscle and strength was shaking under her touch. 

He was too big for her to hold the way she wanted, too broad, too solid, but she tried anyway. She tucked her cheek against his temple and kept him there while he cried into her shirt, each breath leaving him broken and uneven.

“You’re okay,” she said, low and steady, though her own throat felt tight enough to bruise. “I’ve got you. You’re okay.”

He shook his head against her. “I couldn’t–” His voice tore on the word, and his hand tightened at her back. “I couldn’t protect her.”

Her eyes closed.

“My mom,” he said, and it came out smaller than anything she had ever heard from him. “I tried. I swear to God, I tried, but I was–” He sucked in a breath that didn’t go anywhere useful. “I was a kid. I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t make him stop.”

She held him harder, her fingers pressing into his hair, her other hand spreading wide over the back of his shoulder. “Garrett.”

“I’d hear it and I’d just– fuck, I’d just stand there sometimes. I’d freeze. Or I’d go in and he’d look at me, and I knew it would be worse, but I still–” His voice collapsed into another sob, rough and furious and devastated all at once. “I couldn’t protect her.”

She shook her head against his, because the blame in his voice was so old and so deep that it made her stomach turn. It had lived in him for years, packed behind his ribs, disguised under trophies and goals and that bright, cocky grin he wore like armour.

“You were a child,” she said, and her voice came out firmer than she expected. “Garrett, you were a kid.”

He didn’t answer. His breath stuttered into her neck.

“You shouldn’t have had to protect anyone from him,” she said. “That was never supposed to be your job.”

His fingers flexed in the fabric of her shirt, and for a second she thought he might pull away. He didn’t. He stayed folded into her, face hidden against her shoulder, and she kept her hand at the back of his head because he seemed to need the pressure there. Something to push against. Something that told him where the room was.

“I don’t want to be him,” he said, almost inaudible.

She pulled back just enough to try to see his face, but he kept his eyes down, lashes wet and clumped, the bruising under one eye making everything about him look rawer. His mouth trembled once before he clenched his jaw like he could force it still.

“I don’t want to be him,” he said again, more ragged this time. “I don’t want that in me. I get so fucking angry sometimes, and tonight I was–” He dragged a hand roughly over his face, then winced when his knuckles caught near the bruise. “Fuck.”

“Hey.” She caught his wrist before he could do it again, thumb slipping over the inside where his pulse hammered too fast. “Look at me.”

He shook his head, but only barely.

“Garrett,” she said, softer now. “Please.”

It took him a second. It took three. Then he lifted his eyes. She hated what she saw there, because someone had put that kind of fear in a boy and then let him grow around it like it was just another bone. 

Garrett Graham, who could strut across campus like he owned gravity, who could grin his way through almost anything, who could charm a room without even standing up straight, was looking at her like he was waiting for her to realise he was dangerous.

She brought his hand to her lap and held it between both of hers.

“You’re not him,” she said.

His face twisted.

“You’re not,” she repeated, and she didn’t make it soft this time. She made it certain. “You're not him.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do.”

“You don’t.”

“I do,” she said again, because this was one thing she could give him without hesitation. “I know you. I know how careful you are with people even when you’re pretending you aren’t. I know how you move Logan’s shoes out of the hallway when he’s drunk so he doesn’t trip over them. I know how you check the stove when Tucker falls asleep on the couch. I know you pretend Dean annoys you and then still save him the last slice of pizza because he gets pissy when he’s hungry. I know how you touch me.” Her voice caught, but she swallowed around it, leaning closer until her knee pressed into his thigh. “Garrett, you have never made me feel afraid of you. Not once.”

His eyes went wet again.

“You’d never hurt someone like that,” she said. “You’d never hurt me like that.”

The sound he made then was worse than the first sob because it sounded like relief and pain arriving at the same time. His face crumpled before he could stop it, and he folded back into her, harder this time, arms wrapping around her so tightly she almost couldn’t breathe. 

She didn’t care. She let him hold on. She held him back, one hand cupping the back of his head, the other moving slowly over his spine, feeling each shudder work through him and disappear into the space between their bodies.

For a while, there was only that. His breath against her neck. Her fingers in his hair. The lamp humming faintly. A car passing outside and washing headlights briefly across the ceiling. The ordinary world continuing in rude little pieces while Garrett cried.

Eventually, the sobs thinned. His breathing stayed uneven, but the worst of it loosened, leaving him heavy against her, drained in a way that made him feel younger and older all at once. 

She kept touching him until he shifted, and even then she didn’t let go immediately. He was the one who pulled back first, dragging in a rough breath and wiping at his face with the heel of his hand.

“Sorry,” he said, hoarse. “Fuck. Sorry.”

She shook her head.

He looked away, jaw tight again, embarrassment rushing in to fill the space grief had left behind. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to–”

“Hey.” She caught his face between her hands before he could retreat all the way into himself. Carefully, because of the bruise. “No.”

His eyes flicked to hers.

“No,” she said again, quieter. “You don’t have to apologise.”

Garrett let out a shaky breath through his nose, like he wanted to argue and didn’t have enough left in him to do it properly. “I just–”

“I know.”

“I hate this.”

“I know.”

He closed his eyes under her hands. For a second he leaned into her palms so fully that her chest ached. Then he opened them again, gaze dropping to her mouth, her chin, anywhere but directly into whatever softness he was afraid she had for him.

“I’m sorry about tonight,” he said. “At the game. I’m sorry I acted like that.”

She brushed her thumb lightly along the unbruised side of his face. “You were freaked out.”

“That doesn’t make it okay.”

“No,” she said, because he was right and because she cared for him too much, in whatever unnamed, inconvenient way that lived between them, to pretend otherwise. “But I get why it happened.”

His throat moved. “I didn’t want him near you.”

“I know.”

“I saw you sitting there, in my jacket, and he was right there, and I couldn’t–” He broke off, frustration pulling at his mouth. “I couldn’t think. I just kept looking up and thinking, get away from him. And then I’d look back at the play and I’d be out of position, and then I got mad because I was out of position, and then I–” He shook his head. “It was stupid.”

“It wasn’t stupid.” She kept her hands on him, steady even when he looked like he wanted to fold away from the tenderness. “It was a lot.”

He let out something close to a laugh, but there was no humour in it. “That’s one word for it.”

She leaned forward until her nose nudged gently against his, careful of the swelling near his eye. “And you still came through.”

His brow creased.

“You did,” she said. “You moved me. You went back out. You played. You won.”

His mouth trembled, just once. He looked down, and she watched him fight the tears coming back, his face tightening with the effort of keeping it together. “Yeah.”

“Yeah,” she echoed.

A long breath left him. His shoulders dropped a little with it, not relaxed, but less braced. He looked exhausted now, the adrenaline gone, the game gone, the confession gone, leaving only the boy under all of it sitting in the low light with a black eye and red-rimmed lashes and too many years of silence sitting open between them.

She slid one hand down to his chest, feeling the slow, uneven thud of his heart beneath her palm. “Do you need anything?”

Garrett shook his head.

“You sure?”

He looked at her for a moment, and there was something unguarded in it that made her breath catch. Then he reached for her, one hand settling at her waist and pulling her closer by degrees like he was asking without words. “Just this.”

Her eyes softened. “Okay.”

He shifted down the bed first, moving slowly like every part of him hurt more now that he had stopped holding himself so tight. She went with him, letting him guide her into the space beside him as he eased onto his back, then his side, then changed his mind and pulled her against his chest. 

It was clumsy in the way exhaustion made things clumsy, knees tangling under the covers, his breath hitching when her elbow brushed a sore spot from the game. She murmured an apology, and he shook his head into her hair, arm tightening around her middle.

The room settled around them again. She tucked herself against him carefully, cheek resting above his heart, one hand laid flat over his ribs. His skin was warm through the thin cotton of his shirt, his breathing still uneven but gradually finding a steadier rhythm under her ear. 

She kissed the edge of his jaw because it was there and because she couldn’t reach every place in him that hurt, but she could reach that. 

Garrett’s fingers flexed once at her back, then smoothed slowly over the fabric of her shirt, not quite a caress, more like he was reminding himself she was real.

For a long time, neither of them spoke. She stared at the soft blur of his room in the darkened edges beyond the lamp – the open textbook on his desk, the half-empty bottle of water, the heap of hoodie on the chair, the game tape paused on his laptop from earlier in the week – and tried to make the pieces of him fit around what he had told her. 

The boy who had tossed her his jacket that afternoon because she’d shivered. The captain who had come apart on the ice at the sight of his father beside her. The child who had stood in a house and listened for his mother. The man holding her now.

Her training wanted to make categories. To name responses. To trace the line between trigger and reaction, between fear and anger, between what a body remembered and what a mouth could bear to say. 

But this wasn’t a case study, and Garrett wasn’t something to be understood from a distance. He was under her cheek, breathing carefully, his arm heavy across her back, his fingers curled into the side of her shirt like he might wake up and need proof she had stayed.

So she let the clinical part of her go quiet. She pressed her palm a little more firmly to his ribs.

Garrett’s chin dipped, lips brushing the top of her head. “You okay?” he whispered.

The question hurt, somehow. That he could be lying there hollowed out and still asking after her.

She nodded against him. “Yeah.”

“You sure?”

She closed her eyes. “I’m sure.”

His hand moved once over her back. She waited until his breathing had slowed more, until the tension in his stomach eased under her hand, until the house beneath them was nothing but distant pipes and settling wood and the occasional muffled voice. 

Then she lifted her head just enough to press a kiss to his chest, above his heart, and settled back down.

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Senior year had been blissful, to say the least. After you and John finally—finally—began dating toward the end of your freshman year, life at Briar had transformed into something you never would've pictured for yourself. Weekends spent with the boys at the Hawks House, hanging out with Hannah and Allie on game days, parties that somehow always ended with you and Logan sneaking off to the firepit to sip beer and look at the stars. It was honestly hard to believe that you had been dating for only a couple of years—it felt like a lifetime.

And now, with finals, and graduation, and Logan being a shoo-in for the Bruins alongside Garret, you were excited to start the rest of your lives together. Most conversations these days between you and Logan were about apartments, where you guys would live after graduation. You were excited to move out of New Hastings and into Boston, where you'd been offered a job that was honestly, your dream since the day you walked into Briar U.

As Anna wrapped up the tour, you slipped your hand into Logan's, his palm rough, calloused against yours. Anna smiled as she handed you one of the brochures for the apartment. "So, the apartment would be around $3,900 a month. Utilities are not included, of course. I'll need the first and last month's rent if you decide to take the unit. The amount for the security deposit, as well as my fee is at the back of the brochure. If you have a few minutes, I'd recommend taking a walk around the block, familiarizing yourself with the neighborhood. I think you'd really like it."

You felt Logan's arm tense. Not too much—slight enough that you were sure you'd imagined it at first. But then, as you slipped the brochure into your purse, walking down the stairs, you noticed the slight crease in his brow, looking down at his phone. "Is everything okay?"

His gaze snapped up to yours instantly, his face softening the way it always did when he looked at you. "Of course it is, babe. Wanna take a walk around the block, see what's around?"

The two of you stepped out into the evening sun, hand in hand. The apartment was located in Beacon Hill, in a charming old brownstone. The cobblestone streets were lined with little luxury boutiques, antique stores, and gorgeous art galleries.

You passed several such stores in blissful silence, glancing idly at the displays in the windows, until—

"Oh, my God."

Logan was nearly yanked off-balance as you stopped short in front of the window of a jewelry store, mouth agape, staring at a pair of gorgeous diamond earrings. You turned to Logan. "These are exactly like the ones my mom had when I was a kid!"

Logan's face softened immediately. "Yeah?"

You turned back to the window display, pressing closer to the glass, close enough that your breath began to fog up the pane. The earrings were beautiful—simple diamond studs surrounded by a delicate halo of smaller stones. They were elegant, timeless.

"When I was little, my mom had a pair exactly like these. She wore them everywhere. To work, to date nights with my dad, even grocery shopping." A laugh escaped you, your gaze still fixed on the display, unable to tear your eyes away. "I used to sneak into her room and try them on when she wasn't looking."

Logan smiled faintly. You missed the way it didn't quite reach his eyes. "They're nice."

"Nice?" you repeated in mock offense. "John Logan, these are stunning."

"Right." Logan cleared his throat. "Stunning."

You finally dragged your attention away from the display to look at him properly. You couldn't seem to shake the feeling that something was off. You couldn't quite put your finger on it, but he hadn't been himself lately.

It had been happening more and more often—little moments where he seemed to disappear into his own head, where his smile seemed forced, where his eyes got this distant, faraway look in them, like he wasn't quite in the moment with you.

The crease between his brows was back.

Before you could even open your mouth to ask him about it, his phone buzzed, startling him. His hand immediately to his pocket, pulling out the lit up screen. Logan angled it away from you before you could even catch a glimpse of the caller ID, but you could see the look on his face—something between panic and relief.

Logan cleared his throat. "Sorry babe, I gotta take this."

"Everything okay?" you asked, trying to ignore the sickening sinking feeling blooming in the pit of your stomach.

"Yeah." The words spilled out of his mouth a little too quickly. Almost as if he could see the wheels in your head turning, Logan curled the corner of his lips into a smile—that familiar smile that usually settled every worry in your chest.

This time, it didn't.

Logan didn't seem to notice. "I'll be right back," he said, stepping away before you could say anything else, already lifting the phone to his ear.

You watched him retreat down the sidewalk, broad shoulders tensing underneath his jacket. You watched as his free hand went to the back of his neck, rubbing the spot at the top of spine like he always did when he was stressed.

Your stomach knotted itself further. Maybe it was hockey, maybe graduation, maybe apartment hunting. God knew the two of you had enough going on lately to make anyone lose their mind.

But somehow, you couldn't shake the feeling that there was something else.

You forced yourself to let it go, instead you turned back toward the jewelry store window. The earrings sparkled underneath the warm display lights—and before you could talk yourself out of it, you were reaching for the door handle.

A small bell jingled overhead as you stepped inside. The store was lovely. Crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, casting soft light over glass display cases. You felt like a kid in a candy store.

A saleswoman was by your side almost immediately. She looked to be in her fifties, dressed impeccably in black. "Welcome, dear. Can I help you with anything?"

You smiled, pointing toward the window. "Could I see those diamond earrings, please?"

"Excellent choice," the woman said, her face brightening.

A few moments later, she was placing them carefully on a velvet tray. Up close, they were even more beautiful. Gently, delicately, you lifted one. The diamond caught the light, scattering a million tiny rainbows across the glass.

Your mother's face flashed through your memory—helping you zip up your prom dress, teaching you how to curl your hair, laughing so hard tears rolled down her cheeks at Thanksgiving dinner. A sudden warmth bloomed in your chest, but it had nothing to do with the earrings and everything to do with the woman who raised you.

"Would you like to try them on?" the saleswoman asked.

You swallowed the lump of emotions in your throat as you nodded, lifting the stud to your ear. The woman stepped forward, helping you fasten them.

Slowly, you turned your head to the side, glancing in the mirror. Your face immediately cracked into a smile. "Oh."

"I take it that's a yes?" the saleswoman laughed.

You turned your head to the other side, watching them sparkle. They really were almost identical—close enough that your mom would've loved them. Without thinking too hard about it, you asked, "How much are they?"

The saleswoman named the price.

They were expensive—definitely expensive. But not impossible.

You'd been saving aggressively ever since accepting your job offer in Boston. Between that and the graduation gifts from family, you could afford them quite easily.

You looked at yourself one more time, thinking about your mother, about all the milestones waiting just around the corner—graduation, moving to a new city, a new life. "Can I give them gift wrapped?"

The saleswoman smiled knowingly. "Of course."

Twenty minutes later, you stepped back onto the sidewalk carrying a small, cream-colored shopping bag tied with a pink satin ribbon.

The evening sun was beginning to dip lower between the brownstone buildings. Down the block, you could see Logan, still on the phone. His back was turned you, one hand shoved into the pocket of his jeans, the other pressed tightly to his forehead.

Your smile faded. The call had clearly lasted longer than expected.

As if sensing your gaze, Logan looked up, his entire expression changing the moment he saw you. The tension vanished, the crease on his forehead smoothening out. His smile returned, easy, warm, and familiar.

But this time, you were almost certain it wasn't real.

His gaze dropped to the shopping bag in your hand. Something flashed across this face so quickly you nearly missed it. It wasn't annoyance, wasn't surprise—it was something heavier.

Before you could figure out what it was, it was gone, and Logan was walking toward you. "Ready to keep walking?"

You slipped your hand into his, the shopping back swinging lightly from your wrist. "Yep."

Logan squeezed your hand—one, two, three times.

Together, you continued down the cobblestone street, neither of you noticing that the things you weren't saying were beginning to pile up between you.

At first, you told yourself you were imagining things.

Logan had a lot on his plate—he really did. Graduation was only a few months away now, and the Bruins had practically been circling him for over a year now. Between practice, games, classes, apartment hunting, and preparing for an entirely new chapter of your lives, it would've been strange if he wasn't stressed.

That was what you told yourself, anyway.

It was becoming a lot harder to believe, now that three weeks had passed and nothing had changed. In fact, if anything, you were afraid they'd gotten worse.

The first thing you noticed were the late nights. Logan had always been the kind of person who could fall asleep practically anywhere—on the couch, during movies, in the passenger seat of your of your car on the trips home for Thanksgiving.

But now? You woke up at two in the morning to find his bed empty.

The first time it happened, you found him sitting at the table in the Hawks House' kitchen, his tired face bathed in the blue light of his open laptop.

When he noticed you, he slammed it shut so quickly that you jumped. "Jesus, Logan."

"What're you doing awake at this hour?" he asked, his eyes widening.

"I could ask you the same thing."

You could've sworn he looked almost guilty as he looked down, rubbing the back of his neck. "Just couldn't sleep."

At the time, you'd accepted the explanation... until it happened again. The second time, he was sitting on the balcony, the third time, in the living room. The fourth time he was on the living room couch, claiming he was reviewing paperwork for the Bruins.

Every answer felt reasonable, but every answer somehow made you feel worse—because none of them explained why he looked so nervous, so guilty every time you caught him, or why he hid whatever was on his laptop, or why his phone suddenly never left his side.

You noticed the last part one Thursday afternoon, when the two of you were sprawled across the couch, your head in his lap, his fingers twisted in the ends of your hair as he watched a hockey game.

His phone buzzed on the coffee table, and Logan lunged for it so quickly you were nearly thrown off his lap. The movement was so abrupt that both of you froze.

A tense silence settled over the room. You had that feeling again—that strange, sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach like the day he got that phone call outside the jewelry store. It was stronger now, more potent, almost tangible.

Logan stared at you, forcing a laugh. "Sorry, babe."

Nothing—no explanation. You tried not to think about it, but once the thought entered your head, it became impossible to ignore, because there other things, too. Tiny, insignificant things that probably meant nothing... except they didn't feel like nothing.

You started noticing how often he stepped away to answer incoming calls, how frequently he angled his phone away from you. How many texts arrived late at night. How distracted he became whenever you asked him if everything was okay.

One evening, you were brushing your teeth in his bathroom when his phone lit up on the counter.

You weren't trying to snoop—genuinely. Your eyes simply caught the notification as his phone screen lip up with an incoming text. Your chest tightened—no name, just an unsaved phone number.

The screen darkened before you could read the message. Your fingers itched to reach out and hit the power button, to see what the text was, but no. You trusted Logan—you trusted him with your life.

A moment later, Logan entered the bathroom, almost as if he heard the distinct ding of the incoming text from where he lay on his bed. His gaze immediately found the phone, then you.

The tension in his shoulders materialized instantly. "What?"

You flinched at how sharp the word came out. "Nothing."

His face softened immediately. He stepped inside, reaching around you to pick up the phone, planting a soft, gentle kiss on your temple. "I'm sorry, babe."

You gave him a tight-lipped smile, but the damage was already done. That night you lay in bed next to him, staring at the ceiling. Try as you might, you couldn't fall asleep.

It was ridiculous. Logan loved you, you knew that. You'd never doubted it for a second, not once in almost three years.

John Logan wasn't a cheater. He wasn't.

So why did it suddenly feel like he was hiding something? The question followed you everywhere—to class, to work, to lunch with Hannah and Allie.

Which, unfortunately, spending time with Hannah and Allie only made things worse, because apparently, you were terrible at hiding your emotions.

"You okay?" Hannah asked, setting her coffee down.

You looked up from the drink you'd absentmindedly been stirring. "What?"

"You haven't heard a single thing we've said for the last ten minutes," Allie frowned. "Is everything okay with you and Logan?"

You immediately forced a smile, even as the concern in her voice made your stomach twist. "Yeah. Yeah, everything's okay."

The silence stretched as neither of them looked convinced. Then, Hannah's eyes narrowed. "Oh, my God."

"Hannah, no—"

"You think Logan's cheating on you."

The words came too fast out of your mouth. 'I do not."

Allie and Hannah exchanged a look that you could read all too well. It was a look you knew meant they didn't believe you.

"Oh, my God," Allie echoed.

You groaned. "I don't think he's cheating."

"Okay," Hannah said slowly. "Then why do you look like you're about to throw up every time somebody says his name?"

You opened your mouth, then closed it. Nothing came out—because saying it out loud would somehow make it real. It would make the the late nights, the secretive phone calls, the hidden laptop screens, the weird tension, the distance, the uncertainty—all of it would become far too real.

Suddenly, your coffee tasted like battery acid. Allie's face softened. "Oh, honey."

"I know how this sounds," you whispered, wrapping both hands around your cup. "I know Logan would never—"

The words caught in your throat. Would he?

The awful little voice in your head whispered something ugly—you'd trusted people before, you'd been wrong before. And lately, every time you looked at Logan, it felt like he was standing just a little bit farther away than he used to. Not physically, but emotionally, like there was an entire conversation happening inside his head that you weren't allowed to hear.

The thought made your chest ache, because the worst part wasn't the possibility that he was cheating.

The worst part was that for the first time since you'd fallen in love with John Logan, you weren't completely sure what was going on inside his heart.

John Logan had never thought buying an engagement ring would make him feel like he was losing his mind.

And yet, somehow, here he was—three P.M. on a Saturday afternoon, surrounded by his teammates, staring at a spreadsheet. A fucking spreadsheet. He stared at the screen, already able to feel a headache building as he fiddled with an old receipt from Malone's.

"You know," Dean said from where he was sprawled across the couch, "most people use computers for porn."

Logan didn't even look up. "Shut up."

"No, seriously. Every time I see you lately, you're glaring at that thing like it personally offended your family."

Across the room, Tucker glanced over from his phone. "What's on it?"

"Nothing."

"That's a lie," Garrett said immediately.

Logan finally looked up only to see that all three of them were staring at him, judging him. And honestly, fair. He'd been acting like an asshole for weeks. He knew that, but the worst part, he couldn't seem to stop.

Every time he thought he had things under control, something happened that sent him spiraling all over again—like the earrings.

Jesus Christ, the earrings.

He'd watched you walk into that jewelry store and nearly had a heart attack—not because you'd bought something, but because you'd looked so happy, so excited. He couldn't forget the way your entire face had lit up, and

all he'd been able to think was that the earrings probably cost more than the ring he could currently afford. The thought had followed him home, into bed, into practice the next day, into every waking moment since then.

Logan rubbed a hand across his face. "I need a drink."

"It's three o'clock," Tucker pointed out.

"I need several drinks."

Dean sat up. "Okay, that's it."

Logan frowned, his fingers folding and unfolding the scrap of paper he was still holding on to. "What?"

Dean pointed at him. "You've been weird for a month. Like, you look like you're about to be executed."

"Pretty fucking accurate," Garrett snorted.

Logan glared at both of them in vain—neither of them seemed even remotely intimidated.

Eventually, Garrett sighed. "Dude."

The single word carried enough weight that Logan meet his watchful eyes, studying him carefully. "You gonna tell us what's going on?"

The silence stretched out between them. Logan looked away first, and that, unfortunately, that answered the question.

Three seconds later, Dean practically launched himself off the couch. "Holy shit."

Tucker sat up straighter, meeting Dean's widened eyes. "Holy shit."

Garrett groaned. "Oh, for fuck's sake., what?"

Dean pointed toward Logan. "He's proposing."

Logan froze as the room fell silent, Garret's jaw dropping, Tucker's eyes widening. Then—

"HOLY FUCKING SHIT."

"Keep your voice down, Di Laurentis!" Logan snapped, rubbing an exasperated hand over his face.

Dean looked personally offended. "No."

"Tucker?"

"Nah, dude."

Logan looked over at Garret, who was already laughing. "Come on man, you too?" he groaned, dropping his head into his hands. This was a mistake—a massive mistake.

"I don't even have a ring yet." The words slipped out before he could stop them. Immediately, all three guys went quiet.

Garret frowned. "What do you mean?"

Logan let out a slow breath. If he was already talking, he might as well finish. "The ring I want is too expensive, and every cheaper option feels wrong." Neither of them seemed particularly impressed, but Logan pushed forward anyway. "She deserves something nice."

"She deserves you," Tucker said.

Logan ignored him. "She loves jewelry." The memory of the earrings flashed through his head again—the way your eyes had lit up, the excitement in your voice, the sheer joy.

Dean groaned. "Oh my God." He was looking at Logan like he was an idiot—all three of them were. That annoyed him, because he was already very well aware of the fact that he was being an irrational idiot. "You think she cares about how much the ring costs?"

Logan opened his mouth. Closed it. Then opened it again. Before he could force his brain to string the words together, Garret beat him to it, staring pointedly at the piece of paper Logan was still messing around with. "She'd say yes if you propose with a Ring Pop."

"That's not the point," Logan sighed.

"That's exactly the point."

The front door opened before Logan could argue, the sound instantly drawing everyone's attention. A second later, a lilting, beautiful laugh floated into the house—a sound Logan would recognize anywhere. Your laugh.

His stomach tightened, eyes immediately looking for you as Hannah and Allie entered the house. You followed close behind, and immediately, every ounce of progress he'd made disappeared. Because there—shopping bags. Everywhere.

Bright little logos, gold embossing of luxury brands, of little boutiques, of department stores. Logan could feel his pulse spike. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Dean tensing, muttering under his breath, "Oh, for the love of God."

Logan shot him a warning look. Dean rolled his eyes so hard Logan was almost genuinely impressed.

He saw your sift through the room, landing on Logan, and for a moment, a flash of emotions flickered across your face—relief, followed by uncertainty, then settling into something colder, emptier, something that made his stomach drop.

"Hey." Your voice was soft, polite and distant.

Logan hated it with every ounce of his being. "Hey, babe."

You smiled, the look never reaching your eyes. A moment of tense silence enveloped the living room. Logan could feel every single pair of eyes zeroed in on the two of you, and apparently, you could too, because you shifted uncomfortably. "I think I'm gonna put my stuff away."

Before Logan could respond, you disappeared up the stairs. The silence that followed was deafening, everyone's eyes trained on Logan until Dean let out an exasperated sigh, smacking the back of his head.

"Ow!" Logan groaned. "What the fuck?"

"Go."

Logan was up on his feet immediately, slipping the folded paper object into his back pocket before Hannah and Allie could get a good look at it.

And for once, nobody argued. Nobody joked about him being whipped, nobody teased him for being wrapped around your finger—because even they could feel the tension, the distance, the way something had shifted between the two of you.

Logan found you in your bedroom, the shopping bags sitting on the floor next to the bed. You stood on the far end, unpacking them carefully, methodically, like you were trying really hard not to think about something.

The look on your face made his chest hurt. "Babe?"

You glanced up, eyes sliding over his face before going right back to what you were doing. "Hi."

The polite distance in your voice was killing him. Logan stepped closer, words tangling in his throat. He needed to explain, needed to tell you. Except, as it always did in any important moment, his words failed him.

You stared at him expectantly for a moment, then sighed. "I got you something."

"What?" Logan blinked, confusion clear on his face as he accepted the small box you were holding out to him. His emotions knotted tight in his throat as he opened it, because something made you think of him.

Inside, on a delicate velvet cushion, sat a Bruins keychain—a simple, unremarkable trinket that brought him to the forefront of your mind while shopping. Undeniable proof that you were thinking of him, even when you were out with Hannah and Allie, even when you were clearly vexed with him.

His throat tightened. "Babe—"

"I thought you'd like it," you said softly. The smile that accompanied the words was small, sad.

Logan hated it, but more than that, he hated the realization that he'd brought that expression on your face. Because the weeks of stress, of secrecy, of acting like a complete asshole had clearly taken a toll on your relationship, and now—now you were looking at him like you weren't sure what to do with him anymore.

Logan cleared his throat. "I think I owe you an explanation."

You met his eyes, and for the first time all day, he saw something other than distance—hope. It was tiny, fragile, almost undetectable, but it was there.

"Okay," you whispered. The word had barely left your mouth when his phone rang. Logan froze. No. No, no, no.

He glanced down at the caller ID, his heart sinking, and sure enough, it was the jeweler—the custom jeweler he'd been working with for weeks, the one he'd been desperately waiting to hear from.

Before his very eyes, your expression changed. The hope vanished, replaced by the same cold indifference as before. Logan's pulse quickened. "Babe—"

"It's fine."

"I just need a minute."

You waved your hand dismissively, stepping back to create physical space between the two of you. "It's fine, Logan."

His phone continued to ring as he realized this was all his doing. All this distance between the two of you was his creation. The realization hit him like a punch in the ribs, gutting him almost as thoroughly as you brushing past him with the words, "I'll see you downstairs."

And just like that, the conversation was over.

His phone rang again, demanding his attention once more. Logan stared at the screen, then out the bedroom room at the empty hallway you'd disappeared into, and for the first time in weeks, a terrifying thought entered his mind: maybe the ring wasn't the thing he should've been worried about losing.

The call lasted several minutes—several long, agonizing minutes.

Logan barely heard half of what the jeweler was saying, his mind barely registering the words. Custom setting. Center stone.

Any other day, it would've been exactly the conversation he'd been waiting for, but instead, all he could think about was the look on your face when you walked out of the room.

By the time he hung up and headed downstairs, he felt sick.

The house was louder downstairs, Dean arguing with Garrett about something while Hannah laughed. A hockey game was playing on the television like background noise.

Life was continuing exactly as normal, which somehow made everything worse—because nothing felt normal.

Logan found you sitting alone in the lawn chairs by the firepit in the backyard. The sun was beginning to set, painting the yard pink and gold.

You were curled up on the chair, knees tucked against your chest. For a minute, he stood there, just outside your line of sight, wondering how he'd managed to screw up so fucking royally.

The floorboard of the back stoop creaked beneath his weight as he took a step toward you. You lifted your head, your face closing off the second you saw him—and that was the moment Logan truly knew that whatever was happening between the two of you wasn't something he could smooth over with a kiss and an apology. "Can we talk?"

You stared at him for several seconds, then nodded slowly. "Sure."

He lowered himself into the chair next to you, a heavy, uncomfortable silence settling between the two of you—the kind that hadn't ever existed before.

Finally, you spoke. "Are you cheating on me?"

The question hit him so hard he physically recoiled. "What?"

Your laugh was humorless, boken. "I asked if you're cheating on me."

"Babe—"

"Because I don't know what else I'm supposed to think anymore." The words were spilling out faster now, like they'd been trapped inside you for weeks. "You won't talk to me. You leave the room to answer phone calls. You hide your laptop every time I walk in."

Logan's stomach dropped. He opened his mouth to speak, but you kept going.

"You barely look at me lately." Your voice cracked—just slightly, just enough that the sound tore straight through him. "And every time I ask what's wrong, you tell me you're fine."

And suddenly, Logan could see it, could see the weeks of secrecy, of distance, of unexplained behavior through your eyes. God.

Of course you'd think that.

Your eyes were shining now. "You know the worst part?" you whispered, looking away. "I would've rather had you tell me the truth."

The sentence shattered something inside him, because you genuinely believed it. You genuinely thought there was another woman. That after everything—after three years, after every promise, every late night conversation making plans for your future together, you thought he was capable of hurting you like that.

And it wasn't because you didn't trust him, but because he'd given you every reason to question him, to harbor these thoughts.

The realization hit him like a freight train.

"Baby, no," he whispered, his voice cracking. "No."

You blinked. "What?"

"No." The words stumbled out of his mouth broken, desperate. "I'm not cheating on you. God, no."

You stared at him, hurt and uncertainty written all over your tear stained face. He'd done that. He'd put that doubt there. The realization made Logan drop his head into his hands.

For a second, neither of you spoke. Then everything he'd been carrying for months finally spilled out, summed up in eight simple words. "I was trying to buy you a ring."

Complete silence. Logan turned his head toward you to see your brows furrowed. "What're you talking about?"

Logan laughed, a miserable, exhausted sound. "The phone calls, the laptop, all of it. I wanted it to be perfect. The proposal, the dream, everything."

He could see your mouth parting slightly in surprise, but he couldn't stop the words from tumbling out anymore, couldn't stop the tears blurring his vision as he continued in messy, unfiltered sentences. "You love beautiful things,"

"Logan—"

"No, listen. You do." A helpless smile tugged at his mouth. "You stop at every jewelry store window."

You laughed softly despite yourself. "I do not."

"You absolutely do."

A tiny ember of warmth flickered between the two of you, then disappeared. Logan swallowed hard. "The earrings."

Your smile vanished. "The earrings?"

"That day in Boston. Babe, you were so happy."

You stared at him, completely lost, and suddenly Logan felt absolutely ridiculous, but he continued anyway, pushing through the discomfort of laying his heart bare, because where else would he be safe if not with you? "I couldn't stop thinking about how much you loved them."

"Because they reminded me of my mom."

"I know," Logan's voice dropped. "I know, babe. That's what made it worse. Because all I could think about was that if those earring made you so happy, your engagement ring should make you even happier."

He laughed shakily. "And every ring I could afford felt wrong. I kept looking at our apartment options, at budgets, at our future."

His eyes met yours, voice choking as a single tear finally escaped the confines of his long lashes. "I want to give you everything, my love. I want you to have the life you deserve."

"John."

"And it's—it's killing me that I can't do it. It was killing me that I couldn't afford the ring I wanted for you."

You hand flew to your mouth, the tears in your eyes mirroring his.

"And then I started thinking maybe I should wait." Logan shook his head. "But I don't want to wait."

A tear slid down your cheek. "John."

He barely noticed. "I want to marry you."

The words landed heavily between you—simple, honest, terrified.

Logan looked away, unable to hold your gaze anymore. "I know its stupid. I know how insane I sound." Silence, for a moment. Then, quietly: "But you deserve so much better than what I can give you right now."

The sound of your chair scraping as you stood up made Logan finally lift his eyes up off the floor. You crossed the space between the two of you without hesitation. Your hands found his face—warm and familiar and feeling like coming home.

"So let me get this straight." Your thumbs brushed beneath his eyes. "You thought I cared more about a ring than I care about you?"

Logan winced. "When you put it that way—"

"John Logan." The fondness in your voice made his heart stutter. "I like jewelry. I like sparkly necklaces and expensive dress. I like shiny things—but none of those things are you."

His breath caught in his throat as you leaned forward, resting your forehead against his. "I don't care about a large sparkly diamond."

"You don't mean that."

"I do."

'You d—"

"I'd marry you with paper rings, John Logan," you whispered, as his arm wrapped around your waist, holding you to him like you'd disappear if he let go. "I'd marry you with a twist tie. I'd marry you with nothing at all. You're the one I want, and nothing's ever gonna change that."

Logan's vision blurred again, because suddenly, all those nights, all those spreadsheets, all the fears—they all felt so small compared to this, compared to what he had with you. Compared to the certainty in your eyes—the certainty he'd been too stupid to trust.

Something in Logan's chest stuttered, because suddenly, he remembered the folded receipt, still sitting in his pocket. He'd been folding and refolding it between his fingers while Garrett and Dean gave him hell earlier, creasing the paper absentmindedly, and before he could think, his hand was moving.

You frowned as he dug into his back pocket. "What're you doing?"

Logan looked down, letting out a watery laugh.

"Jesus." Carefully, he pulled out the crumpled strip of paper. The receipt had been folded and twisted so many times that it barely resembled what it once was.

Except somehow, he'd managed to fold it into a ring.

A crooked, terrible ring—the saddest excuse for jewelry in human history.

You stared. "Oh my God."

Heat flooded Logan's face. "I was nervous."

A laugh escaped you. "What does that have to do with—"

"I don't know." He was laughing now, too, half-hysterical, half-relieved. "I just kept folding the damn thing."

The ring sat trapped between his fingers, somehow more important than any diamond he'd spent months obsessing over. There was no diamond, no grand romantic gesture. Just you—just the love of his life.

Logan knelt, and despite all the words spilling out of him only moments before, the only word that parted his lips was, "Please."

"Are you serious?"

Logan's voice shook. "I don't have the ring yet. I don't have the proposal I wanted to give you. I don't have it all figured out right now. But I know I want forever, and I don't want it with anyone but you."

A tear tracked it's way down your cheek. "John."

"I know it's not much, but—"

"It's perfect."

"It's literally made out of a receipt."

You laughed through your tears. "So?" The sound nearly stopped his heart. "So was our first grocery list."

Logan laughed—a real laugh this time, the first one in weeks. "Please, babe? Will you marry me?"

"Yes. Yes, you big idiot, of course I'll marry you."

You stared the paper ring from his hand as though it were made of diamonds, holding out your hand for him to slide the ring onto your finger.

It fit terribly. You loved it.

And just like that, every spreadsheet, every budget, every sleepless night, every fear he'd carried for months disappeared.

Because standing in front of him was the woman he'd been trying so desperately to impress, the woman who loved sparkly things, who deserved the world.

The woman wearing a paper ring like it was the most beautiful piece of jewelry she'd ever owned.

“Wally, help me!” You shout, playfully hitting your fists on Dick’s back. “Dick, put me down!”

The former Robin ignores your pleas, continuing his path straight to the pool. You squirm on his shoulders, kicking your legs frantically, but he’s simply too strong. 

Wally watches, suppressing a sigh. He’s not jealous—how could he be jealous? His best friend is dating his other best friend, and he’s in love with both of them. What’s there to be jealous about? 

You look at him with sparkling eyes and a glittering grin, the sun on your face. You’re gorgeous, practically ethereal, and you always have been in Wally’s eyes. And Dick? Years of training with the Bat and being a vigilante have left him looking like a Greek god. It doesn’t help that the summer heat has him rocking a glowing tan. 

Wally can’t help but think back to that night a little over a month ago. When you and Dick had showed up to his apartment for your weekly game night, and broke the news. You seemed so happy together, and it’s not like either of you knew about Wally’s feelings. All the boy could do was smile and nod and congratulate the two of you, no matter how bitter the word tasted on his tongue. 

“Dick!” You slap his shoulder, “come on! If you throw me in there, I’m not swimming back up! Enjoy your homicide charge!”

Wally laughs at your stupid joke. “Don’t worry, Rob. I’ll help you hide the body.”

You put on a fake hurt face and flip him the finger before erupting into giggles. Wally returns your gesture, grinning back at you. Dick makes it to the edge of the pool and tosses you in, giving you a half-assed salute as you fall. 

Of course, Wally can’t let this stand. He’s on his feet in a microsecond, dashing towards the two of you at the edge of the water. He shoves Dick into the water, tugging his phone out of his pocket before he falls in. Wally manages to grab you just before you hit the surface of the water, lifting you into his arms. 

He stands still and watches his best friend surface, the water droplets on his tanned skin making him look even more god-like. 

“I’ll get you back for that, Wally.” Dick threatens, but with the grin on his face and his sopping wet hair, it’s hard to take him seriously.

You hate to admit it, but you secretly enjoy the feeling of Wally’s warm skin on yours. His bare abs and strong arms glisten with sweat and banana scented sunscreen—you swallow hard and force yourself to look away.

“Thanks for the save,” you flash a grin at him and hop out of his arms. 

“It was worth it,” he shrugs. He looks down at the melted rubber of his flip flops and sighs, “good thing these were only $3.”

Dick hoists himself out of the pool, his biceps dripping wet and glowing in the sunlight. He grabs his towel off of his foldout chair, towel drying his hair. The ends curl where it’s started to dry, and you want to tug on the strands with your fingers. 

Wally retreats back to the chair he was laying on. “That’s enough sun for me for the day,” he jokes. “One more minute and my skin would’ve matched my suit.”

“You and your delicate ginger skin,” you smirk. “Poor, delicate Wally.”

He rolls his eyes at you. “I’d watch it, unless you want a swim in the pool.”

“Okay, okay, I surrender.”

Dick comes up behind you, pressing his wet body to your warm back. You shiver and attempt to shove him off but he clings onto you. 

“What?” He pouts, “you don’t want me, baby?”

Wally scrunches up his nose without meaning to. He wishes he was either one of you right now, in the middle of you two. Anything but this.

Dick spins you around, keeping his hands on your waist, and pulls you in for a kiss. The water from his hair drops onto the top of your head and runs down your temples but you don’t care. You’re too focused on tasting him, his familiar flavour muddied with the taste of chlorine and lemonade.

It takes a minute for either of you to notice that Wally’s gathered his things and left.

You frown. “He didn’t even say goodbye.”

“He’s had a long week.” 

Dick offers you a half-hearted smile but you can’t help but look beyond that to the steely look in his eyes. The same one he gets when he knows more than he’s letting on.

—

Wally’s scorching by the time he gets home from the pool. Running mile after mile in the blazing summer heat is not for the faint of heart—especially for someone who already runs hot. 

The heat is only made worse by the ache in his groin. He’s never felt more relieved in his life than the relief he feels at dropping his swim shorts and letting his cock spring free. 

He spits in his palm, smearing it up his shaft along with his precum. A shiver runs up his spine. God, he needed this. 

He squeezes his eyes shut and falls into an easy rhythm. Up and down, up and down. And then the images of you and Dick come flashing through his mind and he knows it's wrong and he knows he should stop—but he doesn’t. 

He thinks of your mouth, how warm and wet it would be. Lips wrapped around his cock, pretty eyes looking up at him. He thinks of how Dick would be by your side, a hand in your hair to guide you and the other hand petting Wally’s thigh. 

He could make you feel so good, he could make both of you so happy. Why didn’t either of you think of him, why didn’t either of you want him? 

The frustration gets to him, his fist clenching his cock tighter. He imagines his hand fisting Dick’s cock while you ride him, soft moans slipping from your lips with every bounce. With his eyes closed, he swears he can almost feel your pussy around him. 

It’s wrong, it’s so wrong, and he’s not sure he’ll be able to look either of you in the eyes after this. But he keeps going, imagining it going further while his cock twitches in his hand. 

The heat consumes him and his hand only moves faster. He can’t help but think of how you’d squirm beneath him, how you’d whine about it being too much. He pictures Dick being beneath you, his cock stilled in your walls, talking you through it while Wally fucks you so good. 

A gasp slips from his throat, his mouth dry with the heat of the day. He needs you so bad, and for one torturous second, he contemplates calling you. Throwing caution to the wind and confessing to you and Dick. 

And then he’s finishing, hot ribbons of cum bringing him back to reality. It coats his abs, his thighs and his hands—but he wishes so badly it was you instead. 

He hasn’t even had a chance to wipe up his fluids when his phone is buzzing and your contact is popping up. Even the sight of your smiling photo in his phone has his face burning in guilt. 

He lets it go to voicemail, and the reality of his situation washes over him. 

He can’t help but stare at himself in the mirror while he washes his hands. A million thoughts race through his mind but more than anything: what can Dick give you that he can’t?

He’s tall, he has abs, and he’s funny, or at least, you laugh at all his jokes. So why don’t you like him? 

And though Wally puts up such a confident front, he crumbles before himself in the mirror. He’s all that, and maybe more, but one thing he will never be is Dick. He’ll never be that confident, trustworthy leader that you’d follow anywhere. 

While Dick is a hero through and through, Wally can’t help but think he’s a cheap copy that could never compare. 

-

Dick stills inside of you, the hand he had between your shoulder blades relaxing. Your walls clench around him in need but the vigilante remains still as stone. 

“What—“ You swallow, your voice breathy with unspoken moans. “What’s wrong?”

His voice is raspy with sex. “You’re distracted.”

You open your mouth to protest but suddenly his hands are on your hips and he’s manhandling you onto your back. A giggle slips from your lips, your knees automatically folding into your chest. 

Dick watches you with a smirk and resists the urge to make a joke about how well-trained you are. “What’s on your mind, sweetheart?”

“I’m worried about Wally.”

Dick rolls his hips into yours. Whether he’s satiating his need or yours, you’re not sure. 

“Why’s that?”

You reach up and tangle a hand in his curls, a frown forming on your face. “He’s been distant lately. I-I don’t know. I’m worried.”

He offers you a few lazy thrusts, tilting his head into your chest so you can knead your hands deeper into his scalp. The head of his cock bullies its way through your walls and forces a gasp from your lips.

“He’s been busy.” Dick plants a kiss to your collarbone, “but if you’re really worried, why don’t you give him a call?” 

“I don’t want to pry.”

“Don’t get shy now.”

For emphasis, he snaps his hips into yours again and an embarrassingly loud moan rips its way from your throat. Heat rushes to your head and you find yourself burying your face in your hands. 

“Okay, okay,” you concede, and reach for your phone on Dick’s nightstand. “I’m calling him, so pipe down.”

“With my cock still inside of you? That’s bold.”

You playfully slap his arm before shushing him, pressing dial on Wally’s contact. It rings once, twice, three times, and then you’re greeted by his voicemail. 

‘Hey, you’ve reached Wally. I’m probably busy right now, so shoot me a text and I’ll get back to you in a Flash.’

You purse your lips and drop your phone in frustration. You look at Dick seriously, “do you really think he’s fine?”

“Wally might bite down his feelings sometimes, but when he wants to talk, he’ll talk. Just let him come to you.”

You sigh. He has a point. Wally may seem confident and brazen, but you know that beneath that suave surface, there’s an entire undertow of emotions waiting to be uncovered. 

“You’ll see him for game night this week, anyway.” 

“I know, I know. You’re right, I’ll leave it alone.”

“Now,” Dick grins and presses a chaste kiss to your lips, “can I fuck you, or what?”

You tangle your fingers on the back of his neck and tug him into you, letting his taste distract you from your concern. 

-

Dick’s away helping family by the time game night rolls around, leaving you no choice but to change it to a movie night instead.

Wally tries to protest that Catan is totally playable with two players but after some light pushing, agrees to come over and watch movies for the weekend. On the condition he gets to choose the movies, of course.

“You’re gonna love this one,” he says through a mouth full of popcorn. “It’s like Groundhog Day if it was a horror movie.”

Wally plops onto the couch next to you, slinging an arm across the back of the cushions. He doesn’t even think about how close he is or how there’s only inches between you two. You’re best friends, you’ve been best friends for years—this is totally normal, right? The memories of his evening after the pool flash through his mind as if to say no. 

You press play on the remote before reaching across Wally’s lap to set it on the side table. Your arm brushes his chest and you swear you see him blush but suddenly the movie is starting and your attention is carried away. You settle back into your spot next to him, so close you can feel the heat radiating off his body.

Wally tries to keep his cool and focus on the movie but his attention keeps drifting back to you. You’re gorgeous, he can’t help it. And it doesn’t help that you’re so reactive to the movie—jumping into his side, gasping at the gory parts, laughing at the jokes.

Every time you move, it’s like a stitch in his side. You’re so close to him that he could just wrap his arms around you and pull you into his lap. It takes everything in him not to. 

At some point, you rest your head on his shoulder, the soft skin of your cheek brushing the spot where his tanktop meets his skin. He swallows hard, taking shallow breaths like he’s afraid you’ll move away.

“Is it—” He scratches the back of his neck, “is it hot in here?”

You sit up and Wally bites back his disappointment. “I can turn the air conditioning on if you want. I know you run hot.”

He nods, fanning his face to keep his ears from glowing red. When you pull your legs out from under yourself and stand, Wally can’t help but miss the feeling of you against him.

No, he berates himself. She’s not yours.

Wally forces himself to his feet, following the familiar path to your bathroom. He only feels like he can breathe again when he locks himself inside. He runs the tap on cold, splashing the frigid water over his face and into his hair.

Through the water on his lashes, Wally makes eye contact with himself in the mirror. For the first time since your day at the pool, he lets his thoughts wander to a place he’s been refusing to go. What does Dick have that he doesn’t?

He wonders what would’ve happened if he’d asked you out first, or if he’d been open to either one of you about his feelings. Maybe things would’ve been weird as he’d always feared—but that what if in the back of his mind wonders if it could’ve turned out better than he could possibly imagine.

He dabs his face dry with a nearby towel and hates the way he can recognize your scent on it. He hates even more the way it has heat rushing to his groin, his cock shifting awkwardly in his boxers. Calm the fuck down, man.

When he settles back down on the couch, concern riddles your features. “Are you okay?”

“Just hot,” he lies. “Speedster genes and all.”

You squint at him and though you don’t believe him for a second—especially given it’s a brisk 18 degrees celsius in the apartment—you nod slowly. Wally presses play on the remote and forces himself to focus on the movie.

You can’t focus, though. Your mind runs laps, thinking of his odd demeanour at the pool, his distance this week and now his sudden jumpiness today. You glance at Wally, who’s keeping a generous six inches of space between you two, and frown.

“Are you sure everything is okay?”

He pauses the movie, drawing in his legs to sit criss-crossed on your couch. He opens and closes his mouth, the gears turning behind his green eyes. He doesn’t know what to say to you. He knows he can’t keep lying and avoiding his feelings, but what the hell else is he supposed to do?

“You’ve been…off lately.” You pick at your cuticles. “You didn’t even say goodbye at the pool and honestly, it felt like you were trying to blow me off this week. Did I—did I do something wrong?” 

Wally’s heart cracks inside his chest. He wants to hug you and kiss you and tell you that you couldn’t possibly do anything wrong in his eyes, but he doesn’t. He sits on the couch like a fucking statue, his mouth falling open in shock. 

He’d considered that Dick might’ve noticed something was off—the insightful bastard—but never for a second did he think you would notice. It was stupid, really. You’ve been friends for years, and he knows you can read him just as well as he can read you.

His voice cracks when he speaks. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

You sit in silence, waiting for him to elaborate. Every feature on your face, every movement of your body tells Wally you’re listening. Waiting.

It’s a trap, every bone in his body screams. Don’t do it.

“I just—” He swallows, knowing the dam is going to break and there’s nothing he can do to stop it. “You guys started dating and I-I feel so awkward. We hang out and I watch you be so happy together and I wanna—I wanna be happy too. I know I could be happy with you guys if you just gave me a fucking chance and—”

He stops himself before he can take it any further. The blood rushes to his ears and for a minute he questions if he really just said all of that out loud. The stunned look on your face tells him all he needs to know—he fucked up.

“Wally…”

He shakes his head, messy red strands bouncing off his temples. He shuts his eyes, hoping if he hides long enough, this whole mess will go away. 

“Sorry, I should go.”

He goes to stand but you catch his wrist tightly in yours, beckoning him to stay. He turns on his heel, watching you with careful eyes. The adrenaline barrels through him, your fingers on his skin only edging it along. 

“Stay. Please.”

The words send electricity up his spine like a bolt of lighting. Blood roars in his ears and suddenly he’s a man possessed. He’s dropping to his knees in front of you on the couch, hands cupping yours. And then his hands are wandering, trailing higher.

They brush up your arms, to your shoulders and linger on your neck before cupping your cheeks. You don’t dare breathe, don’t dare make a sound. And then he’s leaning in and his lips are crashing against yours and you’re stuck there in shock.

He squeezes his eyes shut and with your soft lips against his, he can almost pretend like this is normal. Like this is something he’s allowed to do and not something he’s taking. 

Reality hits him like a brick wall. He forces himself away from you, arms falling flat at his sides. He looks at you, his mouth fallen open in shock. 

You stare at him, his green eyes darkened. You’re not sure what to say, what to do. Your heart hammers against your ribs. What the fuck just happened?

“Wally—”

He’s running out the door before you finish saying his name, a trail of lightning in his wake.

-

It takes an hour from when Wally kisses you for you to call Dick.

“Hey, sweetheart.” His voice is hushed and it’s only now that you realize he’s probably on patrol with one of his brothers.

“Wally,” your voice shakes, “Wally kissed me.”

There’s silence on Dick’s side and you brace yourself. You just shared a worryingly passionate kiss with your mutual best friend, and even though Dick rarely gets jealous, you expect the worst.

There’s an amused undertone to his voice. “How was it?” 

You blink. “How was it? How was it?”  You can’t help but laugh—what the fuck is he going on about? “You’re not seriously asking me that.”

“At least you know now why he’s been distant.”

He says it so casually that it leaves a sour taste in your mouth. You think back to that day at the pool and that look in his eyes. You knew there was more than he was letting on. 

“Did you know?” Your voice is quiet, “did you know he had feelings for me—us?”

“I suspected it.”

He’s using that annoyingly calm voice that makes you want to throw your phone at the wall. Your heart races with barely suppressed frustration. He knows, and he’s possibly known this whole time, and he hasn’t said a damn thing?

“And you said nothing?”

“I knew he’d say something eventually. It wasn’t my place.”

You swallow back tears of frustration. Wally’s been hurting this whole time, hurting because of you, and Dick didn’t say anything. He let you continue on being happy knowing Wally was miserable—knowing you could do something about it.

“How could you?”

“Y/n,” the phone crackles with his sigh. “It’s not like that.”

“I don’t—I can’t hear it tonight, Dick. I’ll talk to you later.”

You hang up before he can protest.

Your apartment is impossibly quiet when your phone call ends. Conflict lines every cell in your body—frustration with Dick and sympathy for Wally battling it out. Even after you curl up back on the couch and start the movie from where you left off, silence seems to blanket the apartment.

You don’t even realize you’re dialling Wally’s number until it goes straight to his voicemail.

‘Hey, you’ve reached Wally. I’m probably busy right now, so shoot me a text and I’ll get back to you in a Flash.’

You can’t remember the last time you heard his voicemail, and yet you’ve heard it too much this week. Wally always, always answers your calls. The sound of his prerecorded voice is only a monument to how fucked up things have gotten.

With nothing else to do, you turn off your phone and watch the rest of the movie.

- 

Wally’s never felt guilt like this before. It weighs on him, hangs over his head like storm clouds. The sight of your shocked face—all swollen lips and wide eyes—stays burned in his mind. The fantasies he’d once had about you have faded away and all he can feel is your shock and sadness when he’d pushed his lips onto yours. 

He’d called you the second he’d got back to his apartment only to hang up before the first ring. He’d done the same to Dick, only to realize there was no one he could talk to about his. At least, no one he wanted to talk to about it. With nothing else to do and nowhere else to go, Wally suited up and hit the city, hoping to burn off some energy. Unfortunately for him, it’s a horribly slow night in Keystone city.

After running a dozen laps around the city, he settles down on the tallest building he can find and opens his phone. He stares at his lock screen—a photo of the three of you at the beach from last summer—and sighs. He considers calling you again, or calling Dick.

Then his phone lights up with your contact and panic swells in his chest. He slams his finger on the decline button. He can’t bear to face you right now.

While any other day he’d be grateful for such a slow night, the evening passes achingly slow, and he can’t help but be grateful when the burglary alarm sounds at a nearby bank.

Finally, something he can’t fuck up tonight.

-

Your week passes agonizingly slow. 

On a good week, your evenings are spent with either Dick or Wally or both. Your apartment is filled with laughter and stupid jokes, and your fridge is found emptied of its contents more often than not. 

It’s not a good week, though.

Dick calls you almost every day. It’s typical of him to try and fix things before they’re ready to be fixed. He’s always forcing the pieces back into place before the glue has had time to set.

Wally also calls you. Only once and you declined the call as soon as you saw his contact. Regret filled you the second your finger had touched the decline button but that stubborn side of you couldn’t bring itself to let go and allow you to call him back.

So you sit in silence every night, wondering if when Friday comes Dick will show up with board games and Wally with pizza. 

When Friday does roll around, your group chat is a ghost town. You type out a message on your lunch break, just a quick ‘hey, we still on for tonight?’ before immediately deleting it. No matter how bad you want to, you can’t bring yourself to send it.

You buy yourself takeout after work and settle in at your apartment for a quiet night. You queue up Wally’s other choice of movie despite the bitter taste it leaves in your mouth. 

A part of you still wants to call him back and ask him if he really meant what he said. If he really meant to kiss you that night. Another part of you is too scared to hear the answer—scared he’ll say it was nothing.

And that part scares the hell out of you.

You think about calling Dick, too. You want to ask him where you go from here, why he was so okay with another man—his best friend of all people—kissing you. Still, you don’t, because you’re not ready to hear Dick’s answer, either.

You’re only part way through the movie when your front door is slamming open so hard dry wall rains from the wall where it impacts. You cringe—your landlord is not going to be happy. You rise to your feet and grab the heftiest book off your coffee table, ready to face your intruder. 

The Flash stands in your living room, his chest rising and falling so fast you’re worried he’ll go into cardiac arrest. Nightwing is draped over his shoulder, half limp and breathing just as fast. You freeze at the sight of them, the book clattering from your hand onto the floor.

Dick’s hair is matted to his forehead with blood, a trail of it leading down to his mask. His muscles are tense and twitching, and his pupils are almost entirely blown out. You take a step towards them only for him to flinch, cowering in Wally’s arms.

“What the hell happened?”

You glance from the costumed men to your broken door, unsure of what you should tend to first. Wally rips off his cowl, taking a deep gasping breath. His cheeks are nearly as red as his suit, his hair coated in sweat and his pupils nearly as big as Dick’s.

They can’t be seen like this, you decide, and make your way to the door. The deadbolt is broken and the door makes a horrible screeching noise when you force it back into the frame, but at least it closes. You frown and make a mental note to have them fix it when there’s not a crisis on hand.

Wally coughs, muscles twitching in pain. “Got ambushed with—” He’s cut off through another coughing fit, adjusting his grip around Dick. “Fear gas.”

Your eyes shoot wide. Though you’d never had any run-ins with the substance, you knew just how volatile it could be. The last time Dick had encountered it, his nightmares had lasted over twelve hours and it took him days to recover. You can only pray this dose wasn’t that potent.

You rush to Dick’s other side, wrapping his arm around you to help Wally bear his weight. He trembles against you and you can feel his heart hammering in his chest. At this rate, he’s going to faint.

With Wally’s help, you manage to get him to your couch. Dick weakly protests as you lay him among your plush blankets and throw pillows but in this state, there’s not much he can do to fight back.

Wally stands on shaky legs by Dick’s side and you can’t help but notice he’s still hanging onto Dick’s hand. Though he’s better off than Dick, it’s not by much. You see the way he cringes at the shadows on the wall cast by passing cars, the way fresh guilt floods his eyes.

You frown at the thought of him running all this way here with Dick. His enhanced metabolism is enough to fight off the worst of the effects but not fast enough to keep the nightmares from setting in.

You nod to the couch. “You too, Red.” 

“I’m fine.”

“That’s a lie and you know it.” You rest a hand on his shoulder, your other hand cupping his to gently coax him onto the couch, “just sit down for a minute while I bring you water, yeah?”

Wally’s too tired to protest, something you’re secretly thankful for. While you fill up two glasses with water, you can’t keep yourself from wondering what he’s seeing right now. You know that in the past Dick’s nightmares have ranged from horrible monsters to the zombified corpses of his loved ones.

You only hope that with some rest, Wally will at least be up and running again soon. 

Wally greets you with a weak smile when you hand him his water. His hands shake as he takes it from you and greedily gulps the entire cup in one go. You can’t help but stare at the wetness around his mouth and the bob of his throat as he swallows. 

It’s terrible, really, to stare like that. He’s your best friend and he’s hurting and your boyfriend is right there—but clearly the kiss has left you with some unresolved feelings. 

“Something wrong?”

You snap back to reality to find Wally staring at you with a lopsided grin. He knows you’re staring. Shaking your head, you gesture towards Dick. “Are you feeling up to helping me give him water?”

Immediately, you feel guilty for asking because you know he’d never say no to you or Dick. Wally nods and rises to his feet slowly, following you to Dick’s side. He stands next to him, cupping the back of his neck to raise his head just enough so he won’t choke.

You raise the glass of water to his lips and gently pour in a couple millilitres. His eyes snap open and fear lines his features. The usual blue of his eyes has been almost completely washed out by black, a heart-wrenching sight.

His arms thrash out to fight you off but the toxin has made him sluggish and Wally catches his wrists before he can touch you. “Dick,” he says seriously. “Dick, it’s just us. We’re trying to help you.”

He only fights for a few more seconds before his arms relax and his eyes flutter closed. With Wally still holding him, you slowly peel his mask from his face and set it on the side table along with his glass of water. 

You’re tempted to grab a cloth and try to wipe the blood off but you know it’ll only cause him to fight harder. Besides, Wally needs rest almost as much as Dick does and it would be unfair to ask him to wrestle his best friend again.

“Thank you,” you say quietly. “Do you need anything? More water?”

“I can get it.”

You level him with a serious look. Sweat still beads his temples and though his breathing has slowed, it’s still not at his normal rate. “You need rest. I’ll grab it just…hang tight for a sec.”

You can feel Wally’s eyes on you the whole way to the sink. Even when you turn around to fill up his empty glass, you feel him watching. A shiver runs up your spine, your hand clenching the cup tighter.

“Y/n, watch out!” He shouts.

You spin around, expecting Scarecrow himself to be behind you. In your panic, you drop the glass of water. You don’t even finish your turn before Wally’s arms are around you and suddenly you’re in the corner of your living room.

Your heart is frantic in your chest and your eyes dart to the place you’d just been standing only to find…nothing. Wally clutches you tighter to his chest, defending you from unseen monsters.

“Jesus, Walls.” You press a hand to your chest as if that will slow your rapid heart rate. “You scared the hell out of me.”

His grip around you loosens slightly. “Sorry, I—I thought I saw something.”

It’s his tone that really grips you. Relief. True, genuine relief. Like he really thought someone was about to hurt you, to rip you right out from under him, and he’d gotten to you in the knick of time.

You rest a sympathetic hand over his and it’s only now that it dons on you how close he is. His body heat feels so nice against your skin and you can smell his deodorant with just a hint of sweat, and—God, has he always been this tall?

“You really should rest, Wally.”

In spite of your words, you make no move to leave his arms. It’s comforting and warm and familiar, and though he’s hugged and carried you before, it’s never been quite like this. Wally makes no move to let you go, either.

“I’m fine like this.”

You’re not sure how long you stand with Wally pressed behind you, his arms around your waist. It feels like only seconds but based on the waning darkness outside, you know it’s been much longer.

“You guys are cute,” Dick rasps out.

You swear Wally flinches behind you. He drops his arms from your waist and you force your face to remain neutral despite your disappointment.

You tear yourself away from him and immediately miss his warmth. “How’re you feeling?”

Dick’s eyes are open now, most of the blue having returned. His breathing’s returned to normal, too. Shit, how long were you guys standing there?

Dick ignores your question. “Would’ve been so cute to see you guys kiss.”

Scratch that—he’s clearly not back to normal yet.

Wally goes white as a sheet, green eyes darting between you and Dick. “Shit, you told him? You know?”

“Of course I told him. I tell him everything.”

A million emotions flash across his face. Confusion, guilt, betrayal. You reach for him but he shuffles back, his gaze suddenly steely. You see him glance at the door and realize he’s planning his escape route again.

“I‘m not mad,” Dick mumbles. “I’ve kissed her too.”

If you weren’t so concerned, you’d probably laugh at that. Instead, you step directly in front of Wally, sizing him up. “Don’t leave again.”

Wally’s not sure what prompts him to stay—whether it’s the sad look in your eyes or his sick best friend—but he does. When you reach a hand to guide him to the couch, he has no choice but to take it.

Your apartment falls into silence once more. Not the comfortable silence you’d grown used to this week. No, this silence is thick and awkward and threatens to choke you at every turn. 

Dick just sits there, staring ahead and processing how he got to your apartment. Wally taps his feet like he always does when he’s uncomfortable or has too much energy. You play with your hands, trying to think of anything to break the ice.

It’s not you who gets the first word in, though. It’s not even Wally. 

It’s Dick who speaks first. “She’s a good kisser, right?”

You laugh, if only in shock and embarrassment. “Okay, that’s enough for me for the night.”

You glance at Wally whose face has turned an impossible shade of red. His brows furrow at your statement, his mouth falling open as if to speak but no words come out.

“You two should get some rest. Come and get me in about 8 hours, okay?”

“But—” Dick protests, stopping in his tracks when you shoot him a serious look. “Okay, goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” Wally parrots.

“Goodnight,” you say. “No one die in my apartment, please.”

-

You’re thoroughly unsurprised when you wake up sandwiched in the middle of your bed. Sweat coats the back of your neck, heat seeping into every pore.

Dick lays on your left, having traded his sweaty Nightwing suit for a pair of old sweatpants you’d stolen from him months ago. There’s a gash on his forehead and the skin along his torso is lined with bruises but the blood is gone. He must have showered. Wally lays on your other side in nothing but a pair of Calvin Klein boxers. He has an arm slung over your waist, his freckly skin glowing in the early morning light streaming through your window. There’s a massive, purpling bruise on his side that makes you wonder what, or rather who, had been able to hit him that hard. 

You can’t help but lightly trail your fingers over it, as if your touch alone could heal him. Goosebumps raise across his skin where you touch him and suddenly his eyes are opening, the sight like grass on a foggy morning.

You withdraw your hand before he can notice, pressing it tightly to your side. Wally blinks a few times, his eyes adjusting to the light, before he notices his arm draped over you. Pink dusts his cheeks.

Wally takes in slow, deep breaths. At one time he had dreamed about this—being in bed with you and Dick. But now that he’s actually here, he’s exhausted and his heart is beating way too fast, and man, do you have to wear that to bed?

“Sorry,” he mumbles, and pulls his arm back. 

“It’s okay, I’m just gonna—” You keep your voice a whisper as you untangle yourself from the mess of sheets and limbs. You gasp in relief when the cold morning air hits your skin. “I’m gonna go sleep on the couch.”

It’s too much. Between the heat of their bodies against yours and the events that’ve transpired this week, it’s enough to leave you dizzy and confused.

You shimmy your way out of the bed, stopping only when Wally rests a hand on your shoulder. 

“I can go,” he says. “I’m not going to kick you out of your own bed.”

You risk a glance down at his bruised abs. “No, you’re hurt. I’m not gonna make you run all the way home.”

“And I’m not going to make you sleep on the couch.”

“Then neither of you go anywhere.”

Both your attention snaps to Dick laying perfectly still with his eyes still closed. There’s a knowing smirk on his face and the morning light gives him an ethereal glow. 

Wally narrows his eyes. “Have you been awake this whole time?”

“What can I say, I’m a light sleeper.”

Wally watches you nod slowly in agreement. He feels dizzy with whiplash, thinking of all the nights he’s spent alone in his bed, thinking about a moment just like this. He lets himself fall back into the plush sheets of your bed, fighting the rising blood rushing to his face.

You stay sitting up, staring at the window just behind Dick’s head. “I’m too hot.”

Without another word, Dick reaches over and blindly feels around for the latch to your window. It takes a few tries but then he’s clicking it open and the room is flooded with fresh air.

“No excuses to leave now,” he says.

You press your lips into a line, knowing he’s right. You’re hesitant to lay between them again, as comfortable and safe as you felt. Something about it feels off, like you’re doing something you’re not supposed to. 

You’re torn between pretending to use the bathroom and just going back to sleep when Dick wraps an arm around your waist and tugs you back into the bed. You hit the pillows with a soft thud, shifting on top of the sheets until you’re comfortable.

Well, that settles that.

-

Wally is gone before you wake up, Dick following suit not much later. At least the latter kissed you goodbye—Wally couldn’t even be bothered to send a text. You hate how much the thought upsets you.

You go about your Saturday morning the way you normally would. Coffee and breakfast somewhat soothes your racing mind from the confusing, dizzying blur that was your Friday night. Still, the events from last night echo in your mind.

For a moment, in the fog of the early morning, waking up between Wally and Dick just felt right. There was no uncertainty, no shame—just you and two men you love resting after a considerably long night. 

And then the weight of your thoughts hits you and your stomach drops because you love Wally, in the same way you love Dick. You remember the way your heart hammered in your chest when he kissed you, the butterflies in your stomach when he held you. God, what have you gotten into?

You force yourself into the shower before you can think about it anymore. Your skin still smells like Wally’s cologne and Dick’s sweat. The water runs across your skin, washing away their scents and the associated feelings that flood and threaten to drown you. 

You stand under the water much longer than you mean to, only getting out when your phone starts buzzing enough to send it tumbling off the counter.

Shit, you’re quick to rinse off and hop out of the shower, dripping water all over the floor on the way to your discarded phone. You grab it, your wet palm smearing water all over the screen, and squint at it through water logged eyes.

Batboyfriend: Pool day? 👀 Speedy + Clingy = This Guy: OMG YES.  It’s hotter than me out here and that’s saying something.

Speedy + Clingy = This Guy: dibs on throwing her in the pool this time

Batboyfriend: what? you literally saved her last time

Speedy + Clingy = This Guy: and? I contain multitudes bro.

Batboyfriend:  y/n? you in? I swear I won’t let him drown you 

You can’t help but smile as you flip through the messages. After a week of silence, the normalcy feels good—even if you are still worried about Wally.

You: sure, why not

Batboyfriend: great, see you in an hour?

Speedy + Clingy = This Guy: YAY!! 💪😎 👊🤠✋

Batboyfriend: what??

You: what??

Speedy + Clingy = This Guy: ⬆️ that’s literally me rn

With your afternoon spoken for, you go to get ready.

-

You’re nervous when you pull up to Dick’s, wringing your shirt in your hands. You’ve been here a thousand times, swam at the pool more times than you can count, but still your heart flutters in your ribcage. 

You thought you were ready to face them again but then the memories of Wally’s hair messy and glowing in the early morning light come bleeding back. Dick’s voice echoes in your ears with every step you take: She’s a good kisser, right?

You’re tempted to duck away, to go back home and pretend like you got caught up in something. And then Wally is calling your name and Dick is coming skipping down the parking lot. 

You swallow at the sight of them—this pool day is going to be the death of you. Wally is shirtless and wearing only a pair of green swim trunks and cheap flip flops. Sweat glistens across his bare chest, highlighting the dark bruise on his side.

Dick offers you a wave, tan skin peaking out from under his tank top. A pair of aviators sits on top of his head and holds back his mess of dark curls. Your heart wrenches at the gash on his head.

Wally grins at you from behind his sunglasses. “Took you long enough.”

Dick comes right up to you, wrapping his arm around your shoulders and kissing the side of your head. You glance at Wally nervously but the redhead looks completely unbothered. 

“How long have you guys been here?”

Wally checks an imaginary watch. “Pretty much since Dick texted.”

You glance at your boyfriend with raised eyebrows who only nods to confirm. Despite their lighthearted attitudes, you can’t help but feel hesitant. Suspicious, even. 

“You guys aren’t actually planning on drowning me,” you glance between the two, “right?”

“No,” Dick says. 

“Only if you deserve it.”

You roll your eyes only for sweet relief to hit you when Dick unlocks the gate and gestures you into the poolyard. The water catches your eye, sparkling as if to say hello. 

Dick and Wally have already set up the tanning chairs, the cooler, and laid out towels for each of you. You smile at the sight, shimmying out of Dick’s reach to sprint towards your favorite chair.

“You guys have been busy.”

“Duh, we’ve been waiting for you.” 

You settle in on the chair, dropping your stuff and claiming your territory. It’s already warm from being in the sun—prime tanning real estate, as you always called it. You sprawl out across the chair and bask in the afternoon sunlight with no intention of getting up anytime soon.

“Straight to the chair as always,” Dick laughs. “There’s drinks in the cooler. I got your favorite.”

“Ugh, you’re speaking my language right now.” 

You slowly strip out of your shorts and t-shirt, letting the sun rays wash over your almost naked figure. You try to ignore the way Wally looks at you, instead focusing on Dick digging through the cooler to grab you a drink.

-

“What’s the point of going to the pool if you don’t go swimming?” Wally teases.

“I’m tanning.” You glance at his pasty figure, “you should try it sometime.”

“Hey, you know I burn easily!”

“Poor, delicate Wally.” You tease.

“That’s it,” he says, and suddenly he’s grabbing you from the chair and tossing you over his shoulder. “You’re going in.”

“No, wait, Wally!”

“Nope, bad girls get thrown in the pool.” 

You hate the way that phrase has heat pooling in your core. You glance to Dick, currently floating on his back in the water, for help.

“Don’t look at me,” he shrugs. “He literally told you ahead of time this would happen.”

Some help he is.

You look at Wally pleadingly. “I concede. I apologize. I surrender. Just—please, do not throw me in.”

It must be the way you’re looking at him or the desperation in your voice, but Wally actually puts you down. Relief floods you when your bare feet meet the concrete lining the pool. You’re inches away from him, you can see every bead of sweat, feel the heat radiating off of him, see the burn forming across his neck and shoulders.

“You and your delicate skin,” you say quietly, reaching out to touch the bruise along his ribs. You stop yourself from touching him.

Wally just stares at you. No retort, no threat to throw you in the pool. Just pure unabashed staring. You shrink beneath his gaze, pulling your hand back to your side. 

“You guys gonna kiss again?”

The sound of Dick’s voice has you realizing you’re standing entirely too close to him. You risk a glance only to see him smiling wickedly in your direction. Oh god, you know what that smile means. He’s planning something.

You take a step back only for Wally to catch your hand in his. “Don’t,” he breathes.

You look at Dick once more, though you’re not sure why. Are you waiting for him to rescue you, to tell you what to do? To give you permission? You shy away from the thought.

Dick takes a sip of his drink. “Well?”

He’s looking at you expectantly, like he somehow thinks you’re going to kiss Wally right here in front of him. The very idea has your face going hot—and not from the sun. You try to meet his eyes from here and it’s only then that you find he’s not staring at you at all.

He’s looking directly at Wally.

You snap your head up only to find the redhead blushing, his mouth set in a hard line. Your gaze follows the length of his arm—his skin turning pink in the sun—all the way down to where his hand rests on yours.

You’re entirely too hot, now. 

“Don’t you remember what we talked about?” You look at Dick again as he speaks.

What we talked about? You frown, suddenly feeling vindicated at your hesitancy earlier. Something isn’t right here.

Your voice cracks when you go to speak. “Am I about to be drowned?”

Your attempt to lighten the mood falls on deaf ears. Dick smirks, looking at Wally with raised eyebrows, while Wally’s eyes are entirely focused on you. Oh god.

“We had a deal.” Dick prompts, and that undertone in his voice sounds eerily similar to the one he uses when he’s commanding the Titans. An order—not a request.

“Fuck it,” Wally mumbles under his breath, and suddenly he’s tugging you into him, closing the gap by gripping the back of your neck.

All of the breath leaves your body as you collide with him, the warm skin of his palm beckoning you closer. His other hand wraps around your waist and before you can even think to question him, his lips are slamming against yours.

There’s no hesitancy, no soft shyness. You can’t feel guilt and anger radiating off of him the way you could last time. There’s passion, now. Intent.

You fall into him, letting all of your own confusion and fear melt away. Your hands trail up his spine like they have a mind of their own. They run up against his bare skin, flickering like lightning until they meet at the back of his neck, tangling up in his hair and tugging him closer to you.

Wally gasps, his hand on your waist tightening until his fingers dig in hard enough to bruise. The sting of it all doesn’t phase you, it only drives you to want more.

And then there’s a different hand on your back and you’re brought back to reality. You pull away, lips swollen and eyes wide, dizzy with lust. You look behind you and meet Dick’s eyes and your vertiginous new reality falls over you.

“I—”

Dick’s hand trails down to the small of your back, rubbing circles on your bare skin. “How was it?”

“How was it?” You repeat, your voice barely a mumble. 

You press a hand to your chest. The world is too hot, your heart beating too fast. If it weren’t for their hands on you, you’re sure you would’ve passed out by now.

“Good.” Wally takes the words right out of your mouth. “You were right.”

It’s the way he says it that catches your attention. His words are void of bitterness, just pure breathless curiosity. 

He looks at Dick, his green eyes sparkling in the sunlight. “Can I—can I do it again?”

“It’s not me you need to be asking.”

His eyes fall on you and you swear your heart hits terminal velocity. You look at him through your lashes, the whole world bright and dreamlike. 

“Can I?” He swallows, “please?”

It’s the sheer need in his voice that makes you nod, not trusting your voice to be any sort of stable right now. Wally doesn’t waste a second to pull you against him and press his lips against yours. It’s less desperate this time, but just as needy, just as passionate. 

For a second, it almost feels like the world is shaking. Like the ground beneath your feet is vibrating at the exact frequency you are. And then Wally rips himself away from you to take a deep breath and you realize the world wasn’t vibrating—he was.

“Fuck,” he says through a laugh.

“Easy, Wally.” Dick lays a hand on his shoulder, clasping tight until the speedster slows down. “You alright?”

He blinks a few times before offering a weak thumbs up, his hand still shaking. It’s only now that you realize what a number you’ve done on him. His red hair is tangled and messy, his cheeks and ears a shade of vermillion you’ve never seen before. It would be laughable if you didn’t feel equally as frazzled.

“And how are you feeling?” Dick asks.

“I just kissed Wally,” you say slowly. “Twice.”

“And?”

“And you watched.” 

Dick just laughs. “It was definitely a sight, I’ll give you that.”

You’re not even sure what to say to that. Dick’s never been considerably possessive but you never pegged him as the kind of man to share. You think back to that first night Wally had kissed you and the initial worry you’d felt while waiting for Dick to pick up the phone.

You never expected it to turn into this.

“Was that really okay?” Wally’s tone is serious in a way you’ve rarely heard before.

“We had a deal,” Dick repeats. 

The statement has your eyebrows raising. You open your mouth in question, ready to ask your boyfriend what the actual fuck is going on, but stop dead in your tracks.

You blink a few times, making sure the sight isn’t just a heat-driven mirage. But no, what you’re seeing is entirely correct. Wally West is kissing your boyfriend, and Dick’s kissing him back.

You watch in surprise, your jaw hitting the floor. Is this how Dick felt when you kissed Wally? Are you supposed to feel this turned on by it? It feels like the world around you is on fire and you’re caught right in the middle of it all.

Dick pulls away entirely unphased and wholly unaware of the state he’s left Wally in. Meanwhile, Wally looks like he’s about to faint. And though you’ve done such a good job holding in your incredulous laughter up to this point, Wally’s messy state finally drives you over the edge.

“What the actual fuck is going on?” You cackle, “what are we even doing?”

“We’re helping Wally.”

Dick states it like it’s the simplest thing in the world and it’s enough to have you doubting your own overcomplicated thoughts. You glance at Wally, hoping for some insight.

“Do you not want this?” He asks.

You’re not even sure what “this” is but something in the way he asks it has you saying you do. It’s Dick and it’s Wally and they’ve always taken care of you, so why wouldn’t you trust them now? 

“Good,” he says and then he’s closing the gap between you, his fingers finding their way to the nape of your neck as if they have a thousand times before. “Because I do too.”

Then Wally’s lips are on yours again and you swear the world falls away from your feet. Your knees shake and your body threatens to tumble forward but then Wally’s holding you, bracing you against the perfectly strewn muscles of his body. 

You gasp into his mouth when you feel Dick press himself against your back, his lips attaching to the side of your neck. One of his hands rests over Wally’s on your hip, the other trailing up your spine to fiddle with the string of your bathing suit top.

It’s almost too much, being between them this way. You’ve never felt so contained, you’ve never felt so free. Wally’s tongue slips into your mouth at the same time Dick unties your top. You barely have time to cover your chest before the useless garment falls limply to the ground.

You pull away gasping, an unbearable heat in the pit of your stomach. “Dick.”

For a moment, both men just stare at you like deer in headlights. You tighten your arms around your chest, awkwardly shifting to cover your bare tits from their prying eyes.

Dick finally hums in acknowledgement. 

“You took my top off.”

“I know.”

You look over your shoulder at Dick, and then to Wally, and you’re not quite sure who’s staring harder. All you know is that Wally’s shorts suddenly look tighter and you’re now a little too curious about what he’s packing beneath them. 

Dick rubs himself against you, the bulge in his shorts catching on your skin. You take a deep breath and brace yourself. 

His mouth brushes against your ear. “Why don’t you move your hands, hm? Let Wally take a look.”

He’s using that damn voice again. The ‘I’m not asking, I’m ordering’  voice that he uses when you’re being a brat. You don’t even think twice before you force your arms away from your skin, letting them fall limply at your sides.

Wally coughs like there’s something stuck in his throat, reaching a hand down to adjust his shorts. His mouth falls open, a hand reaching out and stopping midway as if he’s about to ask permission.

Dick rests a hand under each nipple, cupping your boobs like he’s putting them on display. “Well?”

“Hot,” he breathes. “Fuck—gorgeous, I mean. Pretty.” He cracks a smile, rubbing the back of his neck, “I’m gonna stop talking now.”

Your heart flutters at his praise like you ever thought he’d say otherwise. He reaches out again, more confident this time, and brushes a hand across your nipple. You shiver, backing up into Dick without meaning to.

Your boyfriend holds you still, planting soft kisses on your shoulder to keep you calm while Wally’s hands explore your chest. Goosebumps raise in every place he touches, the heat of the day soothing them down almost as quickly as they form. It’s a tantalizing cycle.

Heat pools in your centre and you’re grateful that you’re wearing something waterproof. You clench your legs together without meaning to, hoping for some friction. Dick knows what you need before you even ask for it, dropping a hand down to rub slow circles on your clothed clit.

Wally dips his head in, flicking his eyes up to silently ask for permission—met with a curt nod—before attaching his lips to your skin. His hot mouth leaves a trail of marks wherever he kisses you, your skin turning shiny with his spit.

“How’re you feeling, baby?” Dick asks while he slips his hand into the front of your bathing suit bottoms. 

“G-good.”

Wally laughs against your skin and for the first time in a while, you see sunshine behind his eyes. His happiness almost feels better than the combined pleasure they’re giving you. 

A whine slips from your lips when Dick’s fingers meet your bare pussy. Wally’s quicker than that, though. He presses his mouth against yours and greedily swallows up your moans.

Dick crouches behind you to get better access and pulls your bottoms down to your knees. You stumble slightly but Wally catches you, his mouth moving away from your lips down to your jaw. He kisses lower and lower, sucking dark marks against your neck, your shoulders, your chest.

It’s his way of claiming you, you think. You may not be his girlfriend and he may not be your boyfriend, but it’s his small way of saying Wally was here. 

Dick slips a finger inside of you, pushing it up to the hilt, and another moan is ripping through you. You grip at Wally’s shoulder, trying to keep yourself stable while the two men ravage you. You squeeze your eyes shut and try to focus on the moment—on the way Dick’s finger curls inside of you, the way Wally’s teeth graze your nipple, the way you can feel your juices running down your thighs.

He dips another finger inside of you, pumping them deeper. You press your body fully against Wally’s, his cock pressing against your stomach through his shorts. If it wasn’t for him, you’d probably be tumbling to your knees by now.

You run your fingers across his abs as a way to distract yourself from Dick’s fingers inside of you. You dip your hand lower and lower with each pass until you’re just barely grazing the top of his swimshorts. 

Wally gulps and that’s the only reaction you need before you’re sliding your hand into his pants to grab his mostly hard cock. He’s solid in your hand, a little longer than Dick but not any thicker. You give his cock a playful squeeze before collecting the precum from his tip and using it as lube to glide along his shaft.

“F-fuck,” Wally gasps. He glances at Dick kneeled down behind you, “she’s good.”

Dick nuzzles his face between your thighs, drinking up the slick that drips from his fingers. “You haven’t even tasted her yet.”

The way they talk about you like you’re not even there just turns you on more, that pressure in your lower stomach building with every thrust of Dick’s fingers. You tighten your grip around Wally’s cock, trying to match Dick’s pace inside of you.

Wally brushes a finger under your chin, tilting your head up so he can kiss you again. His lips slam against yours and you part yours to welcome him. His tongue dips into your mouth and suddenly his taste is everywhere.

A familiar heatwave hits you and suddenly you’re finishing all over Dick’s fingers, your orgasm washing over you in waves. You squirm, your knees shaking and your pussy fluttering around his fingers. Dick pulls his face out from your achy, needy pussy, watching you with hearts in his eyes as you cum all over his hand.

Wally pulls away from you too, watching the spectacle you’ve become. His hand reaches for yours, stroking his thumb along your knuckles in a way he hopes is soothing. It only takes a few seconds before you come back to yourself, panting and messy and hot.

“God, that’s a sight I’d pay to see.” Wally laughs.

Dick rubs a hand up and down your thigh before rising to his feet. “Good thing you don’t have to.”

He wraps an arm around Wally and tugs him in for a kiss. You watch them through bleary eyes, your ears perking up when Wally moans at the taste of your pussy on Dick’s lips. Then Dick is turning to you, beckoning you in and pressing his lips to yours. You swear you can taste Wally on him, too.

“Let’s get you over to your chair, hm?” Dick mumbles against your lips.

You don’t even think, you just obey. You shuffle over to your chair on shaky legs, laying on your back. “Like this?”

The two men follow you over, Dick settling on the chair next to yours while Wally shuffles over to you. You watch him through half-closed eyes while he shimmies out of his swim trunks, letting his cock spring free. 

He’s rock hard, his tip glistening with precum. You trace his body from his muscly thighs to his throbbing cock to his kinda-but-not-really groomed hair. It’s almost exactly what you were expecting, and so incredibly Wally.

He gives himself a few strokes before kneeling on the chair with you, testing his weight. “Man, I hope this thing doesn’t break.”

You gently hit his arm. “Don’t say that, now I’m gonna be paranoid.”

“Don’t worry, baby.” He tests out the nickname, watching you for a reaction. “I’ll protect you.”

He grabs your legs, hooking them around his waist on either side. You take a deep breath and brace yourself, your eyes finding Dick’s for a glimpse of comfort. 

He smiles at you reassuringly. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, sweetheart.”

“I-I want to.”

“Then let us take care of you.”

Wally hums in agreement, rutting his cock through your folds. The head of his dick catches on your clit, eliciting a gasp from your lips that brings a smile to his. You shift lower in your chair, trying to close the gap between his tip and your entrance.

He leans into you, bracing a hand on the chair behind your head. His lips ghost over yours, “you ready for me?”

You mumble a quick yes and then his lips are pressing against yours, his hand guiding his cock inside of you. A moan falls from your lips the minute his length splits you open. You squirm beneath him but Wally’s other hand presses into your hip, holding you against the chair.

He’s surprisingly slow to bottom out, like he’s savouring every inch he pushes into you, every second he gets to be inside of you. He moans shakily once he’s all the way in, the warmth and wetness of your walls almost has him finishing then and there.

You wrap your arms around his shoulders and draw him in closer as he starts to thrust. His hips move out painfully slowly before snapping back in, forcing his length into you all at once. The breath leaves your body, his motions leave you gasping for more.

He falls into a steady rhythm, his movements fast and to the point. His head moves away from your lips to nuzzle into the crook of your shoulder, his breathy moans directly in your ears.

You can’t help but dig your nails into his skin, marking him the same way he marked you earlier. Your eyes flutter open, glancing over to Dick only to see him staring straight at you guys and stroking his cock. You clench at the sight, reaching out a shaky hand to beckon him closer.

He shakes his head, holding up a finger as if to say “give me a minute.” You nod weakly in acknowledgement, letting your head lull back and eyes close again. The pressure in your stomach only builds with every thrust, Wally’s hand only adding to it.

“Is he watching?” Wally rasps.

A cross between a moan and a yes is all that you manage, but Wally seems to get the picture. He snaps his hips harder into yours, each thrust punctuated with a sort of showiness that only Wally himself could pull off. You cling to him tighter, holding on for dear life.

And then there’s a tap at your shoulder and Dick’s cock is next to your face. You don’t even think to question it, only opening your mouth to give him access.

He’s gentle to start, slowly pushing his length into your mouth and letting you get used to it. You hollow your cheeks, letting the saliva build up in your mouth as you bob your head up and down his length. Dick’s thumb rubs the area beneath your lips and brushes away any of the drool leaking out.

Wally shifts his grip on you, his hand almost completely resting on your tummy now. The sudden change has you crying out, arching your hips into his which only drives his cock deeper. You whimper onto Dick’s length, looking up at him through your lashes.

“Doing so well,” he says breathlessly. “Taking such good care of us.”

His praise is what keeps you going, clearing your fuzzy head just enough to keep bobbing on his cock. His salty, somewhat chlorinated taste keeps your tastebuds on their toes, each inch you take of him driving you further and further.

Wally’s thrusts start to get slower and sloppier and your pussy aches with your impending orgasm. Wally pushes a little harder—whether on purpose or not, you’re not sure—and then you’re coming undone beneath him. Wave after scorching wave of pleasure rolls over you, your pussy spasming around him.

Wally is hard pressed to pull out but somehow manages to tear himself away from you, cumming in spurts on your pussy and tummy. He watches you writhe beneath him, your mouth still full of Dick’s cock, and thinks he can cum again from the sight alone.

You pop your mouth off of his cock and finally catch your breath, opting to jerk him off instead. You only get a few strokes in before his hand is covering yours.

He looks at Wally. “Mind switching places?”

Even though he phrases it like a question, you all know he really isn’t asking. Wally’s up on shaky legs and taking Dick’s place at your head before you can even process what’s happening. And then Dick is crouching between your legs and sliding his cocks into your slick, overstimulated folds.

It’s hot and you ache, but Dick feels too good inside of you to stop now. He leans closer to you, pressing his lips against yours while he thrusts lazily inside of you. While Wally felt amazing, Dick just feels right.

The speedster stands beside you, mesmerised by the sight of you two. He can’t help but rub at his half-hard cock while he watches—the two of you are just too sexy. 

It doesn’t take long before Dick’s finishing, only pulling out enough to have his cum pooling at your entrance. He dips his sweaty forehead into your chest while he finishes, mumbling curses against your warm skin. 

“Fuck,” is all he says.

“Fuck,” Wally agrees.

Dick takes his sweet time getting off of you but when he does, Wally is waiting next to you with a towel. You smile and thank him, sitting up and wiping his drying cum off your stomach the best you can. 

Dick, dressed back in his swim shorts, grabs fresh water out of the cooler and sits at the end of the chair. “Here,” he passes it to you. “You’re dehydrated.”

You nod in agreement. Two orgasms in the summer sun would leave anyone dehydrated. You gulp down half the bottle in one go, surprised to see Wally waiting for you with your discarded bathing suit.

You frown at the sight of it. The thought of putting on something so restricting right now is enough to overstimulate you.

“You can wear my t-shirt if you’d prefer,” Wally offers when he sees your face. “Might be comfier.”

“I—” Your voice cracks. Yep, definitely dehydrated. “I’d like that, thanks.”

Dick rubs soothing circles on your back. “Do you need anything else?”

You shake your head. Honestly, what you need more than anything right now is some clarity on what just happened and some time to process.

You wait until Wally is out of earshot, rooting through his messy pile of stuff to find you his t-shirt, before you speak. “What happens now?”

“What do you want to happen?” Dick mimics your quiet tone.

“I want Wally.”

You don’t need to clarify any more—Dick knows exactly what you mean. He laces his fingers with yours just as Wally comes back with an old band t-shirt.

You expect him to hand it to you but instead he gestures for you to put your arms up, helping you tug it over your head. The cotton feels amazing on your feverish skin.

“So, uh,” he says awkwardly. “Should I go?”

You grab his wrist. “Stay, please.”

He offers you a half smile before turning his attention to Dick. The two lock eyes, partaking in one of their silent conversations that you’re not privy to.

“Okay,” he says. “I’ll stay.”

You fight the urge to celebrate, instead springing to your feet and wrapping your arms around him. Wally’s shocked, for just a second, and then he’s pulling you closer to him, holding you the way he did in your living room.

He rests his chin on your head. “Not to ruin the moment or anything but,” he looks at Dick over your head, “do you guys wanna get something to eat? I’m starving.”

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@4-ann1e since u wanted to be tagged >⩊<