A/N- I can't believe this series is done! Thank you for the love and support you all have shown! I wasn't originally going to finish it today, but decided I wanted to close this series off before starting the next one. I have a new fic based off a couple of requests I've received coming out tomorrow!
Pairing: Max Hatter x Rapunzel's Daughter! Reader
Words: 1.8k
Synopsis: You take Max to Corona to meet your parents as well as Pascal and Maximus.
Max Hatter Masterlist Here
A couple of weeks have passed since yours and Max’s first date, and things could not be going better. Max is currently sitting in your dorm room, letting you paint his nails.
“My nails look so much better when I let you paint them, princess. I would have stolen from you a lot sooner if I knew it would lead to a free nail service” Max winks at you.
“Who said this service was free?” you grin at him. “The first time I painted your nails was free but now you’re in my debt forever.”
“Oh no what ever will I do to pay off this debt” He dramatically gasps.
Seeing an opportunity to ask the question weighing on your mind you can’t help but respond “You could come to Corona with me this weekend.”
“Princess, are you asking what I think you’re asking?” Max smiles.
“Yes, I’m asking you to meet my parents. They keep asking about you and I thought it would be a good time. Don’t let it go to your head though” you tease.
“Too late. I already have the beautiful Y/N Fitzherbert as my girlfriend and now she wants me to meet her family. Of course, I’m going to get a bigger ego” Max teases back.
“So, you want to come” you ask excitedly.
“Of course I do! You're sure your parents don't mind that I’m the son of Maddox Hatter,” he asks.
“I’m sure! I’ve already told them who your father is, and they don’t care. If anything, you should be more worried about my father trying to force you to teach him that coin trick you do. I told him about it once and he has tried to do it multiple times and let’s just say it hasn’t gone well” you laugh.
“Well in that case it looks like I’m meeting your family this weekend” Max smiles.
“I can’t wait to let them know! I’m so excited for you to meet them” you say, pulling Max into a kiss, forgetting about the nails you were painting.
After you pull away, you realize that you have just destroyed all of your work on his nails.
“Looks like I’m going to have to start over” you sigh.
“Oh no more time with my beautiful girlfriend holding my hand whatever will I do” Max dramatically exclaims.
“Wow it must be really tough for you, pretty boy” you laugh.
When the weekend arrives, you are practically bouncing off the wall with excitement as you pack the last items in your suitcase. You know your family is going to love Max and if anything, you are worried about your dad stealing Max away most of the time.
Once you finish packing, you make your way to the front of Auradon Prep, where you and Max are being picked up. You are surprised to find that Max has gotten there before you.
“Well, aren't you here early” you say walking over to Max, giving him a quick kiss.
“Couldn’t risk being late today” Max says confidently, though you can sense his nervousness.
Taking Max’s hand, you reassure him “Don’t worry, they are going to love you.”
“Easier said than done princess” he sighs.
Before you can continue, the car that was sent for you is pulling up. As you and Max climb into the back you are surprised to find a stowaway in your seat.
“Pascal! What are you doing here” you exclaim as he crawls onto your cupped hands turning yellow with excitement.
“I missed you too! It was only going to be another hour before I saw you, buddy. I’m glad you came though” you say excitedly.
Noticing Pascal's attention turn to Max, you figure you should introduce them. “Max, this is Pascal. Pascal, this is my boyfriend Max. You better be nice to him.”
“Uh, it’s nice to meet you Pascal” Max says, unprepared to be talking to a chameleon before arriving in Corona.
Pascal, deciding to investigate Max, crawls into his hands. After hardcore intense eye contact that Max thought was impossible with a chameleon, Pascal starts to turn purple matching the shade of Max’s nails.
“Aww, he likes you Max. Not going to lie the only two that I thought may be more cautious with you were Pascal and Maximus” you sigh in relief.
“I thought you said your family is going to love me” Max questions you.
“I did and they will! To be fair, Pascal and Maximus still don't fully trust my dad, so I thought it could go either way. Just don’t steal in front of Maximus and you have nothing to worry about” you smile at Max, easing his worries.
After the hour long car ride, Max and you have finally arrived in Corona. Max is surprised to see the car is stopping at the edge of the kingdom and not at the castle.
Noticing Max’s confusion, you say “We have to walk to the castle. The kingdom of Corona was built long before cars were invented, so the streets weren’t designed for them. Just leave your stuff in the car and it will get brought to the castle.”
“Alright Princess” Max responds, a little worried about walking through the kingdom and people noticing him.
Getting out of the car with Pascal on your shoulder, you walk over to Max and hold his hand.
“You ready?” you ask him.
“As ready as I’ll ever be” Max replies.
Walking through Corona, Max finds himself surprised at how many people you casually wave to and greet. He wasn't expecting you to know so many citizens as he thought royalty rarely interacted with them.
“Princess Y/N” , a little girl with ginger hair in pigtails, comes running towards you and hugs you.
“Lily” you exclaim, hugging her back.
“I missed you! I made you something since I knew you were coming back today” she says holding up a purple and yellow flower crown for you to wear.
“I love it” you say, putting the crown on.
“My mom said you were coming with your boyfriend, so I made him one too” Lily whispers loudly.
“That’s so sweet! Do you want to meet him and give it to him yourself” you whisper loudly back, matching her energy as she nods her head.
“Max this is Lily, she lives here in Corona. Her family used to love helping my mother with her hair. Lily, this is my boyfriend Max” you say introducing the two.
“Hi Lily” Max waves at her.
“I made this for you,” she shyly responds, holding out a matching flower crown which Max takes and puts over his hat.
“For me? I love it. Thank you so much” he smiles at her, causing her to smile.
“I love the flower crowns, but I think your mom is calling you though so you should probably get back to her” you say hugging the girl one last time before she runs off.
Looking at Max, you grab a hold of his hand again, kiss his cheek and say “See I told you everyone was going to love you”
“I guess you were right,” Max smiles brightly at you as you continue walking through the kingdom.
Before you go in you turn to Max with a serious look on your face and say “I need to tell you something very important before we go in.”
“What is it?” Max responds clearly worried.
“You look adorable in that crown,” you grin.
“So do you” he laughs, realizing that is all you had to say.
Suddenly the doors to the castle open and your mother is running over and pulling you into a hug.
“Y/N your home! I’ve missed you so much!” Rapunzel exclaims. “And you must be Max! I’ve heard so much about you” she adds, pulling Max into the hug. Pascal takes the opportunity to hop onto your mother’s shoulders, he is definitely tired of listening to you and Max be all cute for so long.
“Woah slow down there Blondie, you’re going to suffocate them” Eugene laughs, walking over.
“Sorry I was just so excited” your mom apologizes, releasing you both.
“I’m Eugene” your dad says walking over to shake Max’s hand. “But you can call me Mr. Fitzherbert.”
“Eugene” Rapunzel says, before Max has the chance to respond.
“Relax, I'm just kidding” he laughs. “You can call me Eugene.”
“It’s very nice to meet you both. I’ve heard a lot about you two,” Max says formally, trying to impress your parents.
“Don’t worry about all that formality kid, if you want to impress us, you’ll teach me your coin trick” Eugene says, clasping Max’s shoulder.
“Dad,” you exclaim.
“What, I just want to know how he does it” your dad defends himself.
“I can teach you. I don’t mind at all,” Max says.
Hearing the sound of hooves getting closer, you look over to see your favorite noble steed.
“Maximus!” You exclaim, running over to pet him. “Have they been treating you well while I was gone? My dad hasn’t been giving you a bad time” you ask, exaggerating his suffering.
“Hey, I have done nothing wrong,” Eugene exclaims.
“Sure dad” you reply. “Maximus, this is my boyfriend Max. You better be nice to him and I promise you’ll like him more than my dad since he has a cool name like you.”
“I promise not to break any laws while I’m here” Max adds, putting his hands in the air, jokingly surrendering, causing Maximus to snort in approval.
“Come on, you two must be hungry. I’ve been baking all morning waiting for you to arrive,” Rapunzel says, starting to walk to the dining hall with Pascal still on her shoulder.
“And you can show me that trick over lunch”. Eugene laughs following her out of the room with Maximus.
“See I told you everything would be just fine. Everyone has some sort of a past here” you say gently looking at Max.
“You were right, princess, just like always,” Max laughs.
“Well, we better follow them before my dad eats all of the pie” you add, before pulling Max in for a kiss.
When you break away, he notices his hat has mysteriously ended up on your head, and he is now wearing your flower crown.
“Did you really take my hat again, princess?” Max questions you.
“No time to talk about that. Let’s get some food” you laugh, grabbing Max’s hand and pulling him ahead while avoiding the question.
It was at that moment Max knew that everything was going to be fine as long as he had you. He also realized you were never going to stop stealing his hat.
A/N - Hi everyone my taglist is currently CLOSED and at capacity. If you are currently on my Tangled Thieves series Taglist please let me know if you want to be tagged for all of my fics. Going forward I am no longer going to be doing a series taglist since my standard taglist as gotten so large.
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Can I request a really cute and fluffy story about Kimi antonelli?
Something like the reader loves to get her nails done, buy books, buy clothes, etc but she always holds herself back because she doesn’t feel like she deserves to get spoiled? Then obviously kimi notices and spoils her to oblivion!
I hope that made sense. I’m really new to Tumblr and I absolutely adore your fics sooo I’m really looking forward to what masterpiece you come up with. Thank u :D
You Deserve the World So Let Me Buy it For You - KA12
pairing: kimi antonelli x fem!gf!reader
synopsis: Andrea Kimi Antonelli has finally had enough of it. So, he takes matters (and his limitless black card) into his own hands, determined to entirely dismantle the idea that his gf shouldn't be spoiled to oblivion.
wc: 2.6k
note: hello besties <3 hope this likes you!! thanks for your request i love it, maybe a Kimi will find me 🥺🤧
The spine of the special edition hardback was beautiful—embossed with gold foil and intricately designed. You ran your fingers over it, your eyes lighting up the way they always did when you found something you loved.
Standing a few feet away, Kimi watched you with a soft smile playing on his lips. He loved this version of you: completely captivated, entirely in your element. He waited for you to tuck the book under your arm and head toward the cash register.
Instead, he watched your shoulders drop. You turned the book over, glanced at the price tag, and let out a quiet, barely audible sigh. Carefully, almost reluctantly, you placed the book back onto the shelf and took a step away.
"Not getting it, amore?" Kimi asked, stepping up behind you and wrapping an arm loosely around your waist. He pressed a soft kiss to your temple.
You leaned into his touch, offering a tight smile. "No, it's fine. I have way too many unread books sitting on my nightstand at home. It’s too expensive anyway. I don't really need it."
Kimi frowned slightly, his brow furrowing as he looked from the book to your face. He knew for a fact you had been talking about this specific release for three months. "Y/N, if you want it, just get it. Or let me get it for you."
"No, Kimi, really," you insisted, already walking toward the exit of the bookstore. "It's a waste of money. I don't deserve to treat myself right now anyway, I haven't even finished the last one I bought."
He didn't push the issue right then, but as he followed you out into the warm afternoon sun, a realization clicked into place. It wasn't just the book.
It was the clothes, too. Last week in Milan, you had tried on a gorgeous silk dress that fit you like a glove. You looked absolutely breathtaking, and your reflection in the mirror had made you smile so brightly. But the moment the shop assistant asked if you were taking it, you practically ripped it off, claiming the color washed you out—a blatant lie just to avoid the guilt of the price tag.
It was your nails, as well. You loved having long, intricately designed acrylics. You used to spend hours scrolling through Pinterest looking at nail art. But for the last two months, your nails had been bare, chipped from your own nervous picking. When he’d asked about it, you’d shrugged and said, “I don’t want to be high-maintenance. Getting them done is too much of a luxury.”
Kimi gripped the steering wheel a little tighter as he drove the two of you back to his apartment. He hated it. He hated that you constantly made yourself smaller, that you denied yourself the things that brought you joy because of some misplaced guilt. You supported him through the exhausting chaos of his racing career, dealt with his chaotic travel schedules, and loved him so selflessly.
You deserved the entire world, and it broke his heart that you didn't see it.
That night, while you were curled up on the couch in one of his oversized Mercedes hoodies, sound asleep with a movie playing quietly in the background, Kimi pulled out his phone.
He didn't just want to buy you a book or pay for a manicure. He wanted to entirely dismantle this idea you had that you didn't deserve to be spoiled. If you wouldn't treat yourself, Andrea Kimi Antonelli was going to do it for you.
First, he found the website for the most highly-rated, luxurious nail salon in the city and booked their longest, most premium VIP package for the next afternoon. Then, he texted a personal shopper at the boutique where you had left that silk dress, giving them your sizes and a very specific, unlimited budget. Finally, he logged onto the bookstore's website.
The next morning, you woke up to the smell of fresh coffee and pastries. You wandered into the kitchen, rubbing the sleep from your eyes, only to stop dead in your tracks.
Sitting perfectly on the kitchen island was a stack of five books—including the special edition you had put back yesterday, plus four others by the same author.
"Kimi?" you breathed out, your hands flying to your mouth as he walked in from the balcony, a steaming mug of coffee in his hand.
"Good morning, principessa," he smiled, setting the mug down and pulling you into his chest.
"Kimi, you shouldn't have," you stammered, looking at the stack of expensive books. The familiar wave of guilt started to rise in your chest. "This is too much, I don't deserve—"
"Stop right there," Kimi interrupted gently, his hands coming up to cup your face. His dark eyes locked onto yours, completely serious but entirely soft. "Do not finish that sentence, Y/N. You deserve this, and so much more. In fact, this is just the beginning."
You blinked, confused. "What do you mean?"
Kimi grinned, pressing a kiss to your nose. "Finish your coffee and go get dressed in something comfortable, but nice. We have an appointment in two hours."
"An appointment? For what?"
"Your nails," he said simply, his thumb tracing your cheekbone. "And after that, you're going to try on some clothes. And every single time you tell me something is 'too expensive' or that you 'don't need it,' I'm buying it in three different colors."
The drive to the salon was a blur of nervous energy for you and quiet, determined confidence from Kimi. When he pulled up to a sleek, frosted-glass storefront in one of the most upscale districts of the city, your stomach did a familiar little flip of anxiety.
"Kimi, this place is..." You trailed off, looking at the minimalist gold lettering on the window. "This is where celebrities go. A basic manicure here is probably the price of my weekly groceries."
Kimi simply unbuckled his seatbelt, leaned over, and kissed the corner of your mouth. "Good thing you aren't paying, amore."
He stepped out, rounded the car, and opened your door, offering his hand. Resigned but secretly thrilled, you took it.
Inside, the salon smelled of lavender and expensive vanilla. A receptionist greeted Kimi by name, immediately ushering the two of you into a private VIP suite in the back. There were plush velvet chairs, complimentary champagne, and a nail technician waiting with a massive array of color swatches.
You sat down, instantly overwhelmed. "I'll just get a solid color," you told the technician quickly, playing with the rings on your fingers. "Just a short gel manicure is fine. No extensions."
Kimi, who had made himself comfortable on a velvet sofa directly across from you, immediately sat forward. He caught the technician's eye.
"She’s lying," Kimi said smoothly, a teasing but firm smile on his face. He looked at you. "Show her your Pinterest board, Y/N."
"Kimi—"
"The board," he repeated, raising an eyebrow. "I know you have a folder called 'Nail Inspo.' I saw you looking at it three days ago. Show her the ones with the tiny hand-painted stars and the long almond shape. That's what she's getting."
The technician beamed, clearly delighted to have a canvas to work on, while your cheeks flushed crimson. "It takes hours to do that art," you whispered, trying to protest one last time.
"I have nowhere else to be," Kimi replied easily, leaning back and pulling his phone out. "Take your time. Make them perfect."
For the next two hours, you sat in absolute luxury. Every time you glanced over, afraid Kimi was getting bored, he was either answering emails or simply watching you with a soft, affectionate gaze. When the technician finally finished and applied a rich cuticle oil, you held your hands up to the light. The long almond extensions were flawless, painted in a sheer nude with delicate, intricate gold stars scattered across them. You couldn't stop staring at them.
"Beautiful," Kimi murmured, coming up behind your chair and gently tracing your newly manicured fingers. "Matches you perfectly."
You turned to thank him, the guilt fighting a losing battle against the sheer joy bubbling in your chest, but before you could speak, he was pulling you toward the door.
"Thank you," Kimi told the staff, handing over his sleek black card before you could even catch a glimpse of the total. "Now, we have a personal shopper waiting."
If the nail salon was luxurious, the boutique was on an entirely different level. When you arrived, the doors were locked to the public. A well-dressed woman named Elena greeted Kimi with a kiss on both cheeks before leading you to a massive private dressing room.
Hanging on a gold rack were dozens of garments. Dresses, trousers, cashmere sweaters, tailored coats—and right in the center, the emerald green silk dress you had abandoned in Milan a week ago.
"How did you get that?" you gasped, walking over to brush your fingers against the soft silk.
"I have my ways," Kimi smirked, dropping onto the plush ottoman in the center of the room. "Try it on. Try all of it on."
You spent the next hour walking in and out of the dressing room. Every instinct you had honed over the years screamed at you to check the price tags, but Elena had completely removed them at Kimi's request.
You stepped out wearing a stunning, heavy-knit cream sweater and a perfectly tailored skirt. "It’s really beautiful," you admitted, looking in the three-way mirror. "But the wool is so thick, I probably wouldn't wear it enough to justify—"
"Elena, we'll take it," Kimi said without missing a beat.
"Wait, I didn't say I wanted it!" you argued, turning to him.
"You said it was beautiful. That's all the justification you need," he countered, pointing to the rack. "Next."
A few outfits later, you emerged in a breathtaking evening gown. It swept the floor, catching the light with every movement. You felt like an absolute princess, but the familiar heavy anchor of guilt dropped in your chest.
"Kimi, this is too much," you said, your voice cracking slightly. You wrapped your arms around yourself. "I don't have anywhere to wear this. I don't deserve to have thousands of euros spent on me in one afternoon. I'm just... me. You don't have to buy my love."
Kimi’s playful demeanor instantly vanished. He stood up, crossing the room in two long strides, and gently took your hands, pulling them away from your chest.
"Look at me, Y/N," he said quietly, his dark eyes fiercely serious. "I am not buying your love. I already have it, and it is the greatest privilege of my life. I am doing this because you spend so much time taking care of everyone else, making yourself small, and denying yourself happiness over a price tag. You deserve to be spoiled. You deserve nice things simply because they make you smile."
He lifted one of your hands, pressing a kiss to your knuckles, right over the gold stars on your nails.
"You are not a burden. You are not high-maintenance," he whispered, his thumb brushing away a stray tear that escaped your eye. "You are my girl. And as long as you are with me, you are going to be treated like it. Do you understand?"
You let out a shaky breath, nodding slowly as the weight you’d been carrying for years finally began to crack and fall away. "I understand."
Kimi smiled, the bright, boyish grin you loved so much returning. He kissed you softly, lingering for a moment before pulling back.
"Good," he said, turning his head to look at the personal shopper who was pretending very hard to arrange scarves in the corner. "Elena? We're taking the evening gown. And the green silk dress. Actually, you know what? We'll just take the whole rack."
The trunk of Kimi's car was completely packed. So was the backseat. By the time the two of you managed to haul all the shopping bags, boxes, and garment bags up to his apartment, you were both breathless and laughing.
The living room floor was practically covered in boutique bags, the glossy packaging gleaming under the warm overhead lights. You stood in the center of it all, looking around at the sheer volume of things he had bought for you. The heavy guilt that usually accompanied even buying a simple coffee for yourself was entirely gone, replaced by a warm, glowing sense of being deeply, truly cherished.
"I don't even know where I'm going to put all of this," you laughed, shaking your head as you kicked off your shoes. "Your closet is going to be completely overrun."
"Good," Kimi said, shedding his jacket and tossing it over the back of the sofa. He walked over to you, wrapping his arms around your waist from behind and pulling your back flush against his chest. He rested his chin on your shoulder, looking at the beautiful chaos of shopping bags. "I've been telling you to move more of your things in any way. Consider this my strategy to claim all your drawer space."
You leaned your head back against his shoulder, letting out a soft, contented sigh. You lifted your hands, catching the light on your new, starry nails. They were so perfectly you, and every time you looked at them, you felt a little spark of joy.
"Thank you, Kimi," you said softly. This time, there were no 'buts' attached. No 'but it was too much', or 'but you shouldn't have'. Just genuine, unapologetic gratitude.
Kimi noticed the shift immediately. He smiled against your skin, pressing a kiss to the curve of your neck. "You're welcome, principessa."
You turned in his arms, looping yours around his neck to look up into his dark, expressive eyes. "I mean it. Not just for the clothes or the nails or the books. Thank you for... making me see it. For not letting me shrink myself today."
"I'll never let you shrink yourself, Y/N," he promised, his voice dropping to a softer, more intimate register. He brushed a stray lock of hair behind your ear, his touch infinitely gentle. "You light up every room you walk into. It’s about time you let yourself enjoy the spotlight a little bit."
You smiled, leaning up to press a sweet, lingering kiss to his lips. He responded instantly, his hands tightening slightly on your waist, pulling you impossibly closer. When you finally pulled away, you were both smiling.
"Now," Kimi said, taking a step back and gesturing toward the kitchen counter, where the stack of books from this morning was still waiting. "I believe you have a special edition hardback that has been calling your name for three months. And I have a very comfortable couch that requires our immediate attention."
"Are you going to let me read in peace, or are you going to distract me?" you teased, walking over to grab the book.
"I make no promises," Kimi grinned, already dropping onto the plush sofa and pulling a throw blanket over his legs. He patted the space right between them. "Come here."
You curled up against him, resting your back against his chest. His arms instinctively wrapped around you, providing the perfect, warm cocoon. As you cracked open the spine of the beautiful gold-foiled book, your starry nails resting perfectly on the crisp pages, Kimi pressed one last kiss to the top of your head.
You had the perfect book, the perfect nails, a closet full of gorgeous clothes waiting to be unpacked, and the boy you loved holding you close. For the first time in a long time, you didn't question if you deserved it. You just let yourself be happy.
— When you tell Ominis he has a beautiful smile, he admits no one's ever said that before.
He didn't smile often.
You'd noticed this within your first week at Hogwarts, back when you'd been the new fifth-year and he'd been the reserved Slytherin who spoke in careful, measured tones and kept most people at arm's length.
When he did smile, it was usually sardonic—a twist of his lips that suggested he found the world more amusing than agreeable. Sometimes it was polite, the kind of expression he wore during social obligations he couldn't avoid.
But genuine smiles? Those were rare enough to be remarkable.
You'd seen one exactly three times in the months since you'd befriended him.
Once, when Sebastian had made a particularly terrible pun and Ominis had been so caught off guard he'd laughed before he could stop himself.
Once, when you'd described the sunset over the Black Lake in such detail that he'd said, "I can almost see it," and smiled like you'd given him something amazing.
Once, just last week, when you'd successfully brewed a perfect Wit-Sharpening Potion and he'd been able to tell by scent alone, pride evident in the curve of his mouth.
You'd collected these smiles like treasures, catalogued them, replayed them in your mind during dull History of Magic lectures.
Which was probably pathetic, but you'd stopped pretending your feelings for Ominis were anything less than catastrophic sometime around October.
Now it was February, and you were in the Undercroft—the secret space Sebastian had shown you, that Ominis had reluctantly allowed you to share—working on Charms homework while Ominis practiced a complicated spell sequence.
"It's the wand movement," he was muttering, frustrated. "I can feel it's wrong, but I can't—"
"Here," you said, setting down your quill. "May I?"
He hesitated, then nodded, extending his wand hand.
You moved closer, gently guiding his wrist through the proper motion. "It's more of a spiral than a circle. Like this—feel the difference?"
His fingers twitched slightly under your guidance, learning the movement. "Yes. That's—yes, I see."
You smiled at his choice of words. Ominis always said "see" despite his blindness, and you'd learned it wasn't carelessness but rather his own form of defiance—refusing to let his lack of vision define his language.
"Try it now," you said, stepping back.
He performed the movement perfectly, and the spell ignited with a soft shimmer of light.
"Excellent!" you said. "That was perfect."
"Only because you showed me." But he was smiling—really smiling, not the sardonic twist or polite expression, but something genuine and unguarded.
The words were out before you could stop them: "You have a beautiful smile."
The smile vanished instantly. Ominis went very still, his pale eyes widening slightly, and you watched color creep up his neck.
"I—" you started, mortified. "I'm sorry, that was—"
"Don't apologize." His voice was quiet, careful. "I just—no one's ever said that to me before."
"Well, they should have." You were committed now, apparently, your brain-to-mouth filter completely abandoned. "Because you do. Have a beautiful smile. You don't use it nearly enough, and when you do, it's—"
You stopped yourself before you could say something truly mortifying like "devastating" or "the best part of my day."
Ominis turned toward you with that uncanny precision he had, as though he could see you despite the cloudiness of his eyes. "You're staring."
"How can you possibly know that?"
"You're quiet. You're never quiet. And I can hear your breathing change when you look at me." A pause. "You do that a lot, actually. Look at me."
Your face was burning. "I don't—"
"You do." He stepped closer, and there was something different in his expression—tentative, almost vulnerable. "Sebastian's mentioned it. Said you watch me when you think I'm not paying attention. Which is ironic, considering."
"Sebastian needs to learn to keep his mouth shut," you muttered.
"He also said—" Ominis stopped, seeming to reconsider. "Never mind."
"No, what did he say?"
"It doesn't matter."
"Ominis."
He sighed, that particular exasperated sound he made when you were being persistent. "He said you look at me the way people look at art in museums. Like I'm something worth studying. Worth..." He trailed off, jaw tightening.
"Worth what?"
"I don't know. Worth seeing, I suppose." He laughed, but there was no humor in it. "Which is absurd, because I'm a Gaunt. We're not particularly known for being worth much beyond our bloodline and our cruelty."
Your heart clenched. "You're not like them."
"How would you know? You've been here less than a year."
"I know because you helped me with Potions when you didn't have to. Because you stand between Sebastian and his worst impulses. Because you refuse to use Unforgivable Curses even when it would be easier. Because—" You stepped closer, close enough to see the silver flecks in his pale irises. "Because when you smile—really smile, not that sardonic thing you do—it transforms your entire face. Makes you look happy. And I don't think you let yourself be happy nearly enough."
He was very quiet. Then: "Why do you care?"
"Because I—" You caught yourself, swallowed the confession that wanted to spill out. "Because you're my friend."
"Is that all?"
The question hung between you, delicate and dangerous.
"No," you admitted quietly. "That's not all."
His breath hitched audibly. "You should be careful about saying things like that to me."
"Why?"
"Because I'm selfish enough to want them to be true." He reached out, slowly, giving you time to move away. When you didn't, his fingers found your face, tracing your features with the same careful precision he brought to everything. "And if they're true, I won't want to let you go."
Your heart was hammering. "What if I don't want you to let go?"
His thumb brushed across your cheekbone, and his expression was raw in a way you'd never seen. "Then you'd be a fool. I come from a family of dark wizards and blood purists. I have nothing to offer you but complications and a surname that makes people cross the street."
"I don't care about your surname."
"You should."
"Well, I don't." You covered his hand with yours, keeping it against your face. "I care about you. The person who helps first-years find their classrooms. Who plays the violin when he thinks no one's listening. Who stands up to Sebastian when he's being reckless, even though it scares you. Who smiles so rarely that when you do, it feels like a gift."
"Stop," he whispered, but he didn't pull away.
"Why?"
"Because you're making it very difficult not to kiss you."
Your breath stopped. "What if I want you to?"
He leaned his forehead against yours, and you could feel him trembling slightly. "Tell me this is real. That you're not—that this isn't pity, or curiosity, or—"
"Ominis." You said his name firmly enough that he stopped. "I have been catastrophically in love with you since you spent twenty minutes describing the precise smell of rain on stone because I mentioned I missed it. This is not pity."
He made a sound that might have been a laugh or a sob. "Catastrophically?"
"Completely. Utterly. Catastrophically."
"That's redundant."
"I don't care."
He kissed you then—tentative and careful and absolutely perfect. His hands framed your face and when you kissed him back, he made a soft sound of surprise, as though he hadn't quite believed you'd want this.
When he pulled back, he was smiling—that genuine, unguarded smile that you'd been collecting like treasure.
"There it is," you whispered.
"What?"
"That beautiful smile."
He laughed, and it was bright and real and everything you'd hoped for. "You're going to say that every time now, aren't you?"
"Every single time."
"That's going to be insufferable."
"You'll survive." You kissed him again, quick and sweet. "Besides, it's true. You have a beautiful smile, Ominis Gaunt. I intend to see it as often as possible."
"I think that can be arranged," he murmured, and when he smiled against your lips, you thought: yes, this is what happiness looks like.
after a long day, it’s no surprise that you’re left with no energy to take care of yourself, let alone clean up and drag yourself off to bed. luckily for you, your two boyfriends— satoru and suguru, the infamous strongest duo who are as weak as kittens for you— take it upon themselves to bathe you and wash your hair. princess treatment has never felt this good.
⋆.˚ content: SFW but MDNI 18+, fem!reader, canon jujutsu universe (alt au where geto doesn’t defect), fluff fluff fluff, humor, established polyamorous satosugu x reader, gojo and geto are WHIPPED for you and for each other, domestic intimacy, a fair amount of suggestive jokes (but the entire fic stays non-sexual), mentions of battle wounds & scars
a/n: this is a requested drabble for the non-sexual acts of intimacy prompts “taking a bath together” and “having their hair washed by the other” for a fewww different anons 🙂↕️🫶🏽 hope you all enjoy cos this was sm fun to write 💓 masterlist.
Bathwater laps softly at the porcelain edges of the tub, warm enough to turn your skin dewy beneath the draping of steam that hangs hazily over the air like a wedding veil. The bathroom's steeped in the mellow glow of an amber and blossom-pink sunset filtering through the windows that overlook Tokyo. More jasmine-sweetened steam drifts in languid, translucent ribbons from the oversized tub fashioned to fit three (thanks, Gojo clan money).
Lounging with your lovers, everything is pleasantly heavy— your limbs, your eyelids which have long fallen together, your subdued thoughts— and softened by the calming ease of being in Suguru's and Satoru's presence.
You sit between them, back resting against Satoru's steadily beating chest, his ridiculously long legs fallen open for you to sit between them with all the careless assurance of a man who has never once worried about taking up space. Suguru rests against the opposite edge of the tub with one arm curled along the rim and his legs similarly extended. Satoru's and Suguru's calves and thighs skim against each other where they border yours beneath the water, neither inclined to break the comfort of simple touch.
"You've gone quiet." Suguru's observation echoes off the tile.
"Mhm." Your answer is only half there.
"You awake?"
"Ehhh… Kinda sorta, sorta kinda," you mumble, seesawing a hand.
Satoru leans forward until his forehead lightly bumps your nape. "No sleeping yet, pretty girl. Ragdolling while we try to get you clean is a surefire way to go down Ben Drowned-style,” he teases.
You whine a little in protest even though the reference makes your lips tick. "But you guys made me so comfortable already..."
And they truly have.
The bath had been waiting for you before you'd even thought to ask for one. Actually, the idea was planted in Satoru and Suguru's heads the moment you texted that you were dead-tired and grimy to the group chat from the back of Ijichi's car. You had been the only one to head out on a mission today, Satoru spending the day teaching and training the first years and Suguru mirroring him with the third years— Satoru had weaseled his way into a full hands-on day with his students, claiming he needed somewhat of a break, and Suguru spent most of his time teaching rather than hunting curses anymore, anyways.
(You and Satoru have been on the offensive with the higher-ups for years to nail down this arrangement for Suguru. Sure, Suguru still took on the occasional mission when everyone else was stretched thin by their own duties, but for his mental health’s sake, it was best that he stuck to guiding and nurturing the current generation.
You never want to see him as hollowly depressed as he was after everything that went down when he was a student.)
When you'd finally wandered into your shared house with knotted shoulders and your thumbs aggravatedly digging out the soreness from your temples, both your boyfriends snatched you up at the genkan and herded you like wildly insistent border collies to the master bedroom's ensuite, which had been transformed into a luxury spa during your twenty minute commute.
Towels were folded up in their warmer, candles swaying happily, the massive tub brimming with fragrant bathing oils and mineral salts— literally the whole nines. All the tiny things you'd long forgotten mentioning you preferred for a long soak were present, that information lovingly archived inside two impossibly attentive minds.
Before you could burst into happy tears at the lengths they went to for you, Suguru helped peel away your clothes before passing you off to Satoru, who offered both hands the moment you stepped toward the siren call of the water on sore legs, smoothly bowing as though escorting you into a ballroom instead of a bathtub.
Between them, lowering yourself into the steaming water (which was the fucking perfect temperature, holy hell) was less like climbing into a bath— another chore to hustle through before bed when you were already so worn-thin— and more like mindlessly handing yourself over for what they both dubbed your 'princess treatment.'
Suguru's smile is a ray of gentle light coloring his words, "Are we supposed to apologize for being good boyfriends?"
"Yeah. And you have to live with the consequences," you sigh, slumping further back into Satoru. The water rocks with you.
"You hear that?" Satoru says to Suguru over your head. You feel his chin nestle into your crown, arms loosely coiling at your waist. "She's blaming and threatening us."
"This is what happens when we go out of our way and draw us all a nice bath, huh," Suguru kisses his teeth, theatrically disappointed in you and what his and Satoru's efforts have come to. "Shame. I guess we won't be doing this ever again."
That finally gets your eyes to crack, blinking past the steam shrouding your slivered vision. Suguru watches the both of you with a sleepy beam curling the corners of his mouth, midnight lashes dampened and beading at their tips from the humidity. In spite of his long hair being wound up in a picture-perfect bun straight from Pinterest— his thorough wash-day took place yesterday and he's in no hurry to rewash his hair all over again— the baby hairs coiling at his nape and hairline are helplessly frizzy, fallen victim to the moisture in the air.
Suguru's gorgeous, a fallen angel meant to tempt you into the salacious temptations of the forbidden— much like the equally stunning blue-eyed beauty cuddled up to your behind, fluffed up white hair as refreshing as winter's first snowfall and his innate charming smile ten times more devastating than the cursed techniques sown into his very DNA.
"Hey," you protest, somewhat impressed by how he's twisted this situation to his benefit. "I didn't say all of that…"
A big warm palm finds a home on your shoulder, the callouses at the base of Satoru's fingers dragging a satisfyingly scratchy path over your skin. "I didn't agree to that either. Who's gonna appreciate all our hard work and dedication to pampering her if not, well, our princess?" Satoru wonders aloud, each richly pronounced syllable traveling in a velvety rolling rumble through his chest to your back.
Suguru cocks a brow, though he soaks up the reminder with a smoothly executed drag of the wooden bath tray closer to the corner of the tub's edge. Fancy crystalized bottles rattle, winking rainbow prisms across the walls; the oceanic waves of Satoru's irises, the deep earthiness of Suguru's.
You see them in everything, the two men coloring the world you traverse in a gallery forever curated in their likeness, to the point that you couldn't name a single thing on this planet without your lovers tinting your glasses.
Sometimes, you wonder whether the sky was always that boundless, cotton-candy blue, whether the nature crawling dense coils up Tokyo Jujutsu High's mountain campus had always carried such comforting shades of chocolate-brown, or if loving them has simply trained your eyes to always pay homage to Satoru and Suguru. Whatever the case, you're ridiculously smitten.
"Appreciation isn't the point, Satoru," lightly sniffs Suguru.
You wish you could see the stupid grin smeared across Satoru's countenance as he counters, jokingly, "It absolutely is."
"It really isn't," Suguru deadpans, looking to you as if to say get a load of this guy. You giggle.
"I don't know about you, babe, but I wanna be praised for my generous deeds," Satoru announces. "It hits like a line of coke after a long day."
Suguru slowly nods his assent. "That is true… though in your case, I'd say that cake is more your style than coke of all things."
"Snoooore," you loudly mime, deadpanning.
Satoru's laughter sears through your skin, beating a hearty rhythm between your shoulder blades. Suguru fans his fingers over his mouth as he joins in on Satoru's chuckling, amusement blossoming in the air. "Alright, alright. The deluxe princess treatment package is on its way now, promise," Suguru sing-songs with a little flap of his hand, finally easing up now that he's found a way back on track. "Satoru, you'll wash her hair and I'll do her body?"
"For sure," he chirps.
Ah, how nice it feels to lounge around like prized, celebrated royalty without a care in the world while your boys work a plan to pamper you.
All it takes is a simple curl of Suguru's black-painted finger for Satoru to obediently thrust his hand past your head, palm paralleling the ceiling as Suguru pops the glass stopper of a bottle and drizzles a generous heaping of shampoo into his hand's cup.
Satoru loops his arms around your front and works the shampoo between deft palms before your eyes, vanilla and camellia blossoms wafting up to your face, which you dip towards the comforting smell with a hum. It's Suguru's favorite shampoo— you're always surprised when he shares some of it and his conditioner with you, given how he treats it like the holy grail that he alone was blessed and entrusted with.
(Even funnier how he flat out refuses to let Satoru get his hands on it. Not that the white-haired sorcerer cares all that much anyhow; he uses a 3-in-1 shampoo and calls splashing tap water on his face a 'proper face wash.' You'd think a man so prideful about his vanity would splurge on products to properly care for himself and his Adonis body— the same way he buys from luxury clothing brands on the daily— instead of winging it like a head-in-the-clouds college fratboy, but alas…
You've gotta give it to him though: his genetics are killer. Curse Satoru and the goddamned perfectly pretty Gojo bloodline. It's not fair for the rest of you 'simpletons' who actually have to put in the work to groom and maintain yourself in order to look even half as unfairly attractive as he does on a random Thursday morning. The universe shamelessly plays favorites, and Satoru is its dazzling golden child.)
"Tilt your head back for me," he murmurs, long fingers immediately finding your hair— already sufficiently wet— the second you obey.
Humming an absent tune that lulls you into closing your eyes once more, Satoru gathers up all your hair, his usual boundless energy replaced by surprising patience. You can envision the way he's likely got his tongue peeking slightly between his teeth as he smooths the shampoo down your head, working up a rich, pearly lather from your crown to your ends with painstaking care exactly as Suguru once taught him.
Nobody from Jujutsu Tech— not Shoko, not Ijichi, not even any of the students— would expect such gentleness from the strongest sorcerer alive. The same man that tears into curses with calculated, almost joyous violence and blows them apart with a well-placed Red and a dry “oopsies,” is unbelievably tender in his task of shampooing the outer layer of your hair before diving to your roots, firm yet gentle. Reverent, really.
His nails glide along your scalp in purposefully light scrapes that send shivers down your spine. A contented sigh escapes you before you can stop it. "Satoruuuu…" You subconsciously roll the r in the same purring cadence that Suguru speaks his name in.
"Yooo, chill," Satoru splutters behind you, sounding alarmed by who knows what.
Suguru fills in the blank with a suggestive smile and thinning of his eyes: "Moan my name next, baby. I'm feeling left out."
Ah. Curious, you shuffle your hips back further into the cradle of Satoru's pelvis, glad to feel a distinct lack of engorged arousal insistently pestering your back; he's as flaccid as the day he was born. Your foot goes splashing water Suguru's way next. He catches your ankle beneath the surface and chuckles sunnily beneath the playful heat of your half-hearted glare.
"You're such a hater," he chastises.
"Excuse me for trying to enjoy my bath and the princess treatment you both promised me while you two horndogs try to make something out of nothing," you say dryly, though the pretense of sarcasm is rendered null by the next (accidentally) suggestive noise that floats its way past your lips when Satoru tugs a strand of shampooed hair just shy of too roughly.
"I didn't mean to do that, sorry!" Satoru jumps to apologize, presuming you'll give him shit for it and kick him out. But the joint snickers that both men promptly share over your head informs you that they're not exactly remorseful; and they're not even trying to play it sly.
"There's gonna be floggers and pillories in my online shopping cart by the end of the night if you two keep it up," you warn even though you're chuckling yourself. "That, or a sounding rod for you to share."
"Yes, ma'am. Sorry, ma'am," Satoru and Suguru innocently chorus.
Devils, the two of them.
But you're not any better, for you praise them in the sweetest purr possible, "Thank you. Good boys," and you all too joyfully reap the color budding across their already bath-flushed cheeks, tipping your head back against Satoru's shoulder to see his properly.
Suguru and Satoru: 1.
You: also 1.
You'll break that tie soon.
Fingers still wrapped in a delicate snag around your ankle, thumb sweeping over the protruding bone, Suguru one-handedly pumps a decent dollop of body wash into his palm, making a fist and dragging his fingers through it to warm it up a tad. "Lift your leg a little higher for me, sweetheart," he instructs, voice no louder than twinkling rain shimmering in silvery ribbons from the sky.
Conscious yet uncaring of the fact that you're already flashing him your most private parts (both your boyfriends have literally seen it all in every sexual and non-sexual scenario possible), you do just that, trusting that Satoru's solidity will keep you from sliding forward on your ass and submerging your face. Your hip flexor and quadricep tighten in a show of undemandingly easy dexterity— the movement of the latter has Suguru's eyes flicking down to watch as though you're his favorite film made human.
He scrunches his legs up in order to fit into the 'v' your own make. Shifting his grip to the back of your calf, he paints your skin in fragrant body wash from your foot, kneecap, to the crease connecting hip to thigh, coating you thoroughly and treating you to an impromptu massage along the way, thumbs kneading tenderly into muscle.
You're practically purring once he's done with your left leg. Suguru eases it back into the steaming bathwater and rinses you off with sweeping strokes of his broad hand until the jasmine-scented suds melt into the surface. Then, without breaking the tranquil rhythm you'd both settled into, he gathers your right leg in his grasp and starts anew from your foot upward, every motion as meticulous as the last.
You don't startle an inch when Satoru picks his task up again whilst Suguru works his soothing magic up your shin. Circles that bloom sweetness through your body are drawn into your scalp with the pads of Satoru's fingertips, thumbs gliding behind your ears before sweeping upward along your crown, coaxing the rich lather deeper through your roots.
His fingertips dance across your hair in broad, enthusiastic circles, working the shampoo in with enough vigor to make your head tip slightly. It's embarrassingly effective in making you lose track of where one minute ends and another begins. The little remaining tension loosens from your body like water through a sieve.
"Oh my godddd," you moan, blissful, completely swept up in their pampering that comes without a price. You melt between Satoru and Suguru without thinking, trusting the secure cradle of their bodies as completely as breathing itself. "This is exactly what I needed. This is heaven."
"You deserve only good things, especially tonight," Suguru murmurs affectionately, gently dunking your right leg and rinsing that one off, too.
"All the time, really," Satoru agrees. He leaves your hair once he's sure each strand is thoroughly lathered up. "Seeing you turn into a cute little puddle is the best bonus I could ask for. Just let us take care of you, yeah?"
He returns to you with a wooden rinse pitcher that Suguru hands to him. He cups warm bathwater into it, stray droplets sprinkling across the bath's surface when he pulls the pitcher free with an audible gulp of water. Anticipating what follows, you tip your head back and stay still as Satoru pours the first cascade of water over your head to cleanse you of the fragrant foam, his free hand shielding your forehead to keep it from spilling over your face.
"You wanna know a neat trick I thought of?" Satoru asks, voice overflowing with prideful excitement. You and Suguru rumble low noises from your throats at the same time, encouraging. "If Blue allows me to pull buildings apart at minimum output by drawing everything towards the impossibility, then it makes sense that if I put the tiiiiniest possible output into Blue—" you feel a tempered spike of cursed energy that makes the dampened hair at your nape prick to attention, "—the field of attraction is weak enough that I can siphon water from hair."
Before the dirtied water can rejoin the pooling bathwater lapping over you all, it peels from your hair like a clean, satisfying strip of tape as though the laws of nature, too, submit to the wonder that is Gojo Satoru.
You feel each saturated lock of hair lighten by degrees more than you see it. Suspended at your sides where you can spy it from the corner of yout eye, the extracted water gathers into a lazily revolving sphere no larger than a melon, pale with diluted shampoo that swirls in pearlescent ribbons beneath the bathroom's amber light. You can tell that Satoru's flicked his fingers behind you when it all goes gliding into a bucket by the tub— he probably thought to put it there in advance, you realize— with a muffled sploosh. Suguru whistles, impressed.
"There!" Satoru chirps, grin crystal-clear in his voice as though he'd unveiled the world's greatest scientific breakthrough instead of an absurdly overengineered bath hack using one of the greatest cursed techniques in history. "No gross rinse water in the tub."
"That was cool, Toru," you gush.
Suguru's laugh slips free in a quiet puff. "Good idea, baby."
The dual praise has Satoru radiating like an overjoyed sun behind you. "Right? Right?" He boasts with no modesty whatsover, chest jutting proudly against your back.
"You'll have to do that for my hair sometime, too," Suguru sighs longingly, tilting his head with a charmed look on his face. He's so cute. "I could use one of my curses, but Blue'll save me so much time. My hair's getting even longer than it already is, if you can imagine."
"Please never cut it," you and Satoru pipe up in genuine agony.
Suguru titters, enchanting brown eyes creasing in a blinding smile, brighter somehow for it. "Relax, you two. I won't. Aside from trimming split ends— knock on wood." He raps the wooden bath tray with his knuckles.
The exchange coaxes an involuntary smile of your own, the stretch of your lips so overly fond that your cheeks ache. It is so wonderfully, unmistakably the three of you— Suguru's easy indulgement forever balanced alongside Satoru's irrepressible enthusiasm and your habit of matching them both exactly where they stand.
Suguru re-lathers his hands to work on your abdomen, muscles fluttering in delicate butterly wings behind the bountiful garden of your skin at the ticklish feeling of his slickened touch; Satoru ladles another pitcherful over your head and repeats the process of gathering and discarding every soapy drop with Blue. Suguru glides soap up the valley between your perked breasts and beneath them as well, even massaging your tits without a lick of sexual intent; Satoru gives you one last rinse before passing curious fingers through your hair until the strands slide cleanly through his hands, gently teasing apart the few stubborn knots left over. The bathwater gently rocks against your ribs whenever they both shift, focused on their individual tasks but nonetheless in tune with one another.
By the time Suguru finishes off your front by washing your collarbones and shoulders and Satoru's just teased apart the few stubborn knots left over in your hair, your hair hangs sleek and impossibly clean, you're feeling squeaky clean from head to toe, and the bathwater around your bodies remains as clear as when you'd first slipped into it, aside from the body wash that's sluiced off of you.
You feel as though they’d somehow washed away not only the day's sweat and oils, but every bothersome thought that had settled there alongside them. You could seriously fall asleep any second without realizing you'd slipped into unconsciousness.
"Look at us working together in sync," Satoru lilts, signaling for the conditioner over your shoulder. Suguru hands it off from the bath tray without missing a beat. "The G.G. Salon is taking off."
"G.G.?" You ask, faint laughter already bubbling through your nose before he even elaborates. You're anticipating something so stupid that it's somehow funny.
"Get gucked," Satoru supplies, only to shriek a soprano's pitch and jackknife his leg through the water when Suguru aggressively pinches Satoru's big toe. "Yeesh, can't a guy joke around here? I meant the Gojo-Geto salon."
Suguru smiles serenely.
They make quick— but not rushed— work of the rest of your treatment. Suguru reaches between yours and Satoru's bodies to bathe your back while Satoru conditions the ends of your hair with the creamy fixture.
Clearing your hair of conditioner after it soaks in is easy as it was for Satoru with the shampoo. He splashes water along your back to finish off Suguru's work, and Suguru leans in to nuzzle a brief kiss against your forehead, lips lingering for only a second before he settles back against the tub's rim again, the picture of handsome relaxation. A moment later, Satoru cranes his head to smooch the side of your neck as if unwilling to be left out, then ducks past you to peck Suguru's mouth.
No words are needed in the wakeful peace that draws a curtain over you; you, Satoru, and Suguru seemingly come to a silent agreement to soak in the jasmine-fermented bath a while longer, all of yours eyes closed in bone-deep gratification. Heat loosens muscles and peels the firm grip of old aches and pains stemming from battles old and new, determined to ease your bodies that've been carved out from years and years of sorcerery. You only clamber out when the bathwater is cool enough to be drained, yours and Satoru's and Suguru's fingers and toes pruny from the extended soak.
The tired little shiver that quakes you when the air hits your damp skin is noticed immediately by Suguru, who quietly directs Satoru to empty the bucket of dirtied water down the tub before turning to you with towels straight from the tower warmer. He wraps one loosely around your hair and gently squeezes away the excess water.
His sweetened cooing of how cute you are when you're all sleepy and doted-on makes you duck your head into his touch if only to hide your face from the loving searchlights of his eyes. You allow Suguru to similarly wrap your body up in a second towel and you gleefully burrow into the fluffy comfort of it.
Satoru zips to your side in literal seconds with two more towels bunched under his arm, blue eyes alight and completely comfortable in his nudity. "My turn," he announces.
"Didn't you have plenty of turns in the bath?" Suguru amusedly points out in a lowered tone. "She's already dried off, anyways."
Satoru pokes his pretty pink lips out in a pout, sulky as a cat denied its dinner. "I want another."
"You always want another," you hum, eyes half-closed and about ready to conk out on the tile of all places. A plane could crash outside and you wouldn't even be fazed, your mind too up in the clouds and doped up on the princess treatment your boyfriends gave you to care.
“Well, I like taking care of you both,” Satoru admits with some sheepishness, scratching his shorn-short nape that you're sure is soon to be warmed pink as you and Suguru look at him with hearts for eyes. "Can't blame a guy for being in love, yeah?"
You really can't; not when you're just as stupidly infatuated with them both. Especially when, adorably, he surprises you both by turning to Suguru and toweling him off with great attention, making your dark-haired partner flush an even ruddier red than the hot water gave his body. For all of Satoru's impossible strength and impossible speed, his hands fuss with deliberate care as they work the plush fabric around Suguru's waist, folding one edge neatly over the other before tucking it securely against his hip. Then Satoru guides a stray bang that fell loose from his bun behind his ear, fingers lingering sweetly.
Suguru blinks once, twice, as though momentarily caught off guard by the simple gesture. "... Thank you, Satoruuu,” he purrs warmly.
The words are accompanied by a smile so soft it melts years off of Suguru's face, leaving behind only the boy who'd once looked at you and Satoru with that same impossible tenderness after late-night konbini store runs and shared umbrellas beneath summer rain as you all ran back to campus after shared misions— long, long before that accursed village sent him into a year-long spiral. Affection settles visibly into every elegant line of him, warming his browned eyes until they resemble polished amber.
Color rushes into Satoru's ears as he's blasted with the full superlunary rays of Suguru's love, almost shying away from his exuberant beam. "Don't mention it," he mutters, already smiling despite himself as he finally slings his own towel around his hips.
A laugh escapes you before you can stop it, sleepy and airy, and both pairs of eyes snap toward you with such immediate fondness. Your heart gives such a smitten start that it damn near ping-pongs off your ribs.
And then you open your unfiltered mouth, "You're both so cute. You two act like you guys haven't explored each other's holes for literal years."
Their expressions slacken into ones of pained amusement immediately. "Sweets, I love you so so sooo bad, but do you ever think before you reduce years of heartfelt intimacy to digging out each other's asses?" Satoru snorts.
"Please don't say it like that," Suguru bemoans, propping one hand on his towel-wrapped hip while the other drives a thumb into his creased forehead. Even so, he's openly snickering, even moreso when he slaps Satoru's chest. "Are you under the impression that you're any better?"
Satoru touches his heart with theatrical offense. "I've never said anything outrageous as her."
"You literally just did?" Suguru points out, exasperatedly tickled.
You attempt to muster a joke to chip in with, but a yawn stretches your jaw instead, eyes watering as exhaustion overtakes any dignity you might have had left.
"Awww," Satoru breathes out an impossibly stricken coo. "She's gonna fall asleep standing up like a horse."
"I was thinking the same thing," Suguru murmurs, tilting his head at you.
"I am awake and alert and alive," you mumble automatically.
Clearly, neither of them believes you for even half a second. Suguru chuckles beneath his breath before stepping forward, large hand finding the small of your back through the towel. "Looks like the delirium's getting to you, huh, angel? You've had a long day."
Satoru immediately appears at your other side. "For sure. Let's go get dressed and go to bed." Without ceremony, he bends his knees and scoops you into his arms bridal-style as though you weigh nothing at all. You let out the weakest little noise of surprise imaginable before instinctively curling against his warm chest, your cheek finding the familiar place beneath his collarbone.
"I c-can…" Your own yawn slashes the sentence in half, making Satoru throw his head back laughing as he turns towards the bathroom's entrance, "… walk."
"Oh, sweetheart," Suguru rumbles out a laugh.
"I can,” you grumble.
"You just lost consciousness mid-sentence."
"Mmmf," you say intelligently.
Suguru reaches over to straighten the towel atop your head one final time, brushing his knuckles fondly across your temple. "So spoiled," he whispers.
You hum contentedly, already halfway to sleep. "Your fault."
"Our fault," Satoru corrects, carrying you toward the door with Suguru walking beside him, shoulder brushing his every few steps. Then, as an aside to Suguru, "To be fair, we kinda made her expect this."
"I think I deserve princess treatment everyday," you exhaustedly pipe up, words dragging as you gradually drift off.
Satoru and Suguru exchange looks over your lolling head. So cute.
pairing – garrett graham x nursing student!reader
summary – a national championship, a very badly timed love confession, and garrett graham choosing a kiss before the trophy.
warnings – hockey violence, championship game stress, accidental love confession, anxiety/spiralling, injuries/hits, blood/cut mention, emotional overwhelm.
notes from me – WE DID IT!!! based on this ask, thank you so so much lovely!! if i got anything about hockey wrong, no i didn’t and stfu 🤗
word count – 9.1k
The last time Garrett tried to go down on her, he fell asleep. Not fully, he remains extremely defensive about that distinction.
According to Garrett, there’s a significant difference between falling asleep and briefly resting your eyes while your mouth is still attached to your girlfriend, even if the girlfriend in question has to tug gently at your curls and ask, “Baby?” three separate times before you lift your head with a little crease pressed into your cheek from her thigh.
“I wasn’t asleep,” he’d mumbled.
“You stopped moving.”
“Was thinking.”
“With your eyes closed?”
He nodded against her thigh. “Helps me focus.”
Then he’d yawned so widely his jaw cracked, lowered his face onto her stomach and gone completely limp across the bed.
She had stared down at the back of his head for several seconds, one hand still tangled in his hair, her underwear stranded somewhere around one ankle and the entire evening rearranged around the fact that Briar’s hockey captain had reached physical collapse halfway through eating her out.
“Okay,” she’d said, because there were moments where compassion had to take priority over personal fulfilment. “We’re going to sleep.”
Garrett had made a muffled sound of protest into her skin.
“You just lost consciousness between my legs.”
“Didn’t.”
“Your mouth was open.”
He adjusted his face more firmly into her stomach. “It was already open.”
“That is not the defence you think it is.”
He had tried to lift himself onto one elbow, managed perhaps four inches and then dropped his face back against her with the exhausted dignity of a man being asked to complete one final push-up after the end of civilisation. “Give me five minutes.”
She’d taken one look at the grey shadows beneath his eyes, the tired drag at the corners of his mouth and the fading yellow bruise along one shoulder from the regional final, then pulled the blanket over both of them instead. Garrett had been asleep before she finished getting her underwear back on.
That was nearly two weeks ago. She hasn’t been fucked properly in three, which would be a more compelling personal tragedy if Garrett hadn’t spent those same three weeks skating like Briar University’s continued existence depended on him alone
The tournament has eaten all of them alive. Two regional wins to secure the Frozen Four. The semifinal two nights ago, won in overtime after Briar spent most of the third period trapped in its own zone and Garrett blocked a shot with his ankle badly enough that he limped until the next morning but still refused to acknowledge anything had happened.
Film sessions. Practice. Recovery. Media. Team meetings. More film because Garrett had decided there might be a hidden tactic buried in the exact angle of an opposing winger’s shoulder if he watched the footage enough times.
He’s been sleeping in pieces. Forty minutes on her dorm bed before practice. Twenty in the passenger seat while Tucker drove. Once at her desk with his forehead resting on a chapter about community health, and one hand still wrapped loosely around her wrist like he had fallen asleep halfway through confirming she was there.
She has watched the tournament take him apart in small, ordinary ways nobody else would necessarily notice.
The protein bar wrappers multiplying in his gear bag because he keeps forgetting meals until she puts food directly into his hand. The way his jaw goes hard whenever somebody asks what it means to play the national championship at TD Garden, when everyone knows perfectly well what it means.
The Bruins. His future. His father’s history hanging somewhere above all of it, invisible and still somehow taking up space. Garrett has answered every question correctly. He says it’s about Briar. About the boys. About finishing what they started. He means it too.
Garrett’s spent weeks carrying everyone else’s nerves so convincingly that half the team appears to have forgotten he possesses any of his own.
By the time she reaches the Garden, she feels like she has swallowed something carbonated. It moves beneath her ribs in bright, rising bubbles as she follows Lucy and Monique through the concourse, one hand wrapped around theirs to keep from losing either of them in the river of navy, silver and white pouring toward the arena.
Everywhere she looks, somebody from Briar is there. Students she recognises from tutorials. Professors wearing team scarves over collared shirts. Alumni with old jerseys stretched across bodies that have changed significantly since graduation. Half the hockey house’s regular party population appears to have made the trip, suddenly united by school pride and the urgent need to buy beer before warm-ups begin.
The Garden itself feels too large to hold all of them. Light spills down from the high ceiling onto the ice in hard, clean sheets, making the rink look almost blue at the edges. Music pounds through the arena speakers while the scoreboard turns slowly above centre ice, cycling through team logos, player footage and the words NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP in letters large enough to make her stomach tighten every time they appear.
The air smells like cold metal, popcorn, spilled beer and the sharp synthetic chill that rises from a sheet of freshly cut ice. Even through her jeans and the long-sleeved top beneath Garrett’s jersey, she can feel the cold working its way in through her knees. She doesn’t care.
Their seats are down against the glass, close enough that she can see the scraped white line where the boards meet the ice and the little ridges the resurfacer left behind. Kendall, Paige and Sienna are already there when they arrive, occupying several seats in a loose cluster with enough bags, drinks and handmade signs to suggest they’re establishing a permanent settlement.
Kendall has silver stars beneath both eyes. Paige has somehow worked Garrett’s number into her eyeliner despite Garrett not being her boyfriend, which she claims is general captain support and not an act of targeted provocation. Sienna is holding a sign that reads DEAN, PLEASE TRY DEFENCE TODAY in thick navy letters.
“That’s so mean,” she says, accepting the silver face glitter Paige immediately begins pressing toward her cheek without permission.
“He’ll love it,” Sienna replies. “He responds well to criticism.”
“He responds loudly to criticism.”
Lucy has made a sign too, although hers simply says GO HAWKS because Lucy believes in encouragement without inviting retaliation from large men on skates.
Monique has brought no sign and is carrying emergency supplies instead: tissues, water, painkillers, two granola bars and a portable charger because, in her words, somebody in this group has to remain connected to civilisation.
“You look like you’re going to throw up,” Monique observes as Paige draws a small forty-four near the corner of her eye.
“I’m not.” She glances at the scoreboard. Five minutes, forty-eight seconds until warm-ups. “That’s basically now.”
Lucy loops an arm through hers and squeezes. “You excited?”
The question is absurdly insufficient. Excited is standing in line for concert tickets. Excited is finding out the difficult lecturer has cancelled class. This feels more like every part of her body has been tuned slightly too high, her skin warm beneath the cold arena air and her pulse sitting visibly in the base of her throat.
She looks down at the jersey instead. Garrett’s name stretches across her shoulders. Forty-four covers most of her back. It still smells faintly like his detergent even after being folded inside her overnight bag, and something stupid happens beneath her breastbone when she smooths one palm over the number on the sleeve.
“Normal amount,” she says.
Lucy looks at Monique. Monique nods gravely. “She’s going to throw up.”
She doesn’t throw up. She does, however, nearly crush Kendall’s hand when the lights shift and the first few players spill onto the ice.
The Briar section detonates. Noise surges up around them so quickly it seems to change the pressure inside her ears. People are already standing, banging hands against the glass, screaming names into the cold while the boys come through the tunnel in a loose stream of navy jerseys and silver helmets.
Tucker is one of the first out, skating directly toward centre with his head down and his stick loose in one hand, settling immediately into the quiet, economical movements he carries everywhere. Logan comes behind him faster, taking his first lap like he has something personal against the far boards.
Dean’s last only because Dean has decided entering the national championship requires choreography. He pushes onto the ice backward, both arms spread toward the Briar section like he’s rented the building for the evening. The response gets louder. Dean cups one glove to his ear, shakes his head as though disappointed and gestures for more.
Sienna slams her sign against the glass. Dean spots it. His mouth drops open beneath his cage. He points his stick at her, then at himself, then makes an offended gesture toward his chest as if he’s just been accused of a serious crime.
“TRY DEFENCE,” Sienna screams.
Dean skates past them shaking his head, one glove held over his heart.
“He’s going to bring that up for six months,” Paige says.
“He needed motivation.”
The rest of the boys circle out into warm-ups. Pucks scatter across the ice. Skates begin cutting sharp white lines through the untouched surface, the hard clack of sticks and pucks occasionally breaking through the music and crowd noise. She finds Garrett almost immediately.
Her body knows where he is before she properly registers the forty-four on his back. He’s near the blue line, taking two long strides before dropping into the familiar stretch he always does first, one knee bent deeply while the other leg extends behind him.
His helmet is tipped forward. His gloves are tucked beneath one arm. For several seconds he stays there with his head lowered, shoulders rising and falling beneath the jersey. He looks tired. She sees it in the slowness when he stands, the careful roll of his shoulders and the way he flexes one ankle before starting toward the far end.
Then a puck comes to him. Everything changes. His stick catches it cleanly, and his body settles into the ice as though it has finally entered its natural environment. One stride, two, a quick shift onto his outside edge.
He sends the puck hard into the top corner during the first shooting drill, circles behind the net and shouts something at Logan that makes Logan raise one glove without turning around.
The pressure beneath her ribs goes soft and hot. There are feelings that arrive with sensible names and manageable symptoms. Affection. Attraction. Pride. Things that can be discussed over coffee without anyone needing medical supervision.
Whatever she feels for Garrett has never behaved properly enough to qualify. It spreads through her bloodstream like she has been drinking on an empty stomach. Warm behind her face. Loose in her knees. Her brain a little slower and much happier whenever he looks at her.
Sometimes she catches him standing barefoot in the kitchen eating cereal and has the deeply unreasonable thought that this may be the best thing that has ever happened to anyone. Not her. Anyone.
It feels rare in a way she doesn’t know how to say without sounding insane. Like something a person might stumble into once every several lifetimes if the timing is right and the universe briefly stops being an asshole.
Garrett takes another shot. The puck hits the post with a sharp metallic crack. She cheers anyway. He turns at the sound of the Briar section, lifting his head toward the glass. His eyes begin moving over the crowd.
She knows what he’s doing. The knowledge lands in her stomach with enough force that her fingers tighten around Lucy’s wrist.
“He’s looking for you,” Lucy says.
“I know.”
“Wave.”
“I’m trying to look normal,” she mutters.
“You’re wearing his jersey and gripping my arm,” Lucy replies.
“Wave,” Monique orders.
She lifts both hands. Garrett sees her. His face changes so completely that the whole arena seems briefly less important.
The hard focus around his mouth breaks first. Then his eyes soften and his grin comes in bright beneath the helmet, familiar enough to reach through the glass and settle directly beneath her ribs. He points his stick toward her, says something to Tucker as he passes and turns sharply toward the boards.
“Oh my God,” Kendall says. “Incoming.”
Garrett stops in front of them with a small spray of ice, one glove braced against the top of his stick. Up close, she can see the faint tiredness beneath his eyes and the flushed line across his cheeks where the cold has already caught him. Damp curls push out beneath the back of his helmet. His gaze drops immediately to the jersey, then returns to her face.
She leans toward the glass, grin stretching before she can even try to control it. “Hey, forty-four.”
“Hi, baby.”
She barely hears him over the music and the crowd, but she knows the shape of his mouth well enough to fill in whatever sound the glass steals. Garrett shifts closer, face tipped toward her through a narrow break between the panels, and for one second everyone around them appears to become extremely interested in watching something else while also listening with every available part of their bodies.
“How’re you feeling?” she asks.
Garrett nods once. “Good.”
It comes automatically. Captain answer. Media answer. The exact response he has been giving anyone who asks for the past three weeks. She narrows her eyes.
Garrett’s mouth twitches, but the expression doesn’t hold. He looks back toward centre ice, where the other team has begun its own warm-up, then returns his gaze to her. “I just–” He exhales, the breath fogging faintly against the glass. “They’ve been killing it this tournament, baby.”
She looks at him for half a second. “And you guys haven’t?”
His eyes drop briefly.
“Garrett.”
He nods. “I know.”
She presses closer to the glass, lowering her voice even though she has to speak louder to be heard. “You don’t have to drag them through this by yourself. Tuck’s been seeing everything before it happens. Logan looks like somebody put rocket fuel in his water. Dean’s so excited he might actually attempt defence just to surprise us.”
Garrett smiles properly at that.
“You’ve won every shitty game they’ve put in front of you,” she continues. “You won the one where half your bench could barely stand. You came back Thursday when everyone had already decided you were done. You’ve been killing it too.”
His gaze stays on hers.
“Okay?”
Garrett nods.
She shakes her head once. “Words, baby.”
That gets the full grin. Bright, sudden and so deeply him that her stomach tips. “Yeah. Okay.”
“You’ve got this, Garrett.”
His throat moves when he swallows. “Yeah.”
“You feeling good?”
He looks at her for another second, shoulders sitting lower now, his grip easier around the stick. “Yeah, Coach.”
She grins. “Good.”
A whistle cuts across the ice. Garrett’s head turns toward the bench. Coach is gesturing sharply, calling the first unit back toward centre for the final drill. Logan skates past behind Garrett and hits the back of his helmet with one glove.
“Stop flirting,” he yells. “National championship.”
Garrett twists around. “I’ll bench you.”
“You can’t.”
“Watch me.” Garrett looks back at her. The whistle goes again, longer and significantly less patient. “Gotta go, baby.”
She nods, still smiling so hard her cheeks ache. “Go.”
He pushes away from the boards, then turns while skating backward. One glove lifts to his mouth. Garrett blows her a kiss.
She catches it automatically, closing her hand against her chest with the same stupid little movement she’s done from stands and car parks and the end of hallways a hundred times before. “Love you, baby.”
The words leave her mouth without consulting anybody. Garrett’s already turning.
Tucker catches the shoulder of his jersey and pulls him toward the drill as Coach shouts something from the bench. Garrett’s head shifts slightly, perhaps toward her, perhaps only because Logan has said something at his other side. Then all four of them are moving, sticks dropping toward the ice while a puck slides into the face-off circle.
Her smile stays where it is for one full second, then her brain receives the sentence. Her hand opens against her chest.
“Oh,” she says.
Lucy slowly turns toward her. Monique’s eyes widen. Kendall’s mouth drops open, silver stars stretching at the corner of one eye. Paige stops halfway through lifting her drink. Sienna lowers the sign in front of her with the solemn care of somebody putting down a weapon.
“Did you just–” Lucy begins.
She slaps both hands over her mouth. “Oh my God.”
The words come out muffled into her palms. Heat climbs from her chest to her face so quickly she can feel it beneath Paige’s little silver forty-four.
Monique catches both her elbows. “You’re okay.”
She shakes her head. “No, I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I just told him I love him.”
“You did,” Kendall says, then winces when Monique looks at her. “Supportively.”
“I told Garrett Graham I love him through plexiglass before the national championship,” she squeaks.
Lucy reaches for one of her wrists, gently pulling her hand away from her mouth before she can smother herself. “It’s okay. It was cute.”
“It was not meant to happen.”
Lucy shrugs. “Most things aren’t.”
“It just came out.” She stares at the ice, where Garrett has dropped into position for the drill like her entire internal structure hasn’t just collapsed twenty feet away. “I didn’t decide anything. My mouth went… it went freelance.”
Paige presses her lips together.
Sienna points one warning finger at her. “Do not laugh.”
Paige shakes her head. “I’m not.”
She turns desperately toward Monique. “Do you think he heard?”
The girls all look toward the ice. The Garden is still roaring. Music pounds through the speakers. Hundreds of Briar students are chanting something about Burlington’s goalie that will almost certainly lead to an email from university administration. Pucks slam against the boards, whistles splitting the cold air while the players call to one another through helmets and crowd noise.
Kendall tilts her head. “Honestly? Maybe not.”
“Oh, good.” Relief hits for less than a second before immediately becoming something else. “Wait. Is that good?”
“Yes,” Lucy says.
“No,” Paige says at the exact same time.
Lucy glares at her.
Paige lifts both hands. “I’m only saying she might eventually want him to hear it.”
“Not like that,” she says. “Not while Coach is threatening him and half of Massachusetts is watching.”
“He probably thought you said good luck,” Sienna offers.
“That doesn’t have the same number of syllables!”
“He’s often concussed,” Kendall suggests.
“Not currently!”
Monique squeezes her elbows. “Breathe.”
She takes one breath. It catches somewhere high in her chest and comes out thin.
“Again.”
She breathes again, staring helplessly through the glass. Garrett takes the next pass near centre ice, cuts around Logan and shoots. The puck goes in cleanly. He circles the net, taps Tucker’s shin pads with his stick and joins the line again without looking toward her.
That should help. It doesn’t.
“What do I do?” she whispers.
Lucy rubs one hand down her arm. “Right now? Watch the game.”
“For three periods?”
“Hopefully only three,” Monique says. “Overtime might kill you.”
She makes a noise of genuine distress.
“Not helpful,” Lucy tells her.
The warm-up clock keeps counting down above the ice. Two minutes, nineteen seconds. The boys gather near the bench for water, shoulders bumping, helmets tipping together as Garrett says something that makes Dean slap one glove against his chest.
He looks like the captain again. Focused. Certain. Every inch of him turned toward the game waiting on the other side of the clock.
She cannot tell whether he heard. There’s no visible sign that her first I love you reached him at all. No stunned look. No missed stride. No Garrett abandoning the national championship to climb over the glass and demand clarification, which is ridiculous but currently feels like the only response that would give her useful information.
Instead, he takes his place beside Tucker while Coach speaks, one glove wrapped around the top of his stick and forty-four broad across his back. The buzzer sounds to end warm-ups.
The crowd rises again as the players begin filing toward the tunnel. Garrett disappears between Logan and Dean without looking back, swallowed by navy jerseys and the dark opening beneath the stands.
She stays at the glass with both hands over her mouth, his name stretched across her shoulders and his number pressed warm against her back.
Behind her, Lucy says, “You’re fine,” with the determined confidence of somebody trying to influence an outcome medically beyond her control.
Monique pushes a water bottle into her hand. Kendall begins listing reasons the arena acoustics are unreliable. Sienna insists declarations made during warm-ups may not be legally binding, and Paige is still being prevented from mentioning that Garrett’s head had moved slightly after she said it.
Above centre ice, the scoreboard resets for puck drop. Eighteen minutes.
At least three periods before she could get him alone. Sixty minutes of hockey, plus intermissions, during which she would have to watch her boyfriend play for a national championship while wondering whether she had accidentally changed the entire shape of their relationship at full volume.
The Garden roared around her, and she stood there with Garrett’s forty-four stretched across her back, and absolutely no way to take the words back through the glass.
The first face-off happens before her body has remembered how to process oxygen normally. One second the teams are circling beneath the hard white light, officials gliding into position while the noise inside the Garden rises and breaks and rises again.
The next, the puck hits the ice, Garrett’s stick snaps forward and the national championship becomes too fast and too violent to leave much room for privately destroying her own life.
For roughly fourteen seconds, anyway. Garrett wins the draw cleanly and knocks the puck backward toward Tucker. Briar surges forward around him, all navy shoulders and cutting blades, the opening shift moving with the sharp, practiced rhythm she’s watched enough times to recognise before she could ever explain it properly.
Logan flies up the left side. Dean cuts across behind him, already throwing his weight into a defender with the subtlety of a car entering a building. Tucker sends the puck deep, Garrett follows it into the corner and the opposing defenceman drives him shoulder-first into the glass hard enough that the boards shake beneath her hands.
Her whole body contracts. She doesn’t scream or grab Lucy or begin climbing over the glass. It’s smaller and worse than that, a hard internal flinch that starts somewhere behind her sternum and pulls all the muscles down her back tight at once.
Garrett comes away from the hit still moving, knees bent, stick down, one glove briefly flexing near his shoulder before he takes the puck from beneath the other player’s skates and sends it back toward the point.
The game establishes its personality quickly. It’s mean. Every hit arrives half a second before it could become something officials might feel obligated to stop, all sharp hips and shoulders and bodies driven into boards with the deeply technical violence of men who have spent their lives learning precisely how hard another person can be struck while everyone calls it clean.
Tucker gets crushed behind Briar’s net three minutes in, his helmet snapping backward against the glass before he drops to one knee. She’s halfway out of her seat before he plants one glove on the ice, stands and immediately hooks his stick beneath the other player’s to strip the puck away.
“Jesus Christ,” Paige mutters.
Tucker sends the puck up the boards like nothing happened. Garrett catches it, turns through the neutral zone and gets met by two bodies at once.
He disappears. She sees one navy sleeve, the silver of his helmet, then his skates leave the ice and he lands flat on his back hard enough to slide several feet before friction finally catches him.
The Briar section loses its mind. Her hands slap against the glass. “Oh my God.”
Garrett lies there for perhaps one second. Long enough for her stomach to turn over completely. Then he rolls onto one knee, gets his stick beneath him and pushes upright while Logan barrels into the guy who hit him with enough force to send both of them into the boards.
The whistle goes. Players gather immediately, shoulders colliding, gloves pressing into chests while officials wedge themselves between bodies that clearly have no intention of politely separating. Dean arrives late and shoves someone who’s not even involved.
“Of course,” Sienna says.
Garrett skates into the edge of the gathering and catches Dean around the chest before he can convert an ordinary post-whistle disagreement into an actual incident. He says something beneath his cage. Dean replies with both gloves raised as if innocence is a position he has ever occupied. The official sends Dean toward the box.
“What did he even do?” Lucy asks.
Sienna presses both hands to the glass as Dean passes. “WORTH IT!”
Dean turns his head and blows her a kiss. The penalty kill lasts less than a minute before Tucker takes a puck off the ankle, limps through one stride and sends it down the ice anyway. She watches him reach the bench with his face drawn tight, one trainer bending immediately toward the skate while Tucker waves him off and points toward the play as though the trainer has accidentally started discussing something irrelevant.
The boys have been exhausted for weeks. She knew that. She has watched Garrett fall asleep with food in his mouth, watched Logan lie facedown on the living-room rug because walking upstairs felt unreasonable, watched Tucker stretch one hamstring against the kitchen counter while stirring pasta and watched Dean voluntarily turn down a party because his entire skeleton had a headache.
Knowing it in kitchens and bedrooms is different from seeing it here. Every hit looks like it should empty them. Every collision seems large enough to knock the last little reserve of energy loose and scatter it across the ice. Instead, they keep getting up, and they give it back.
Dean comes out of the penalty box like he’s been insulted by the concept of confinement. His first shift ends with an opposing winger folded into the boards and Dean skating away while the man’s teammates shout after him.
Tucker catches another player cleanly near centre and sends him onto his ass with such quiet efficiency that the crowd makes one collective, delighted sound.
Logan scores first. The play starts with Garrett trapped along the boards beneath two bodies, one stick pressed across his hips while another player tries to dig the puck out from between four pairs of skates. Garrett somehow gets it loose. She doesn’t see how. One second it’s beneath him, the next it slides backward to Tucker, who sends it across the width of the ice to Dean.
Dean takes one stride, pulls the defence toward him and passes to Logan at the back door. Logan buries it.
The red light comes on. The Briar section erupts so hard the sound seems to push against her skin from every direction. She screams with everyone else, both arms thrown upward as Logan crashes into the glass near the corner and gets swallowed by navy jerseys.
Garrett’s first to grab him. Tucker follows, then Dean launches himself into the group with enough enthusiasm that Logan nearly goes down beneath all three of them. The scoreboard changes.
BRIAR 1.
The number glows above the ice for forty-one seconds before the other team answers. A turnover near the blue line. A breakaway. Briar’s goalie makes the first save, but the rebound kicks loose and an opposing forward gets there before Tucker can tie up his stick.
1-1.
Then 2-1 to them after Dean gets caught too high in the zone and Briar gives up an odd-man rush.
Sienna lowers her sign. “He’s actively refusing to take constructive feedback.”
Briar ties it again before the end of the period. Garrett scores this one.
Tucker wins the puck behind their own net and sends it to Logan, who carries it through centre with two defenders closing. Garrett’s moving beside him, a little behind, his stride long and controlled even though she can see the heaviness beginning in his legs.
Logan waits until the last possible second and slides the puck across. Garrett receives it without looking down. One touch. Then another. He shoots through the defenceman’s legs. The puck hits the back of the net before the goalie has fully dropped.
For half a second, Garrett stays where he is, chest rising beneath the jersey, eyes fixed on the goal like he needs visual confirmation that it really happened. Then he turns. He points directly at her.
There are thousands of people in the building. Hundreds wearing Briar colours. His entire team is skating toward him, Logan already reaching for the top of his helmet while Dean screams something close enough to distort Garrett’s grin.
Still, Garrett finds her. His glove lifts. Two fingers extend toward the glass. Her heart punches once against her ribs.
She points back before she can think better of it, forty-four stretched across her back while the girls around her scream. Garrett’s grin widens, and then Tucker catches him around the shoulders and drags him into the celebration.
“Oh my God,” Lucy says, gripping her upper arm. “That was for you!”
“No way,” she says automatically, voice already ruined from yelling.
“He pointed at your face.”
“He could’ve been pointing at, like, the general student population.”
Kendall looks around them. “Anyone else wearing his jersey and blushing?”
She puts both hands over her cheeks. They are burning.
The goal helps. It should make the earlier problem worse. Garrett pointing at her after scoring in the national championship shouldn’t reduce the pressure of having accidentally told him she loves him. It should drive the sentence deeper, sharpen it, make every thought inside her skull louder.
Instead, something settles. The question is still there, pacing badly inside her. Did he hear? Did he understand? Is he waiting until after the game to say something? Has she just handed him an emotional grenade and then sat down behind plexiglass while he tries to win a championship?
But the game keeps demanding her attention, and Garrett keeps finding her. Every time he comes near their side of the rink, her body locks onto him. The bend of his knees. The tilt of his shoulders. The little shake of one glove after a slash the officials pretend not to see. When he scores, he points. When he assists on Dean’s second-period goal, he glances toward her before the boys have finished celebrating.
It’s not an answer. It feels enough like one to stop her throwing up.
The second period becomes uglier. Nobody has enough energy left for finesse without violence beneath it. The hits get heavier, tempers shorter, every whistle followed by little scrums where gloves climb higher and sticks become objects with plausible deniability.
Dean gets driven face-first into the boards behind the net. His cage strikes the glass with a sound that makes half their row gasp. He pushes backward at once, turns and swings both hands into the chest of the guy behind him.
Tucker gets between them first. This is, perhaps, the least sensible possible person to use as a calming influence, because Tucker’s version of de-escalation involves shoving the other player away hard enough that his skates leave the ice.
The officials grab both Briar players. Dean is yelling. Tucker is quieter, which looks significantly more dangerous.
“Oh, Tuck’s mad,” Paige says.
“How can you tell?” Lucy asks.
“He’s not blinking.”
Across the ice, Garrett circles in, one hand gripping Dean’s shoulder while he talks into the side of his helmet. Whatever he says works. Dean’s posture drops by an inch. Tucker releases the front of the other player’s jersey with the slow reluctance of a man being asked to return stolen property.
The officials send one from each team to the box. Dean skates away mouthing, “Bullshit,” so clearly that the Briar students nearest the glass begin chanting it for him.
The game stays tied until six minutes remain in the second. Then Briar goes ahead. Then gives up the equaliser less than ninety seconds later.
3-3.
The scoreboard becomes a threat hanging over centre ice. The other team scores again after a scramble in front of the net.
4-3.
For the first time all night, the Briar section goes briefly quiet. The sound changes, falling inward around thousands of held breaths while the opposing players celebrate near their bench and Garrett stands several feet away with both hands braced on the top of his stick.
She can see the pressure arrive in him. It’s in the angle of his neck. The way his chin drops. The stillness that overtakes his body while everyone else moves around him.
The old instinct. Mine. My fault. Fix it.
Garrett lifts his head toward the bench. He skates over and leans toward Coach, listening. Tucker joins him. Logan. Dean leaves the penalty box and takes his place at the edge of the group, chest still heaving.
Whatever is said lasts only seconds. Garrett nods once. Then the boys go back out. The next shift is brutal.
Logan takes a hit near centre that spins him completely around. Tucker loses his stick and still manages to kick the puck forward with one skate. Dean blocks a shot off his thigh and nearly folds, gets up anyway and drives into the corner.
Garrett gets the puck beneath the goal line and tries to cut toward the net. The defenceman catches him directly in front of her.
The impact drives Garrett into the boards with enough force that the glass shudders beneath both her hands. His shoulder hits first. Then the side of his helmet. The other player keeps him pinned there, forearm across Garrett’s back, stick trapped between their skates.
She sees Garrett’s face turn against the glass. Sees the flash of his teeth beneath the cage. The fury moving into his eyes. The defenceman gives him one additional shove after the puck is gone.
Garrett explodes backward. He twists free, throws both gloves into the man’s chest and shoves him hard enough that the other player stumbles two strides. The crowd roars immediately, half excitement and half invitation.
The defenceman comes forward again.
“Garrett!” she shouts, slamming one hand against the glass. “Focus!”
He doesn’t look at her. For one horrible second, she thinks he hasn’t heard. Then Garrett’s head tilts slowly to one side. His neck cracks. Even through the glass and the crowd and the scrape of skates, she can practically hear it. He turns away from the defenceman and skates back into the play.
Beside her, Lucy says, very quietly, “Oh, that’s so hot.”
She smacks Lucy’s arm without looking away from the ice. “Hey. My boyfriend.”
“Ow.” Lucy rubs the spot, entirely unrepentant. “Sorry, but I have eyes.”
“Close them.”
“No,” Lucy smirks.
Kendall leans toward them. “In her defence, that was objectively hot.”
“None of you are being supportive.”
“We are incredibly supportive,” Paige says. “We support you having that.”
She looks at all of them with genuine betrayal. “He’s exhausted and being assaulted.”
“And listening when you yell at him through reinforced glass,” Sienna replies. “Very sexy.”
Monique places one steady hand on her shoulder. “You can be concerned and recognise that the neck thing was unfortunately effective.”
“Thank you,” Lucy says.
She stares at Monique. “You too?”
Monique’s mouth tightens. “I’m not dead.”
The period ends 4-3.
The teams disappear into their tunnels, the Garden filling immediately with music and conversation and thousands of people attempting to breathe through the same collective stress. She drops into her seat for the first time in several minutes and realises her legs are shaking.
Lucy gives her water. Monique opens a granola bar and places half of it in her hand without asking. Kendall starts analysing the opposing goalie’s rebound control as if she has been retained by Briar’s coaching staff. She eats because Garrett would somehow sense if she didn’t.
The I love you returns during intermission. Without hockey moving in front of her, the sentence comes back and sits directly on her chest. She stares at the tunnel where Garrett disappeared and replays his face when he scored. The point. The grin. The way he looked toward her after Dean’s goal.
“He heard,” Paige says.
She turns. “What?”
Paige has the good grace to look slightly guilty. “I’m not saying definitely.”
Lucy points at Paige. “We agreed not to bring this up until after.”
“You agreed. I was drinking.”
Monique rubs a hand between her shoulder blades. “It doesn’t matter right now.”
“It matters a lot,” she mumbles.
“Not in a way you can do anything about during intermission.”
That’s so painfully sensible she briefly considers ending the friendship. The lights shift before she can. The teams return, and Briar comes onto the ice differently. She sees it before the puck drops. All the boys look like someone has reached into the locker room and replaced whatever exhaustion was left in them with something sharper.
Dean’s practically bouncing on his skates, jaw moving as he talks continuously at Logan. Tucker rolls one shoulder, then the other, gaze fixed down the ice. Logan taps his stick three times against Garrett’s shin pads. Garrett stands over the face-off dot with his body low and still.
She doesn’t know what Coach said in that room. Maybe he reminded them they had twenty minutes left together. Maybe Garrett spoke. Dean. One of the seniors. Maybe they sat in silence and listened to their own breathing, every one of them understanding there was no sensible reason they should have anything left.
Whatever happened, Briar comes out violent in a completely new direction.
Garrett wins the opening draw. Tucker gets the puck and sends it forward before the opposing centre has finished turning. Logan carries it over the line. Dean drives the net and pulls both defencemen with him.
Garrett trails the play. Logan drops the puck backward. Garrett shoots. Goal. Nine seconds.
The Garden detonates. She’s on her feet, screaming before the red light comes on fully. Garrett circles away from the net and drops onto one knee, fist punching once toward the ice while Logan crashes into him from behind.
4-4.
Garrett stands beneath the weight of all three boys and looks directly toward her, and points. Her throat closes around the noise. She puts both hands to her mouth and blows him a kiss this time. Garrett catches it against his chest with one glove before Dean nearly tackles him into the boards.
“That man so heard you,” Paige says.
“Shut up.”
Briar scores again two minutes later. Tucker this time, a shot from the point that changes direction through traffic and slips beneath the goalie’s arm. Tucker doesn’t even appear certain it went in until Dean grabs both sides of his helmet and screams into his face.
5-4.
Then Logan scores.
6-4.
The opposing coach calls timeout. His players gather around the bench while Briar circles near centre, shoulders bumping and gloves tapping helmets. The entire arena feels tilted now. Briar’s section is on its feet and stays there. Nobody sits again. Every touch of the puck earns a scream. Every clear is celebrated like a goal. Every blocked shot feels personal.
The other team starts taking chances because they have to. That makes them dangerous, it also leaves space.
Dean scores on a breakaway with eight minutes remaining. He comes over the blue line alone, one defenceman chasing. She can feel the entire Briar section inhale. Dean shoots high. The puck hits the crossbar, drops behind the goalie and bounces into the net.
7-4.
Dean skates directly toward their corner with both arms spread, mouth open in a yell. Sienna slams her sign against the glass so hard one corner bends.
“DEFENCE,” she screams.
Dean points at the scoreboard and mouths something that looks very much like, “Don’t need it.”
Garrett reaches him first and shoves him affectionately in the head.
The other team pulls the goalie with three minutes left. The extra attacker floods Briar’s zone. Pucks hit skates, shin pads, sticks. Their goalie makes one save, then another. Tucker dives to knock the rebound away and gets landed on by two bodies.
Garrett clears it down the ice. The puck misses the empty net by inches. The crowd groans.
One minute, twelve seconds.
Her hands are numb from gripping the rail.
Forty-eight seconds.
The puck comes out toward centre. Logan reaches it first, pokes it past one defender and sends it sideways. Garrett has open ice, he takes the puck, crosses the red line and shoots from distance. The puck slides over the ice toward the empty net, turning slightly on its edge. It crosses the line.
8-4.
Garrett doesn’t celebrate immediately, he looks toward her. Even from the other end of the rink, even through the bodies and glass and thousands of people between them, she knows he’s smiling.
He points one final time. Her chest feels too small to contain anything currently inside it. The final seconds come off the clock beneath a wall of sound.
Ten.
Nine.
The boys stop pretending to play normally.
Eight.
Dean’s already grinning.
Seven.
Tucker turns toward the bench.
Six.
Logan lifts one glove.
Five.
The entire Briar section begins counting.
“FOUR!”
Garrett looks toward the scoreboard.
“THREE!”
She grabs Lucy with one hand and Monique with the other.
“TWO!”
The Briar bench empties before the clock reaches one. The buzzer sounds. For a second, she hears nothing.
The noise is too big. It strikes her all at once and wipes itself out, becoming pressure rather than sound, something physical moving through the arena floor and up her legs while the boys throw themselves over the boards.
Briar’s fucking won.
The girls collapse into one another. Lucy screams directly into her ear. Monique, usually the least likely person in any room to lose control of her limbs, grabs her around the neck and jumps hard enough that all three of them stumble into Kendall.
Everyone is crying or laughing or doing both without making a meaningful distinction. Paige spills half her drink over the floor and doesn’t notice. Sienna’s sign bends completely in the middle when she hugs it to her chest.
On the ice, the team becomes one enormous pile of navy jerseys and raised sticks. Garrett disappears beneath it. Dean launches himself on top of Logan. Tucker is somewhere near the bottom, one glove reaching upward as if requesting rescue. Their goalie skates the length of the ice and dives into the mass, sending three players sliding.
Helmets and gloves scatter across the surface. The Briar bench is empty. Coaches stand near the boards with their arms around one another, several of them looking as though they’re trying very hard not to cry on television.
She finds Garrett when the pile begins to break apart. He’s on his knees, helmet gone, curls damp and flattened strangely on one side. Logan has both hands on Garrett’s face. Dean grabs him from behind. Tucker reaches them and folds all three into another hug.
Garrett throws his head back and yells. The sight of it breaks something open inside her. It’s too large and warm and sharp at once, rising behind her ribs until she cannot breathe around it.
Three weeks of watching him drag himself through every practice. Every night he fell asleep before she finished speaking. Every meal she had pushed toward him. Every time he said the team was killing it and left himself out of the sentence.
On the ice, officials and event staff begin organising the presentation. A carpet is carried toward centre. Someone wheels the championship trophy through the open gate, silver catching beneath the arena lights.
The boys see it and lose their minds again. Dean points with both hands like nobody else has noticed the enormous trophy entering the rink. Logan shoves Garrett toward it. Tucker is laughing so hard he bends forward, hands braced on his knees.
Garrett takes two steps with them, then he stops. He turns away from the trophy, his head comes up, eyes moving over the crowd. She knows immediately.
“Oh,” Monique says behind her.
Garrett scans the front rows once, fast and frantic, until he finds her, and the expression on his face changes. She’s already moving.
There’s an opening near the bench where staff have begun letting family and selected guests closer to the ice. She doesn’t ask whether she’s selected. She slips past the end of the row, nearly trips over a folded sign and pushes through the bodies clustered near the gate.
Someone says her name. Maybe Lucy. Maybe a security worker attempting to protect the national championship from overly emotional nursing students.
Garrett’s skating toward her. He reaches the open bench gate just as she does, one hand catching the boards while the other reaches for her.
She throws herself at him. Her sneakers leave the rubber flooring. One knee knocks lightly against the boards and Garrett catches her beneath the thighs with a startled laugh, skates shifting backward on the ice before he steadies.
His arms tighten. He spins her once, the Garden lights sweep through her vision and her stomach lifts while she grabs both sides of his face.
Garrett kisses her before she can speak. It lands crooked at first, half her mouth and half the corner, both of them laughing too hard for accuracy. Then he adjusts his hold and kisses her again. Properly. Hard and warm and breathless, tasting like sweat, cold air and the mint gum he must have been chewing before warm-ups.
She pulls back because there are things she needs to say. “You–” Garrett kisses her. “Baby, you–” Another kiss. Shorter, but still enough to knock the sentence loose. “You won,” she manages when his mouth moves briefly to her cheek. “Garrett, you fucking won.”
“I know.”
His voice cracks on the words. She barely gets to hear it before he kisses her again, one hand leaving beneath her thigh to catch the back of her neck.
Behind him, somebody screams, “GRAHAM, TROPHY!”
Garrett raises one hand over her shoulder without looking and gives the entire team the finger. She laughs into his mouth. “Baby, the trophy.”
He shakes his head once and kisses her again. It’s ridiculous. The championship trophy is thirty feet away. His entire team is shouting his name. Cameras are absolutely capturing the captain of Briar University ignoring the formal presentation to make out with his girlfriend through an open bench gate.
She cannot make herself care. Garrett’s forehead presses against hers. His breathing is rough, chest rising hard beneath her arms, damp curls brushing her fingers where they hold the sides of his face.
His eyes are bright. Something wet catches along his lower lashes before he blinks and laughs like his body has become too full to choose one reaction. “I fucking love you,” he says.
The words strike her in the centre of the chest. For half a second, she can only look at him. Then the laugh comes out of her, thin and startled and so relieved it nearly turns into a sob. Her forehead presses harder against his. “You heard me?”
Garrett lets out one disbelieving breath. “Baby, I heard you.”
“Oh my God.”
“I nearly threw up.”
She laughs harder, both hands sliding into his hair now, holding him close enough that their noses bump. “You nearly threw up?”
“I was about to play for a national championship and my girlfriend just yelled that she loved me through the glass.”
“I didn’t mean to.”
His brows lift.
“No, I mean– I meant it.” Her mouth cannot keep up with her brain. Everything comes out tangled, warm and too fast. “Obviously I meant it. I just didn’t mean to say it then. It slipped out and then you skated away, and I didn’t know if you heard, and Paige said your head moved, but heads move all the time–”
Garrett kisses her once, laughing against her mouth. “You’re spiralling.”
“I’ve been spiralling for three periods,” she groans.
“I know.”
“I was watching you get hit by men the size of refrigerators.”
“And thinking about whether I heard you.”
“Yes.”
His smile goes soft. Tired and overwhelmed and so openly happy that the sight of it makes her throat tighten. “I heard you,” he says again, quieter now. “Every word.”
She touches the little cut near his cheekbone, thumb brushing beneath it without pressing. “I love you so much.”
Garrett closes his eyes for one second. When they open again, there’s no joke waiting there, no grin to make the sentence easier. Only him, holding her against his chest while the Garden roars around them and his team shouts increasingly creative threats from centre ice.
“I love you,” he says. “Fuck, I love you.”
She kisses him because there’s no possible response her mouth could make that would improve on that. Garrett kisses her back immediately, deep enough that another wave of yelling rises from the boys.
“CAPTAIN!”
“WE HAVE A FUCKING TROPHY!”
“GRAHAM, WE’RE ON TV!”
“That one was Tucker,” she whispers against Garrett’s mouth.
Garrett laughs, forehead returning to hers. She looks past him at the boys clustered near centre. Dean has both hands on his hips. Logan is pointing urgently at the trophy. Tucker is shaking his head, but he’s smiling so hard it ruins any attempt at disappointment.
“Okay,” she murmurs. “Okay, go get your trophy.”
Garrett tightens his arms around her. “In a second.”
“Baby.”
“One second.”
“You’re the captain,” she argues.
“I know.”
“They need you.”
He grins. “They’ve needed me all month. They can wait ten more seconds.”
Warmth pushes hard behind her eyes. She swallows it, kisses the corner of his mouth and presses both palms to his cheeks. “I’m so proud of you.”
Garrett’s face shifts. His lips part slightly and his eyes drop for half a second like those words have reached somewhere the championship couldn’t.
She strokes one thumb over his skin. “You did it.”
His throat moves, then he kisses her again, one firm press of his mouth to hers that feels less like interruption now and more like an answer.
“Love you,” he murmurs.
“I love you too.” She gives his shoulders a small push. “Now put me down before Dean starts crying.”
“He’s already crying.”
She looks past Garrett again. Dean’s wiping both eyes with the collar of his jersey while aggressively denying something Logan has said. “Oh.”
“Told you.”
Garrett lowers her carefully. Her sneakers land on the rubber mat beyond the ice, knees wobbling after being held above skates and adrenaline for longer than sensible workplace guidelines would recommend. His hands stay at her waist until he’s sure she is balanced.
“I’ll see you soon,” he says.
“You better.”
His grin returns. Bright, golden and exhausted, split at one corner by the small cut on his lip. “Bossy.”
“National champion or not, you still need to listen.”
“Yes, Coach.”
She leans through the gate and kisses him one last time, quick enough not to trigger another team revolt. “Go.”
Garrett pushes backward onto the ice. She catches his wrist before he gets too far. He turns. Her chest is still heaving. Her face hurts from smiling. His jersey hangs heavy and warm over her body, number stretching across her back while the Briar crowd shakes the building around them.
“Love you, Captain.”
Garrett’s whole face lights. He brings one glove to his mouth and blows her a kiss. She catches it.
“Love you,” he calls.
Then he turns and skates toward the boys. Dean meets him halfway and jumps onto his back, nearly taking both of them down. Logan slams into Garrett’s side. Tucker catches his other shoulder and drags the group toward centre, where the trophy waits beneath the arena lights.
She stands at the open gate watching them go, one hand still closed around Garrett’s imaginary kiss. Then Lucy crashes into her from behind.
“You said it twice,” she screams directly into her hair.
Monique wraps both arms around them. Kendall and Paige arrive next, Sienna pushing in with the damaged sign still trapped beneath one elbow until all six of them are pressed together in a laughing, crying mess beside the bench.
“He heard me,” she says, although no one asked.
Lucy squeezes harder. “We noticed.”
“He loves me.”
“No shit,” Paige replies, voice thick with tears. “He abandoned the national championship trophy to kiss you for five minutes.”
Out on the ice, Garrett reaches centre. The boys crowd around him as officials begin saying things nobody in the building has any intention of hearing. Coach hands him the trophy.
Garrett takes it with both hands. For one brief second, he looks down at the silver beneath his gloves. His mouth presses together. Tucker’s hand lands on the back of his neck. Logan grips one shoulder. Dean has both arms raised already, visibly incapable of waiting.
Then Garrett lifts the trophy over his head. The Garden erupts all over again. She screams with everyone else, hands thrown upward, tears warm on her face and Garrett’s forty-four stretched across her back while the boys jump around him.
The trophy shines above them. Dean’s yelling. Logan’s trying to touch it before Garrett has finished lifting it. Tucker’s head is tipped back in laughter.
And Garrett, standing in the middle of everything he has spent his whole life being pushed toward, looks past the cameras and the confetti beginning to fall and the men crowding around him, and he finds her again.
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CONTENTS - ANGST, kissing, mentioned sexual themes, it’s just a whole lot of arguments and they're both touch-starved (mostly Peter) actually both.
WORD COUNT - 3.5k.
AUTHOR’S NOTE - I intended it to be soft and cute in the beginning but then I spiraled so…. Yeah. [not proof read so there will be a lot of mistakes and repetition]
“So what exactly are you trying to do?” You walked over from Peter’s bedroom to his work desk.
Multiple monitors, machines which you had no idea what their functions were and empty energy drink cans. The blue light reflecting off the screens and the whirling of the machines took you back to the Avenger’s tower where you had occasionally watched Mr.Stark work.
Peter was hovered over the side table wearing a fitted white t-shirt that read ‘Delmar’s Deli’ in blue and red. You couldn’t tell if suddenly all his shirts had gotten tighter or if he purposely did that. You wouldn’t argue either.
“Well, I spoke to Dr.Banner-“ His focus was still on the small chip in his hand until he put it through one of machines. The light inside it flickered and started doing it’s magic.
He lifted his head finally “And he said it’d be possible to make an inhibitor that-
Peter’s eyes widened slightly when he finally took you in. You standing by his desk, in just a Spider-Man merch t-shirt and his socks. That’s it. The shirt hung at your mid-thighs and the long socks rested just at your knees.
You tilted your head slightly as he stopped talking. You didn’t think Peter would still be stunned seeing you after he just spent the evening fucking you into a different reality. Well that’s how you felt anyway.
He cleared his throat when he saw that you caught him staring.
“You were saying?” You stated with an amused smile.
“I…” He blinked once before dragging his attention back to the machine. “You distracted me.”
The tips of his ears turned pink before he busied himself in finishing the inhibitor.
“Uh huh” You rolled your eyes lightly when he moved around you, turning you by your hips.
You stopped him before he sat down, reaching up giving him a quick peck on his cheek.
He turned his head and caught your kiss as you immediately kissed back. His hands that were on your hips pulled you against him.
His hand slid around and rested at the small of your back, holding you. The sudden intensity of it had you leaning further back and his arm curled around your waist, supporting you.
You tilted your head back letting out a breathless laugh. His lips dropped to your throat and you felt his grin against your skin.
Your fingers slid into his curls, tugging lightly so he looked back up at you.
"You were saying?" You teased playfully.
"Huh?"
"Oh-" His eyes widened slightly and his face flushed.
“Uh, And if this works…” he continued, smoothly slipping back into the previous conversation “…I should be able to suppress that side of me.”
He gave you a quick kiss on the cheek before letting go of you. He sat down in front of the monitors as you hovered over him.
Your brows furrowed slightly at his words, “What, the Spider side? The thing that quite literally makes you Spider-man?”
You stood behind him, watching him analyze something in the screens. On one monitor it showed an X-ray of him and his health levels. Including his arachnid DNA that were currently level but had been spiking lately.
“No-No” He shook his head. “The part that just keep changing.”
He nodded towards one of the monitors and you draped your arms over his broad shoulders, your chin on top of his head of dark curls.
A full scan of his body rotated slowly across the screen. Sections of his body glowed amber alongside lines of data you couldn’t even begin to understand.
“I don’t want to wake up one day and have turned into an actual spider.” He attempted a laugh as he squeezed your hand that rested on his chest.
“It just keeps the other side balanced, like it was before.”
You remembered when he first told you he woke up in a cocoon of webs, hanging off the side of his building, naked.
You found humor in it at first until just a few nights later your bedroom turned into the same thing. You were still finding webs. It almost looked like it had marked every corner of the house like its territory.
Your eyes remained fixed on the screens.
He wasn’t treating a symptom. He was rewriting himself. His DNA. Which even for our standard was insane.
Peter called for E.V., asking it to run another test.
The AI responded but you barely heard it. Your mind started going through different dilemmas on this. On one hand, you understood why he was doing this. But on the other, this wasn’t natural.
Even for someone as smart as Peter, this wasn’t still dangerous and could have long term consequences.
He gave your hand a pat before he stood up, brushing past you to retrieve the finished inhibitor.
“Wait-“ You looked between him and the machine.“…Do you really think this is a good idea?”
His brow furrowed,“What do you mean?”
“I mean…”
You gestured helplessly towards the screens.
“You’re changing yourself.”
“I’m stopping something dangerous.” He stated like it was obvious.
“You’re suppressing a part of yourself that’s natural.” You said softer, trying to reason with him.
He laughed but it held no emotion, “Natural?”
“Because of me an officer almost died. A person.”
Your chest tightened,“I know.”
“And-and, you know what the worst part was?”
He didn’t wait for an answer.
“I knew it was happening.”
His eyes fixed on the screen,“I could feel it.”
“My heart started racing, everything got louder…” He swallowed. “I-I could hear everything. The moment their heart beat shifted and they were afraid of me.”
You didn’t say anything for a moment as you felt the heavy weight of his words.
“You weren’t yourself.” You tried to assure him but you knew this was just another guilt he’d carry.
“No.” He turned back to look at you.
“So let’s- let's figure out why, we can do that-”
His hands moved erratically, “I already know why” He tried to convince you.
You stayed silent, biting back what you had already tried to assure him of over and over again.
“So tell me, how is that natural?” He said to you again.
“I couldn’t control it.” He stated again, trying to get it through to you.
“You can learn.” You said with reassurance to him.
He scoffed, starting to get irritated by your stubbornness, “I don’t want to learn.”
“Peter, you’ve spent your entire life learning how to live with your powers.”
“These aren’t the same.” He shook his head.
“They’re still yours.”
Peter looked away.
“Then if it’s mine, I can choose if I want it or not.”
You sighed at his words. You didn’t want to bring up this next thing. Well you did, but not right now. But you’ve realised there’s no ‘good’ time for it, and he just has to hear it.
“Maybe it’s not just about the mutation…”
He folded his arms and his brows furrowed, “What do you mean?”
“When’s the last time you slept, Peter?”
The look on his face faltered as he didn’t expect that question.
“And I mean properly, not with me there.”
The stoic look settled back onto his face, “I’ve been fine.”
“Stop that.” You shook your head, “You are anything but fine.”
“When’s the last time you let yourself live? Let Peter Parker live?”
His jaw ticked, “I don’t have that luxury.”
“No, you choose not to.” You said back to him.
“Right-“ He spoke with bitter tone.
“You don’t think all of this-” You motioned towards the apartment.
“The sleepless nights. The stress. The lack of a social life - just everything you’ve been carrying…might be affecting what’s happening?”
“No.” He said flat out.
The frustration in you flickered, “Oh Peter, c’mon-“
“I think I know myself enough to know that it isn’t.”
“Do you?”
The question lingered.
You watched his shoulders tense and his gaze turns to the monitors, not being able to look at you.
“I’ve still got a city to protect.” He said quieter.
“And Peter Parker?”
“What about him?”
He was tired. That was evident enough.
But even the way he spoke about himself, like he wasn’t Peter Parker anymore.
You spoke up again, lowering your tone to his, “When’s the last time you let him exist?”
His brows furrowed and he shook his head, “He doesn’t really get much demand these days.”
His words hung between them but you don't argue back.
Instead, you reached out to him carefully.
Your hands on his forearms that were still tense, “You don’t have to do this alone.”
He looked away from you as soon as you touched him and you brought up your other hand, turning his face back to you.
You searched his dark brown gaze trying to find an answer. They were darker than usual. The light had dimmed in them. And it makes you think could you have fixed this sooner?
His eyes held yours and they only softened the slightest.
“I am alone.”
“No-“ Your voice cracked when you unfolded his arms, “No, You don’t have to carry this by yourself. You don’t have to do this alone. I can help you.”
“You don’t understand.” He sighed quiet, trying not to let you uncover the feelings that he buried.
“Then help me to understand.” You practically pleaded with him.
"Just let me in. You know what I can do so why won't you let me."
He held your gaze and his voice remained calm.
“I can’t.”
"Why?" You retorted back.
"Because I don't want you burdened with whatever is going on up here. And I don't... want you seeing it."
He didn't want you to see all the ugly, dark feelings and emotions he had. For the past four years, and even before that. He spent day and night on patrol. Sometimes just to feel something he let himself be hit. He trained harder. He pushed himself. Just so that he could feel something other than loneliness and grief.
You had taken a peak once accidentally. When he was asleep. He had felt it. The way your face broke and his pain overwhelmed you so much that you felt it all. It stayed with you for weeks.
He asked you to never do it again. And you didn't.
He was angry, not with you but with himself for even letting it happen. For still staying close to you. For letting you in. For letting you love each other.
He already knows what goes on in your mind and heart, and he never wanted to be the reason you felt pain. Even if it wasn't directly from him, it was his pain.
He'd listen to you. Your ramblings. Your singing. Your laughs. The way you'd ask him random things like he was the human wikipedia. If he didn't know it, he'd search it up and pretend he did. He told you the plot of movies and you'd complain when he gave you spoilers, even though you asked for it.
He'd have his head in your lap as you read out loud. One hand in his curls and the other holding your book.
He would be there for you. He'd let you love him. Cry to him. Shout at him.
So you didn't understand, why he wouldn't let you be his person. Just as he was yours.
Even with the faint workings of the machine and the flicker of hum from his monitors, the silence was thick between you two.
You watched him turn the inhibitor between his fingers like he was contemplating.
“This isn’t just for me.”
Your eyes flicker back up to him where he’s already looking at you.
“If it works on me then… I could be able to use it on her too.”
Your expression changed completely, “Who, the girl?”
The one who had been a pain in Spider-man’s ass. Jumping into different bodies, wreaking havoc across the city just for something called V-max. But she was also just a young girl. Granted she wasn’t doing good with her powers but this didn’t feel right.
“It could stop her from hurting someone else.” He said more determined as he placed the inhibitor to the side.
Your hands dropped from him and you took a step back.
You looked at him in disbelief. So many different emotions were running through you that you didn’t even know what to say to him.
“So that’s what we’re doing now?”
Peter frowned, “What?”
“Putting collars on people like us?”
“It isn’t a collar.” His answer came quickly, almost instinctively. His brows pinched together in disbelief that you could even compare it to that.
You scoffed, gesturing towards the inhibitor still in his hand, “What else do you call forcing someone to suppress who they are?”
“Peter, organisations have spent years trying to build things exactly like this. Weapons. Contingency plans.” You shook your head. “What happens when somebody decides this is easier?”
Anyone they decide is a threat, the could go around tagging people with the inhibitor. Forcefully stopping their abilities, stopping who they are. It can be of good if a catastrophic event happens but people abuse their power and if they see something like this, they won’t hesitate to try and control us.
This is what you thought and maybe Peter understood or maybe he was just thinking about now and his mission to just get that telepath of the streets.
Before you gave him the chance to respond, anger bubbled inside you, “What happens if someone gets a hold of this-?”
“They won’t.”
“You don’t know that!” Your voice rose, fear bleeding into every word.
He closed the distance between you two in an instant. You barely had the time to register it as his hands wrapped around your upper arm, firm but gentle.
Your first instinct was to move back since you were still mid-argument.
“Hey…”
His voice had lost all of its sharpness.
“That’s not going to happen.” He tried to reassure you.
“If… I use it on her, it’s only temporary. And no-one else will get their hands on it. I’ll destroy it before that even happens.”
You stared at him, searching his gaze for honesty. The thing about Peter was he never lied to you. Even when he attempted his little white-lies you could tell, and you knew he had good intentions, always. This is why this is so difficult.
Your skin grew warm and your hands shook slightly from the adrenaline of this argument. Neither of you liked arguing. It ended with one leaving snd not seeing each other for a few days until the other one stopped being stubborn.
He didn’t like your silence, “Trust me.” His voice dropped to a desperate whisper.
You wanted to.
God, you wanted to so badly on this.
Your lips parted to speak until something caught your attention.
A mug floated slowly past Peter’s shoulder.
You frowned in confusion and your eyes flickered past him.
Everything that wasn’t bolted down in his apartment was currently a few feet of the ground.
The room trembled around you, every object suspended by your emotions alone.
The desk chair had lifted a few inches from the floor, gently rocking from side to side. The monitors trembled on their stands as screws, pens and loose tools floated weightlessly around them.
Even the bed had begun to rise, its frame groaning quietly beneath the strain.
Outside, windows rattled throughout the building. Dogs barking and horns blaring.
Your breathing was heavier and his hands left your arms and came up to your face in a cradling manner. His touch was cool against your warm skin.
His hands held you so gently like you were the most fragile thing here.
He called out your name and you drew in a shaky inhale.
The room shuddered.
The floating objects began to lower, some settling softly back into place while others crashed down harder than intended.
The refrigerator landed with a heavy thud and the metal tools clattered across the workbench.
Somewhere outside the apartment, a series of loud crashes echoed through the building, followed by blaring car alarms.
You winced at the sound of it. The anger and fear faded and shame crept in hot.
Peter lowered his gaze to your eye-line, “Say something.” He murmured, searching your gaze in desperation.
You sighed again heavier, “I don’t know what to say, Pete.”
“We keep finding ourselves here. And it’s not healthy, not for either of us.” You spoke quieter, accepting on the situation.
"You won't let me help you. Not really. And It hurts me to see you like this."
“Like what?” The defensiveness flared up again. His hands left your face and he took a step back.
He pinched the bridge of his nose in tiredness and frustration from this. You heard quiet beep of the monitor and looked over to see his hormone levels increasing.
"Pete-"You bit the inside of you cheek before looking up at him, “There just… there has to be more to your life than being Spider-Man.”
You kept your tone steady and calm for him. You stepped forward to him and then he placed his hand out to stop you.
“Oh like what-" He spoke through gritted teeth, "Like you?”
You paused when he said that. For a second, every emotion in conjured together and your mind went blank.
The words landed harder than if he’d shouted them.
Peter dropped his head, groaning when he felt that familiar painful headache. His eyes tightened shut and his fingers rubbed at his temple to ease it.
Your fingers twitched to reach out to him again but your mind said otherwise.
He rested one hand on the edge of the desk and the other dragged down his face. He exhaled through his nose and turned to look at you.
“You tell me to find Peter Parker again…”
He swallowed.
“…but maybe you don’t know what to do with him either.”
Your eyes burned and you slowly shook your head, “Peter-”
“Maybe this isn’t about me.”
He rubbed the back of his neck, the tension in his face told you the headache still lingered.
“Maybe it’s easier believing I’m something you can fix.”
“…Maybe then your conscience becomes quieter..”
Tears welled before you could stop them.
“That’s not true.” You said quiet, letting a tear fall.
He didn't look at you. He couldn't.
He wanted nothing more than to say he’ll fix it all. But he also knew he wouldn't. And he needed you to understand that being Spider-Man was the only thing keeping him going.
That aching feeling in his chest that was pressuring him to just be honest. He ignored that too.
That you were his person.
It was easier to not admit it. To rely on himself. Even when he did keep coming back to you.
He looked down at the inhibitor.
“I’m not going to be the reason someone loses their life…”
His voice was steady.
“I’m sorry but I have to do this.”
You didn’t answer. There wasn’t anything left to say.
Peter finally looked at you when you had averted your gaze to the wall ahead.
Neither of you moved as the tension weighed on you both.
Eventually, he grabbed the inhibitor and turned back towards the desk.
The machine hummed patiently as he down onto the chair. His movement were stiff and quick.
A few more tears fell from your eyes and you felt something scratch at your throat that you forcefully pushed back down.
Slowly, with a flick of your wrist, the oversized Spider-Man shirt shimmered away, replaced by the clothes you’d arrived in before.
When you both were building legos and brought him something home-cooked. When he showed you his real webs that came out of his wrist. He made a disgusted look at the fluid coming out of his veins whilst you look fascinated.
He had playfully tackled you back on the bed when you kept bringing up that in fact you were the one who saved both his and Frank’s life on Staten Island. Which turned into something else. Which then turned into a few hours of his head buried between your thighs, his lips over your skin, your fingers tugging at his dark curls until he would kiss back up and give you what you both desperately needed.
But now all that seemed a long time ago.
He stared at the screen waiting for the system to begin.
He used the back of his hand to quickly wipe the tears that fell before they could stain.
SLAM.
The apartment door echoed through the room.
Peter didn’t move. His tongue poked into his cheek as he forced down the emotions that were threatening to spill.
In a few seconds the tears stopped and he reached behind to place the inhibitor on himself.
synopsis: after seven years of friendship, spencer finally introduces you to his team. unfortunately, they're all very good at their jobs.
word count: 4.5k
content: no use of y/n, friends to lovers, mutual pining, everyone knows but them, seven years of accidental courtship, the BAU drawing one very reasonable conclusion, alcohol consumption, fluff
Spencer changes his mind about bringing you somewhere between ringing the bell and Rossi opening the front door.
“We can still leave,” he says, leaning closer and lowering his voice as though someone might overhear him, despite the empty porch.
“You spent three weeks convincing me to come.”
“I know.” He glances towards the house, and you watch the implications of what he’s done catch up with him. “I may not have thought this through.”
You follow his gaze to the nearest window. The curtain falls back into place with such violent innocence that you can practically hear Penelope Garcia denying everything from the other side.
“She’s been waiting there?”
“Possibly.”
“How long?”
Spencer glances at his watch. “We’ve only been here for forty-three seconds.”
“And she’s already frightened you into retreat.”
“I’m not frightened.” His mouth pulls to one side, though his eyes stray to the curtain again. “I just want to make sure you’re comfortable.”
You look back at him. He’s dressed slightly better than the occasion requires, which is normal enough that you noticed only in passing when he arrived at your flat. His tie is patterned but subdued, and his hair keeps falling forwards no matter how often he pushes it away. His coat is still unbuttoned despite the January cold; he began telling you about Rossi’s cooking before you made it out of your building and apparently forgot there were buttons involved.
The knot of his tie has worked its way a little to the left. You reach up to straighten it. “I’m comfortable.”
His attention drops to your hands. “You’re cold.”
“I’m standing outside in January.”
“You loosened the scarf.”
“It made me look like I was being strangled by a blanket.”
“It’s cashmere.”
You glance down at the loosened scarf. “I know. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t aggressive.”
Spencer’s smile spreads slowly, warm and crooked and bright enough to make you forget the weather for a second. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“You understood me.”
“I usually do.”
The door opens before you can answer. Rossi takes in the two of you on his porch — your fingers still resting against Spencer’s tie, Spencer standing close enough that the sleeve of his coat brushes yours — and lets his eyes linger on your hand before returning to Reid.
“Reid.” He steps aside. “And you must be the woman who stole his seat.”
You turn on Spencer. “You told him that?”
“It’s how we met.”
“That’s not how we met.”
Rossi accepts your coat. You unwind the scarf and hold it out without looking; Spencer takes it automatically, hanging it beside your coat while he continues to regard you with the stubborn composure of someone who possesses an eidetic memory and has appointed himself sole custodian of the past.
“There was a programme on the chair,” he says.
“There was rubbish on the chair.”
“It was the programme for the lecture.”
“Which had already started.”
“That doesn’t make it rubbish.”
Rossi closes the door behind you. “You can argue the case over dinner. I’ve heard Reid’s testimony several times.”
You follow him into the hall, looking sideways at Spencer. “How many times have you told this story?”
“It comes up more often than you’d think.”
Before you can ask how a disagreement over auditorium seating could possibly come up at the Behavioral Analysis Unit, someone makes a small, delighted noise at the end of the hallway.
Garcia appears in a sweep of colour, bracelets and barely restrained curiosity. “You’re real.”
“Garcia,” Spencer warns.
“I never suggested she wasn’t.” She reaches you and takes both your hands, looking you over with such open pleasure that it’s impossible to feel inspected. “I’m Penelope. I have been waiting so patiently to meet you that I think I deserve official recognition from the Bureau.”
“You sent me four messages this afternoon,” Spencer says.
Garcia dismisses this with a flick of her bracelets. “And every one of them was supportive.”
“One of them was nine exclamation marks.”
She hugs you before you have decided whether handshakes are still an option. Over her shoulder, you find Spencer watching you, ready to intervene and relieved when he sees he doesn’t have to. He knows you have never enjoyed entering a room full of strangers. He also knows that Garcia has rendered strangers impossible within thirty seconds.
Morgan comes around the corner carrying two bottles of wine. “So this is who’s been taking up all your Thursdays.”
Spencer’s head turns. “She doesn’t take them up.”
“You make that sound worse,” you tell him.
“I mean, I choose to spend them with you.”
Morgan’s eyebrows rise. “And disappear before anyone can give you another file.”
Spencer has already turned back to you, taking the bag from your shoulder before you have to hitch it back into place.
“I leave work at a reasonable time on Thursdays,” he adds. “That isn’t disappearing.”
“You texted me from the lift last week saying, ‘I escaped.’”
“They’d already given me three,” he says, as though this settles the choice of verb.
Morgan studies the two of you for another second, then gives you a slow nod. “You’re going to fit in fine.”
The rest of the introductions happen in Rossi’s living room, where the fire is lit and every available surface has acquired either a glass or a plate. JJ greets you with an easy warmth that eases the last of your nerves. Hotch is more reserved, although the handshake he offers comes with a sincere, “It’s good to finally meet you.”
Between the BAU’s cases and your own habit of declining invitations to crowded gatherings, finally becomes the common thread of the evening. Oddly, the feeling is mutual. Spencer has been talking about his team for seven years, long enough that you sometimes forget you’ve never actually met any of them. Tara, seated on the arm of a chair, tells you that she has only known Spencer for a few months and has somehow still heard enough about you to recognise your name immediately.
You look at him. “What have you been telling these people?”
“Not much.”
Morgan sets the wine beside Rossi’s decanter. “He brings you up more than he thinks he does.”
“Only when something reminds me of her,” Spencer says.
“So whenever anyone sits in a chair,” you say.
“Only if they sit in my seat.”
“That wasn’t your seat.”
Tara looks between you. “I’m beginning to see how you two have kept an argument about a chair going for seven years.”
“Seven years, two months and six days,” Spencer corrects.
You’re accustomed to this. Spencer remembers the first time you met, the first film you watched together and the day you discovered the little bookshop that now holds a hard-won place in your Thursday routine. He remembers what you ordered the first time you dragged him to your favourite café and exactly which joke made you choke on it. None of it has ever seemed remarkable when it’s simply the way his mind works and the shape your life has taken around his. Across the room, JJ’s gaze rests on him for a moment before returning to you.
“That’s Spencer,” you say, because it is.
“It is,” JJ agrees, a small smile tucked into the words, and Rossi calls everyone to the table before you can work out what she finds funny.
He has prepared enough food for twice as many people and accepts praise as his due. The conversation moves easily around you, propelled by the overlapping stories of people who spend too much time together. Morgan disputes Rossi’s version of an arrest in Baltimore; JJ supplies the part both men have omitted. Tara waits until they have nearly finished before revealing that Garcia showed her the security footage and neither account is accurate.
At the head of the table, Hotch listens with the patience of a man who has long since accepted that authority has limits.
As everyone gathers around the table, Spencer rests a hand on the back of an empty chair. You slip into it without either of you acknowledging the gesture, and he takes the seat to your right, tucking your bag safely beside his feet.
The conversation follows everyone to the table, breaking and reforming as chairs are pulled in and Rossi begins sending dishes around. When the bread reaches Spencer, he selects the darker end piece before handing you the basket. He’s looking down at his plate, but you catch the twitch at the corner of his mouth.
You dig beneath the slices for the remaining end and set it on your plate.
“Did you just take that?”
He arranges his face into innocence. “Take what?”
“You know I like the end.”
“There are two ends.”
“You took the better one.”
“They’re structurally identical.”
“They absolutely are not.”
He lets you make your case, then exchanges his piece for the one on your plate with the ease of a ritual completed many times before. You tear the bread in half and put half back on his plate, which is when you notice Tara watching from across the table, amusement gathering at one corner of her mouth.
“What?” you ask.
“Nothing.” She reaches for her wine. “I’m learning.”
Spencer leans nearer to you. “About bread?”
You give him a look and take a bite. He glances across at Tara, clearly tempted to investigate.
“Don’t make the face,” you warn.
“What face?”
“The one you make before asking a question that adds twenty minutes to a conversation.”
Spencer turns to you, brow furrowed and mouth pulled into a small, dubious line. “I don’t have a face for that.”
“You do,” JJ says from his other side.
Morgan points his fork at her. “He definitely does.”
Spencer appeals to Hotch, who takes a measured drink of wine. “You do.”
The table breaks into laughter, Spencer along with it. His head tips back, his eyes close, and the smile opens across his face without the flicker of self-consciousness that sometimes follows when he realises a room is watching him. You know the quieter laugh he uses when he’s trying not to encourage you, the startled one that escapes when you catch him off guard, the breathless, helpless version that makes him fold forwards and hide his face. This one is easy and bright. He looks happy.
You are still watching when he turns back. The laughter remains in his eyes as his expression shifts into a question, and only then do you notice the small streak of sauce near the corner of his mouth.
“Hold still.” You wipe it away with your thumb before it occurs to you that a napkin would have done the job just as well.
His lips part at the touch. For a second, the noise of the table seems to move around the two of you, then you drop your hand and reach for your glass. By the time Spencer does the same, Morgan has turned the conversation towards Rossi’s wine.
Later, once the plates have been cleared and Rossi produces a tiramisu large enough to require architectural planning, Garcia asks how you and Spencer became friends after what she calls the Auditorium Incident.
“She followed me outside,” Spencer says.
“You followed me.” You turn towards him, eyebrows raised at the version of events he has chosen to present. “Apparently handing me a pen and saying ‘Here’ was supposed to communicate a short-term loan.”
“I thought it was obvious.”
Morgan rests an elbow on the table. “Was this at least a good pen?”
“No. It leaked all over my hand.”
“That’s what I was trying to tell her when she walked away.”
JJ glances between you. “So you followed a woman out of a lecture hall over a defective pen?”
“I didn’t follow her,” Spencer says, a little too quickly. “She was walking towards the Metro.”
“I was walking towards coffee. He spent three blocks correcting a route I wasn’t taking.”
Garcia presses both hands to her heart. “And he came with you.”
“It had started raining,” Spencer says.
JJ looks at him. “You hate coffee shops.”
“They’re usually loud.”
“That one was,” you say. “You stayed after the rain stopped anyway.”
He looks at you, momentarily caught without a correction. His knee has rested against yours beneath the table for most of the conversation, warm and solid through two layers of clothing. “You were interesting.”
The answer is simple, offered without embarrassment. Before you can decide what to do with it, Rossi cuts into the tiramisu. “And the rest is seven years, two months and six days of arguing.”
“We don’t always argue,” Spencer says.
“You called me at midnight last week because my bookshelf leans.”
“It leans towards your bed.”
“Protectively.”
He gives you a long, suffering look. “It’s going to fall on you.”
Hotch hides a smile behind his wine. “He may have a point.”
“Thank you,” Spencer says, vindicated, and you promise the table that when he appears at your flat with a spirit level, they are all invited to help him.
The evening loosens after dessert. Rossi opens another bottle of wine, Morgan finds music, and people drift between the living room and kitchen as the conversation divides into smaller pieces. You spend a while talking to JJ and Tara near the fire. Spencer is pulled into a discussion with Hotch on the other side of the room, but his attention returns to you often enough that you begin to anticipate it. You look up, and his eyes are already there.
He never stares. His gaze finds yours, checks, and returns to the conversation. When Garcia drops onto the sofa beside you with enough force to send your glass wobbling, his hand lifts from across the room before you catch it yourself.
You raise the rescued glass in his direction. He smiles, lets his hand fall and turns back to Hotch.
Between the fire and the overlapping voices, the room soon grows too warm. You finish what remains in your glass, leave it on the side table beside Garcia and slip through the doors onto the back terrace. At the stone railing, you draw one full breath of cold air before the door opens behind you.
“You’re going to say you told me so,” you say.
Spencer settles your coat over your shoulders. “I was going to ask why you came outside without this.” He draws the fabric closed at your throat, making sure your hair stays clear of the collar.
“Same sentiment.”
“Not exactly.”
You turn before he has taken his hands away, leaving the two of you close enough that his hands slide down to your elbows instead. Through the glass doors, Garcia is looking directly at you. Morgan comes up beside her, follows her gaze and says something you can’t hear.
“What are they doing?”
Spencer glances over his shoulder. Both of them disappear from the window.
“I don’t know.”
“They’re very strange.”
“They like you.”
His certainty draws your attention back to him. “They’ve known me for three hours.” You reconsider this, glancing towards the living room. “Then again, Garcia gave me copies of your childhood photographs.”
Spencer’s eyebrows lift. “She gave you copies?”
“And made me promise Morgan would never see them. You were very serious about that chess trophy.”
Spencer smiles, small and pleased. “That means she trusts you.”
You laugh, and his thumbs shift against the sleeves of your coat. The movement is small, nearly absent-minded. You have held his hand through turbulence, hooked an arm through his in crowded streets and fallen asleep against his shoulder during films neither of you remembers finishing. This belongs to the same familiar language, a touch whose meaning has never required either of you to stop and examine it.
You rest your hands against the front of his jacket. “I like them too.”
The line of his shoulders softens. “I knew you would.”
“Even Morgan.”
“That’s premature.”
The door opens, and Morgan sticks his head outside. “We can hear you, genius.”
Spencer looks back at him without removing his hands from your arms. “She said she likes you.”
“I heard the rest too.” Morgan gives you a wounded look before retreating inside.
Spencer’s grin is immediate and entirely unrepentant. It stays with him as you go back indoors together, his hand resting lightly between your shoulder blades. Once the doors close, he eases the coat from your shoulders before the heat can become uncomfortable and carries it back to the hall.
It’s close to midnight when people begin leaving. Hotch goes first, followed shortly by JJ. Morgan hugs you and tells you to come back even if Reid doesn’t, Garcia informs him that threatening a guest is poor etiquette and then hugs you twice as hard. By the time Tara finds her coat, Spencer is helping Rossi carry glasses into the kitchen, although the discussion drifting down the hallway suggests that helping involves an argument about the safest way to store crystal.
“It was lovely meeting you,” Tara says. She loops her scarf around her neck, then glances towards the kitchen with affectionate amusement. “I understand now why he keeps disappearing on Thursdays.”
“He’ll be pleased you believe it counts as disappearing.”
“I’m sure he’ll explain the distinction to me at length on Monday.” She reaches for the door, then pauses. “I’ll admit, I was confused at first. Reid talks about you all the time, but he never mentioned you were his girlfriend.”
The word is gentle, tossed into the conversation without any reason to be careful with it.
“His girlfriend?”
Tara looks back at you. The realisation reaches her a moment later. “Oh. I’m sorry. I thought the two of you were together.”
Behind her, Garcia stops rearranging the bracelets on her wrist.
“No.” The answer comes automatically. It is a simple fact. You and Spencer have never crossed that line or even discussed it. The rest ought to follow just as easily. Instead, we’re just friends catches somewhere behind your teeth, suddenly too small to account for seven years of Thursdays and everything the others have been watching all evening. The evening begins moving through your mind again, Rossi opening the door to find your hand on Spencer’s tie, Morgan’s eyebrows when he said Spencer chose to spend Thursdays with you, JJ’s quiet smile, Tara watching the bread pass between your plates, Garcia and Morgan vanishing from the terrace window. “It’s not like that. We’re not—”
“You ready?”
Spencer comes down the hallway with your bag in one hand. His attention passes from your face to Tara’s and then to Garcia, who has become far too interested in her bracelets.
“What happened?”
“Nothing,” Tara says, recovering first. “I was saying goodnight.”
You can’t find the end of the sentence you were saying. “Yeah. I’m ready.”
He holds your coat while you slip your arms into it and frees your hair from beneath the collar with practised fingers. The touch is the same one you have barely noticed a hundred times. Now the word girlfriend seems to catch against it.
Rossi appears at the end of the hallway. He surveys Tara, whose hand is still on the door, Garcia valiantly looking elsewhere and Spencer adjusting your scarf. “Goodnight,” he says, much too entertained for someone who can’t possibly know what has just happened.
By the time the two of you reach the Metro, Spencer has filled the walk with an account of Rossi insisting tiramisu can’t be made properly without alcohol. He talks while you wait on the platform and keeps going once you’re inside the carriage. The earliest known versions of the dessert lead to the disputed origins of ladyfingers, which somehow bring him back to the argument about stacking Rossi’s crystal.
Usually, you interrupt. You ask questions, argue over details or tug him back to the original point when one tangent begins producing another. Tonight, you watch his reflection in the darkened window while he talks. His curls have grown increasingly disordered over the course of the evening, and one falls across his forehead whenever he turns towards you. Interest animates his whole face — his eyes brighten, his hands move with the rhythm of his words, and every trace of fatigue leaves him for as long as the thought holds him.
You know all of this because you have always known him. What it does to you when he turns that attention on you is hardly new; the part you have never allowed yourself to question is what any of it means from his side. A room full of profilers watched the two of you for a few hours and assumed they already knew. Tara gave that assumption a name, and now every small, familiar thing seems to return carrying the possibility with it.
When the train lurches around a curve, Spencer’s hand closes lightly around your forearm. He releases you once you are steady, still talking. You feel the place his fingers were long after the warmth is gone.
Outside the station, the pavement is damp from an earlier rain, catching the streetlights in long, blurred reflections. Spencer slows his stride to yours without acknowledging the adjustment. He has glanced at you more than once since the train pulled away, waiting at the end of a sentence as though he expects you to tug the conversation elsewhere, and each time he has gone on when you don’t. You’re only a few blocks from home when his explanation of why Rossi’s crystal glasses should never be stacked trails off.
“Everything okay?” His words soften as he studies your face. “You’ve been unusually quiet.”
“Yeah. I’m good.”
He doesn’t look convinced, but he lets you have the answer. You make it another half-block before a disbelieving laugh slips out.
“What?”
You shake your head. “Did you know Tara thought we were dating?”
A smile begins at one corner of his mouth. “What?”
“Yeah.” Saying it aloud makes you unexpectedly shy. You push your hands deeper into your coat pockets. “Apparently everyone did.”
You expect him to laugh. You expect him to question the team’s observational abilities or reconstruct the evidence that led them there. Instead, the smile falters as something you cannot read moves through his expression, and for the first time all evening Spencer has nothing to say.
At the corner, he waits for the light with his hands in his coat pockets and his shoulders drawn in against the cold. The unfinished explanation about Rossi’s glasses hangs somewhere behind you.
“Spence?” You bump your arm against his. “Got really quiet there for a minute.”
He looks at you, then towards the signal as it changes. “Did you correct her?”
You start across the street beside him. “I tried. Then you came over.”
“What were you going to say?”
“That it wasn’t like that. That we weren’t…”
“Dating,” he supplies.
“Right.”
He nods, but the silence returns. You reach the other pavement and stop. Spencer takes one more step before noticing you are no longer beside him.
“What?” he asks.
“You’re being strange.”
“I’m not.”
“You abandoned a fact halfway through.”
“I can finish it.”
“I don’t want to hear about the glasses anymore.”
His eyebrows lift. “Then why did you bring them up?”
“Spencer.”
He goes still. For a moment he simply looks at you, his hair untidy from the wind, a nervous half-smile appearing and disappearing at the corner of his mouth. When he speaks, each word sounds measured.
“I didn’t realise it was that obvious.”
Your pulse stumbles. “What was?”
He doesn’t answer with words. His gaze holds yours, open enough that you can see the question he’s too careful to ask and the truth he has already let escape.
“Oh,” you say. Everything you have been turning over since Rossi’s house settles into place at once. Spencer is still watching you with nervous hope, and Tara’s mistake no longer feels entirely like one.
Spencer glances down at the wet pavement, then back at you, waiting.
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I didn’t want to lose you,” he says quietly, holding your gaze this time.
For several seconds, all you can do is stare at him. “Spencer, I rearranged my entire week so I could keep Thursdays free for you.”
He blinks. “You said Thursday was convenient.”
“It’s convenient. I made it convenient.”
“For me?” he asks, still sounding uncertain enough to make you want to shake him.
You let out a breath and catch the lapels of his coat. “Yes. For you.”
Then you pull him down and kiss him.
The first touch of your mouth to his goes awry only because Spencer inhales at exactly the wrong moment. His body stills beneath your hands. You feel the startled warmth of his breath, the edge of his lower lip and the smallest movement as he begins to respond — just before nerves get the better of you and you draw back.
His eyes stay closed for another second. When they open, he stares at you, lips parted.
“Because I wanted Thursdays with you,” you say, still holding his coat. “And because I think I’ve wanted to do that for longer than I realised.”
His gaze searches your face. “You’ve wanted this too?”
“Yes, Spence.”
Relief breaks across his face as one of his hands finds your waist, tentative only until you lean into it.
“Then why did you stop?” he asks.
A nervous laugh slips out. “You went completely still.”
“I wasn’t expecting you to kiss me.” His fingers curl into your coat and bring you a little closer. “I am now.”
You kiss him again.
This time Spencer meets you halfway. One hand settles against the side of your neck, his thumb fitting beneath your jaw, while the other draws you in at the waist. He kisses you slowly at first, learning the angle, and then with an eagerness that makes you smile against his mouth. His answering laugh is breathless, one you have never heard before and already know you will want to hear again.
When the cold finally makes itself impossible to ignore, you part only far enough to breathe. Spencer’s forehead rests against yours, his breath still unsteady.
“Garcia is going to be unbearable,” you whisper.
“She’s going to say she knew.”
“She did know.”
Spencer closes his eyes. “Please don’t tell her that.”
You laugh and smooth the curl the wind has dropped between his eyebrows. He catches your hand as you lower it, keeping your fingers curled inside his.
“Are Thursdays still mine?” he asks.
“They’re still yours.”
He keeps hold of your hand as you begin walking again, his thumb moving over your knuckles while his shoulder keeps brushing yours. He makes it almost half a block before speaking.
“Friday,” he says.
“What about it?”
“Are you free?”
“No.”
His disappointment is immediate. “Oh.”
You let him endure it until you reach the next streetlight. “But I can move things.”
Garrett Graham doesn’t do relationships. Something everyone at Briar U knows. It’s honestly the most trivial fact that anyone could imagine. However, to nearly every girl on campus, it’s more of a challenge. Girls throw themselves at him and think they can change his mind, but so far, no one has succeeded.
Except for you… kinda?
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
w/c: 7k
c/w: not proofread, HEAVY pining/yearning, jealous!garrett, mature content, SMUTT (my previous parts have only had mentions of sex; this one has a sex scene), PinV protected sex, mentions of alcohol/intoxication, minimal cursing, minimal use of y/n, pet names (princess, bug), fluff
a/n: Thanks again for all the love on this short series; I really appreciate it <3 This is the final part, but I plan on writing more soon. It feels so good to get back into writing :)
Garrett leads you through the crowd of people to the back door, making sure to keep a tight grip on your hand. It’s almost as if he thought that if he didn’t hold on tight enough, you might slip away. He opens the door with his free hand and lets it close once you step through.
“Why are we out here?” you ask, looking around the yard. There were some people scattered around the yard-a few people sitting by the bonfire, someone smoking by the gate, and a couple making out against the fence-but it was mostly quiet. Definitely more peaceful than inside.
It’s fall, so it’s a little chilly outside, but you don’t mind it so much. The lace fabric of your dress was pretty sheer, but it had long bell sleeves that were better than nothing in the crisp autumn air. You had tights on too, which were also sheer, but again better than nothing. Honestly, stepping outside provided you with a breath of fresh air. A quiet, open, still space where you felt a smidge less anxious about whatever it was that was about to happen. Way better than inside the house, which was packed like a sardine can with blaring music that you could still hear outside, just a muffled version of it. It was nice.
“It’s quieter,” he said, walking over to the corner of the yard farthest from the house. There were two simple patio chairs and a little table set up right by the biggest tree in the yard. It sort of provided some privacy from any peering eyes that may be watching from the fire. There were also string lights hung on the entire backyard fence, so the area was dimly lit. With as many times as you have been over to this house, you could not remember ever seeing this corner set up in such a cute way.
Garrett finally lets go of your hand as the two of you make it to the chairs. “Has this always been over here?” You ask, looking up at him curiously. “The chairs and stuff, I mean.”
“Uh, no…” He rubs the back of his neck. “I moved the chairs from around the fire, and we’ve kept this table in the shed for a while. Someone stood on it at a party last year and almost broke it.”
“So you set this little spot up today?”
“Yeah…” he says with a shrug as if there was no meaning behind it. He clearly planned out this conversation, but knowing that just leaves you wondering. What is his end goal? He motions to the chairs. “Sit.”
You bite your lip and do as he says, taking a seat in one of the chairs and setting your drink on the table. “Garrett, I-“
“Can I- do you mind if I talk first?” He asks, cutting you off as he sits down next to you. You nod. You honestly weren’t even sure of what you were going to say, so letting him take the lead with this conversation may be for the best. And it seemed really important to him that you let him get something off his chest first. The sort of strained expression on his face made that clear.
***
Aria was dancing with a random guy when she realized you were missing. She had been making sure to look over at where you and Henry were talking every few minutes just to make sure you were okay. This time, she glanced over to see only Henry awkwardly leaning against the wall. “What the fuck?” She mumbled to herself as her eyes scanned the room, looking for you. You were nowhere to be seen. And after another survey of the room, she realized neither was Garrett.
She saw Dean a few feet away from her, flirting with a girl- not surprising. Aria abandoned the guy she was with and squeezed past a few people to reach Dean, grabbing his upper arm and yanking him back a bit. “Have you seen, Garrett? Or Y/N?” She asked without even saying excuse me.
Dean smirks, “Mhmm, a few minutes ago, yeah.”
“So you saw them together?”
“I may have convinced him to-“
The girl that Dean was flirting with just moments ago interrupts. “Are we not gonna make out?”
Aria looks at her with a fake smile. “No, he has more pressing matters to attend to. Go find someone else to suck face with.” The girl looks to Dean, and before he can try to salvage his chances with her, Aria covers his mouth. “Run along,” she says, waving her off.
She scoffs and steps away. Dean pouts, turning to Aria, “Wow, you just-“
“Shut up and tell me where they went,” Aria says, dragging Dean to the kitchen where Tucker is still lingering, making drinks and refilling the snack bowls.
“I convinced him to talk to Bug.” He shrugs.
“Wait, they're talking?” Tucker asks, overhearing the conversation.
“Yeah, Gare saw Bug talking to that dude she went out with yesterday, and he was practically foaming at the mouth. I told him to go get his girl.” Dean explains as if it’s not the most important information of the night.
“And you didn’t tell us?” Aria exclaims, staring at him like he grew a second head.
“Didn’t tell us what?” Logan asks, walking up to the group. “What’d I miss?”
“Garrett and Bug are talking.” Tucker fills him in.
“Oh shit!” Logan looks around the room. “Where are they?”
“Garrett took her outback. He set up a little spot for them to sit earlier. It’s honestly kinda adorable.” Dean smiles.
“I have to see,” Aria says before marching over to the back door. Tucker quickly tries to reach her. “No, we can’t follow them!” He shouts. Logan and Dean look at each other, “Just a quick peek?” Logan suggests. Dean nods, and they follow after the other two. Aria slips outside first, making sure to be quiet as she decides to move behind a bush by the side of the house. The three guys follow suit and crouch down behind the bush with her, the four of them now engaged in the most ridiculous stakeout ever.
“This is ridiculous,” Tucker mumbles just as Dean points to the corner of the backyard where you and Garrett were sitting, slightly hidden by a large oak tree. “There they are,” Dean whispers.
“He really set that up today?” Aria asks quietly.
“Yeah, we told him to talk to her tonight, and he wanted to make sure they had a quiet spot,” Dean says. All four pairs of eyes are trained on the two of you intensely, watching for any signs of how the conversation is going.
The two of you are facing each other. Garrett had scooted his chair almost directly in front of yours, so your figure was slightly obscured by his.
“Can you hear them at all?” Logan asks, starting to lean over the bush. “Maybe we should get closer.”
Tucker grabs the back of Logan’s jacket and pulls him back behind the bush. “Absolutely not. We are not crawling across the yard to eavesdrop on their conversation.”
“What? Why not?” Logan protests, peeking over the bush.
“Dude, if they catch us, Garrett will have our heads,” Dean says in a serious tone.
“And she’ll be embarrassed,” Aria adds. “We just have to watch them like it’s a silent movie. We’ll be able to make out the vibes.”
***
“You said you loved me,” Garrett says after a few moments of silence.
Your stomach drops.
Your eyes widen.
You weren’t expecting him to start with that. “What?” Is the only word you’re able to get out.
“Last night.” His voice is rough. “After Malone’s. We were in bed, and I told you to sleep and-“ He pauses for a moment. “You said ‘I love you.’”
“I-“ you suddenly feel like you can’t breathe. Your heart is pounding in your chest as your brain short-circuits. “I was drunk. Really, really drunk and I don’t even remember saying it, so-“
He pushes back his chair and stands up. “So it doesn’t count?” He asks, looking down at you for a moment before he starts pacing. “You were drunk, so it doesn’t mean anything?”
***
“Oh shit,” Tucker says, almost wincing as Garrett suddenly stands up. “That doesn’t seem good.”
“Shhh.” Aria nudges him. “Let it play out.”
They watch as Garrett paces a bit, and you stand with him. You say something, putting your hand on his arm to still him. He looks down at you, and more words are exchanged before he throws up his hands as if in defeat. Now you are the one pacing, with your hands pressed to your face.
“Maybe we should go back inside?” Tucker suggests. “This seems intense.”
“Shut up, Tuck.”
“Shhhhh.”
“Hush!”
Tucker sighs and turns back to watch the two of you. You stopped pacing and looked up to Garrett, starting to say something. They still couldn’t hear you, but they could tell the conversation had shifted. You had moved in closer to him, and the energy between the two of you was warm. You two were figuring this out.
“Okay, now we go.” Aria smiles, “We don’t need to see anymore. They’ve got it.”
The four of them sneak off back into the house. Giving you and Garrett your privacy.
***
“I didn’t say that.” You stand up, reaching your hand up to catch his arm. “Garre-“
He stops as you grab his arm and looks at you, his shoulders tensed, and his hands clenched at his sides. “Then what are you saying?” He asks, cutting you off. “Because I have been losing my fucking mind for the past 24 hours trying to figure out if you meant it or if you were just- just, I don’t know, too drunk or caught up in the moment or something.”
“Garrett-“
“And then you show up tonight, and you won’t even look at me.” His voice falters. “You didn’t want me to pick you up. You’ve been avoiding me all night. And now you’re standing here telling me it doesn’t mean anything because you were drunk? What am I supposed to think?” He throws up his hands with a defeated look on his face.
“I’m not-“ You press your hands to your face and huff, starting to pace in front of him, trying to think. “I’m not saying that it doesn’t count. I'm saying I don't remember, okay? I don't remember saying it, and I don't know what context I said it in, and I-" Your pacing halts as you drop your hands, meeting his eyes. "I'm terrified, Garrett. I'm absolutely terrified."
His expression shifts, some of the anger washing away, revealing more of the vulnerability. "Of what?"
"Of this!" You exclaim, gesturing between you. "Of whatever this conversation is. Of-" Your voice breaks. "Of ruining everything."
He stares at you for a long moment, trying to figure out how to articulate what he wants to say. Then, quietly, he says, "What if you already did?" …That’s the best he could come up with?
Your heart stops. "What?"
"What if you already ruined it?" He's not angry anymore. He just sounds... tired. "I just mean what if I can't go back to pretending I don't-" He stops, shakes his head. "Fuck."
"Garrett." You take a step toward him. "What are you saying?"
He laughs, but there's no humor in it. "I'm saying I'm in love with you."
Time feels like it stops in this moment. Did you hear that right? Or are you in a dream? You move your hands behind your back and pinch your palm… no, not a dream.
"I'm saying I've been in love with you for months, and I've been too much of a coward to do anything about it because I didn't want to fuck up what we had. And then you said it first, and I thought-" He runs his hand through his hair again. "I thought maybe I wasn't crazy. Maybe you felt it too."
You can't speak. Can't move. Can't do anything but stare at him.
"But then you woke up, and you didn't remember," he continues, his voice getting rougher. "And you looked at me like nothing had changed, and I realized that you didn't mean it. Or you did, but you didn't want to mean it. And I don't- " He stops, his jaw clenching. "I don't know what to do with that."
You look down at your feet, processing everything he’s just admitted to you. "When?" The word comes out as barely a whisper.
He looks at you, confused. "When what?"
"When did you-" You glance back up at him. "When did you realize?"
He's quiet for a moment, and you can see him deciding whether to answer. Whether to give you this. He clears his throat. "Uh, remember that night in June? It was like the last week you were on campus before you went home for the summer. We stayed up all night watching movies and were just about to go to bed when you mentioned The Princess Bride. You couldn’t believe I had never seen it, so you ended up forcing me to watch it."
You nod, not trusting your voice.
"You knew every single line," he says, and there's something soft in his expression now. "You did all the voices, Vizzini's lisp, Inigo's accent. The whole sword fight scene. You were so animated, so completely in your own world." He shakes his head. "You weren't performing for me. You were just... being you. And I remember sitting there on the couch, watching you act out 'Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya' for the third time, and thinking-" His voice catches. "Thinking I could watch you do this for the rest of my life."
Your eyes are burning.
"You had this look on your face when Westley said 'As you wish,'" he continues. "Like it was the most romantic thing you'd ever heard. And I just- I wanted to be the person who made you look like that."
A tear slips down your cheek.
"And then there was that time you came to my game," he continues. "The one against the Vipers. You wore my spare jersey, and you screamed so loud when I scored that Tucker said he could hear you from the bench. And after, when we all went to grab dinner, all you could talk about was the game. You were so enthusiastic about it, too; you just kept talking about the game, every play, every call. You were so enthusiastic about it, like you actually understood. Like you actually cared."
"I do care," you manage.
"I know." His smile is small, sad. "That's the problem. You understand hockey and literature, and you make terrible jokes, and you sing karaoke like you're performing on Broadway, and you quote The Princess Bride like it's scripture, and you-" His voice cracks. "You're the most interesting person I've ever met, and I’m terrified that if I tell you that, you'll realize you can do better."
"Better than you?" You're crying now, you realize. Tears streaming down your face. "Garrett, you're-"
"I'm the guy who doesn't do relationships," he cuts you off, moving in closer to you. He lifts a hand to your face to wipe away the tears rolling down your cheeks. "I'm the guy everyone warns their friends about. I'm the guy who's spent the last year sleeping with you and pretending it doesn't mean anything because I was too scared to admit that it means everything.” He takes a shaky breath, and when he speaks again, his voice is raw. "But last night-" He stops. Starts again. "Last night, when you sang that song..."
Your breath catches. "What song?" You ask with a sniff as if you don’t know the answer.
"'Forever Your Girl.'" He's looking at you now, really looking at you, and there's so much emotion in his eyes it makes your chest ache. "You sang it right to me. You looked me dead in the eyes and sang 'hey baby, you gotta remember I'm forever your girl,' and I-" He laughs, but it sounds broken. "I couldn't breathe. Because you were telling me. Right there, in front of everyone, you were telling me how you felt."
"Garrett-"
"And then in bed, you said it out loud." His hands are shaking now. "You said 'I love you', but you were drunk, and I didn't know if you'd remember, and I was so fucking scared that you'd wake up and regret it."
He steps closer, close enough that you can see the tears in his eyes.
"But tonight, watching you talk to Henry… watching him look at you like he has any right to, I realized I can't do this anymore. I can't pretend I don't love you. I can't watch you smile at other guys and act like it doesn't kill me. I can't-" His voice breaks completely. "I can't lose you without at least telling you the truth."
You're sobbing now, your whole body shaking.
"So here it is," he says, his voice barely above a whisper. "I love you. I'm in love with you. I have been for months, maybe longer. And if you don't feel the same way, if last night was just the alcohol talking, then-" He swallows hard. "Then I'll deal with it. But I needed you to know."
For a moment, you just stand there, tears streaming down your face, your heart hammering so hard you think it might burst.
And then you're moving.
You close the short distance still between you in one step, your hands finding his face, pulling him down to you. You kiss him roughly, like it's the only way to speak, like it's the only thing that will make him understand.
"You're an idiot," you whisper against his lips after breaking the kiss.
He freezes. "What?"
"You're an idiot," you repeat, pulling back just enough to look at him. "Because I do feel the same way. I have for months. And I meant it last night… I meant every word, I just didn't remember saying it because I was drunk and terrified and-" you stop for a moment to collect your thoughts. "I do love you," you say, and this time you remember. This time it counts. "May," you whisper.
He blinks. "What?"
"May." You wipe at your face with shaking hands. "It was May for me. The night you got food poisoning," you continue. "Remember? You texted me at like two in the morning because you were dying and Tucker wasn’t home and Logan and Dean were useless."
"Bug-"
"I came over in my pajamas," you say, the words tumbling out now. "And you were so pathetic, Garrett. You were lying on the bathroom floor in your boxers, and you looked up at me and said 'I think I'm dying' in this tiny, miserable voice."
He huffs out a laugh.
"And I sat with you," you say. "For hours. I got you water and crackers, and I rubbed your back while you threw up, and at some point, you fell asleep with your head in my lap on your disgusting bathroom floor. And I remember sitting there at four in the morning, with your head in my lap and my back against the bathtub, thinking-" Your voice breaks. "Thinking that I would sit on a thousand bathroom floors for you. That I would rub your back and bring you water and listen to you complain about dying from bad sushi for… well, for forever if that’s what you needed."
"Bug," he breathes.
"And I was terrified," you continue. "Because that's not what friends with benefits do. That's not casual. That's-" You shake your head. "That's love. And I knew it then, sitting on that bathroom floor, and I've been running from it ever since because I was so scared of losing you."
"You're not going to lose me," he says, his voice rough.
"You don't know that." You're shaking now. "We have this perfect thing, Garrett. We have this arrangement that works, and if we- if we try to make it more and it doesn't work out-"
"What if it does?" He closes the distance between you, his hands coming up to cup your face. "What if it works out? What if we're actually good at this?"
"What if we're not?" Your voice is barely a whisper. "What if we try and we fail and I lose my best friend?"
"You won't." His thumbs brush away your tears. "Bug, you won't. I promise you won't."
"You can't promise that."
"I can." His forehead drops to yours. "Because even if we crash and burn, even if this is the worst decision we've ever made… I would rather have tried and failed than spend the rest of my life wondering what if."
You close your eyes, fresh tears spilling over.
"I love you," he whispers. "I love you so much it scares the shit out of me. And I know you're scared too, but-" He pulls back just enough to look at you. "Can’t we just be scared together?"
You let out a sound that's half-laugh, half-sob. "That's the worst line you've ever used."
"I know." He's smiling now, even though he's crying too. "But did it work?"
You look at him. Really look at him. At the boy who sat through your dramatic impression of nearly every line from The Princess Bride. Who let you paint his nails for fun. Who held you when you got too high and couldn’t stop crying about a dog food commercial. Who made you laugh until you couldn't breathe. Who looked at you like you were the most important person in the world.
Who loved you.
"Yeah," you whisper. "It worked."
And then you're kissing him again.
It's not like the other times. It's not casual or easy or friends-with-benefits.
It's desperate and messy and perfect, his hands in your hair, your fingers clutching his shirt, both of you crying and laughing and kissing like you're trying to make up for all the months you wasted pretending.
When you finally pull apart, you're both breathless.
"So," he says, his voice rough. "What now?"
You laugh, pressing your forehead to his. "I have no idea."
"Me neither." He's smiling, and it's the most beautiful thing you've ever seen. "But I'm willing to figure it out if you are."
"Yeah," you say, looking over his face. "But now it's complicated. Now we have to figure out what this means and what we're doing and what happens if it doesn't work out and-"
"What if it does? We just said we’d try, and we’d be scared together. You-"
"I know! But what do we do if it's a disaster?" You counter. "What if we date for two months and realize we're better as friends? What if you get bored? What if I'm too much? What if-"
"Bug." His hands come up to frame your face, and the gentleness of it makes you want to cry harder. "You're spiraling."
"I'm being realistic," you argue, but your voice is weak.
"You're being scared." His thumbs brush away your tears. "Which is fair. I already told you, I fucking terrified too. I've been having a panic attack for the past twenty-four hours. Ask any of the guys. I've been a complete mess."
"You seemed fine this morning."
"I was deflecting." He gives you a look. "Kind of like what you're doing right now."
You want to argue, but he's right. You're deflecting. You're spiraling. You're doing everything you can to avoid the actual question hanging between you.
"What do you want?" you ask quietly. "Like, actually. What do you want this to be?"
He's quiet for a moment, his hands on your face, thumbs rubbing against your cheeks slowly, his eyes searching yours.
"I want to take you on a real date," he says finally. "Not just hanging out at my place or going to Malone's with everyone. A real date where I pick you up and take you somewhere nice, and we don't have to pretend it's casual."
Your heart is racing. "Okay."
"I want to be able to kiss you in public without worrying about what people think."
"Okay."
"I want to tell people you're my girlfriend." His voice drops. "If that's- if that's what you want."
"Is that actually what you want?" You have to ask. Have to make sure. "Or are you just saying that because it’s what sounds right?"
"I'm saying this because I've wanted to say it for months," he says firmly. "Last night just- it gave me a reason to stop being a coward about it."
"You're not a coward," you say, setting your hands over his and moving them away from your face. You flip his hands over and hold them in yours, squeezing them tightly.
"I am when it comes to this." His jaw tightens. "I've spent years building this stupid reputation of being anti-relationships because it was easier than admitting I was scared of actually caring about someone. And then you-" He stops, shakes his head. "You made me care. You made me want things I didn't think I wanted."
"Like what?"
"Like a future." The words are quiet, almost hesitant. "Like someone to come home to. Like-" He stops, and you can see him struggling with the vulnerability of it. "Like someone who knows me. Really knows me. Not the image I’ve built up. Just... me."
"I know you," you whisper.
"I know." His forehead drops to yours. "That's why I'm so fucking scared of losing you."
You close your eyes, breathing him in. "So what do you propose we do?"
"I don't know." He laughs softly. "I've never done this before. The whole... feelings thing."
"Me neither." You pull back slightly to look at him. "Not like this."
"So we figure it out together," he says. "We try. We probably fuck it up sometimes. But we try."
"What if people talk?" You have to ask. "What if everyone on campus-"
"Let them talk." He says it so simply, like it's that easy. "I don't care what people think. I care about you."
"And if it changes things?" Your voice is small. "If we try dating and it's weird and we can't go back to how things were?"
"Then we deal with it." His hands let go of yours and slide up to your shoulders, grounding you. "But we can't go back anyway. Not after this. Not after last night. We can either move forward or we can-" He stops, his expression pained. "I don't want to lose you. But I can't keep pretending I don't want more."
You're quiet for a long moment, letting his words sink in.
He's right. You can't go back. The second you said "I love you," everything changed. And maybe it changed before that. Maybe it changed months ago, in all those little moments you've been cataloging in your head.
"What if you realize I'm not—" You stop, struggling with the words. "What if I'm not enough? What if the reality of actually dating me is different than what you've built up in your head?"
His expression softens. "Bug. You think I don't know you? We've been doing this for a year. I know you're grumpy in the mornings. I know you cry when you’re angry. I know you have strong opinions about The Great Gatsby. I know you stress bake before exams. I know you’re a little bit of a slob sometimes."
"Rude, but accurate," you mutter.
"I know all of that," he continues. "And I still-" He stops, takes a breath. "I'm not building anything up in my head. I'm just finally admitting what's already there."
You search his face, looking for any sign of doubt, any hint that he's not sure. But all you see is Garrett, your Garrett, looking at you like you're the only person in the world.
"Okay," you whisper.
He blinks. "Okay?"
"Okay." You nod, more firmly this time. "Let's try. Let's do this. Actually do this."
"Yeah?" There's hope in his voice, cautious but real.
"Yeah." You reach up, your hands covering his, where they rest on your shoulders. "I want to try. I want-" You take a shaky breath. "I want you. Actually want you. Not just the arrangement or the benefits or whatever we've been calling it. I want you."
The smile that breaks across his face is devastating.
"But," you add quickly, because you need to say this, "we have to be honest with each other. If something's not working, if one of us is feeling weird about it, we have to talk about it. We can't just-"
"We won't," he promises. "We'll talk. We'll figure it out."
"And we're exclusive," you say. "Like, actually exclusive. No more-"
"Bug." He's laughing now. "There hasn't been anyone else for months. You know that, right?"
You blink. "What?"
"I haven't hooked up with anyone else since-" He thinks. "Since… Well, probably since that night you made me watch The Princess Bride at least, maybe longer."
"But we said—"
"I know what we said." His thumbs trace circles on your shoulders. "But I couldn't. I didn't want to. I just wanted you."
Your heart is doing something complicated in your chest. "I haven't either," you admit. "Been with anyone else, I mean. Honestly, since a couple months after… we started."
"Good." The word is almost possessive, and it sends a shiver through you.
"So we're doing this," you say, needing to confirm it one more time. "We're actually dating."
"We're actually dating," he confirms.
"And we're telling people?"
"If you want to."
"Do you want to?"
He considers this. "I want people to know you're mine," he says finally. "But I also don't want to deal with everyone's opinions about it. So... maybe we tell our friends first? See how it goes?"
"Our friends already know," you point out. "They've been pushing us together for months."
“True,” He chuckles and glances around the yard. “They were probably spying on us at some point.”
“Oh, for sure.” You say, looking at the kitchen window. You spot Aria sitting on the counter, talking to Dean. She turns her head, and her eyes immediately land on you and Garrett as if she knew exactly where to look already. She immediately notices the two of you looking at the house and turns her head away in a flash.
"Want to give them a show?" He grins.
"Garrett-"
But he's already kissing you again, and you can't help but laugh against his mouth, your arms wrapping around his neck as he pulls you closer. When you finally break apart, you're both smiling.
He rests his forehead against yours, both of you catching your breath. "So," he says quietly. "What now?"
You glance back toward the house, where you can see silhouettes moving past the windows, hear the bass thumping through the walls. The thought of walking back in there and facing the inevitable knowing looks, friendly interrogation, and countless I-told-you’s…
"What if we didn't go back inside?" you say.
Garrett pulls back slightly to look at you. "What?"
"I just-" You bite your lip. "I don't want to deal with them right now. With everyone. I just want..." You trail off, not quite sure how to finish.
"You want to be alone," he finishes, and there's something soft in his expression. Understanding.
"Is that okay?"
"Bug." He laughs, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear. "I've been wanting to get you alone all night."
Your heart does a little flip. "So we just... leave?"
"We just leave." He takes your hand, lacing his fingers through yours. "Come on. Before they notice we're gone."
You let him lead you along the fence line, staying in the shadows cast by the string lights. The backyard gate is on the far side, away from the house. You can hear voices from the bonfire, laughter from inside, but no one's paying attention to the two of you slipping away.
Garrett eases the gate open slowly, wincing when it creaks. You both freeze, waiting to see if anyone heard. When no one comes running, he pulls you through and closes it carefully behind you.
His Jeep is parked on the street, and you're practically jogging by the time you reach it, both of you glancing back like you're escaping a crime scene.
"Get in, get in," he says, unlocking the doors. You scramble into the passenger seat, and he's behind the wheel a second later. He doesn't start the engine right away. Instead, he looks at you, and then you're both laughing, quiet, breathless laughter that feels like relief.
"We just ditched your own party," you say.
"Well, technically, if it's my party," He's grinning. "I can ditch if I want to."
"They're going to kill us tomorrow."
"Worth it." He reaches over and takes your hand again, bringing it to his lips. The gesture is so casual, so natural, but it makes your breath catch. Because he can do that now. You can do this now.
He starts the truck, and you lean back in your seat, watching the streetlights blur past as he drives. It's only a ten-minute drive to your apartment, but it feels both too long and too short.
When he pulls into your parking lot, the reality of it hits you. You're bringing Garrett back to your place. Which you've done a hundred times before, but this time it's different. This time you're his girlfriend. This time, he's your boyfriend.
"You okay?" he asks, killing the engine.
"Yeah." You squeeze his hand. "Just... processing."
"Yeah." He brings your joined hands to rest on the center console. "Me too."
You sit there for a moment, neither of you moving. Then you take a breath and open your door. "Come on."
Your apartment is dark when you let yourselves in. Aria's still at the party, obviously. You flip on the light in the entryway, suddenly hyperaware of the space. The throw blanket draped over the couch, the stack of textbooks on the coffee table, your mug from this morning still sitting by the sink.
"You want something to drink?" you ask, heading to the kitchen. "I think we have tea. Or I could make coffee, or-"
"Bug." Garrett catches your hand as you pass him, pulling you to a stop. "Breathe."
You let out a shaky laugh. "Sorry. I'm just-"
"Nervous," he finishes. "Me too."
"You are?"
"Yeah." He tugs you closer, his hands settling on your waist. "This is new. We're... figuring it out."
You nod, your hands coming up to rest on his chest. You can feel his heartbeat under your palm, quick and strong. You move one of your hands up to the back of his neck to pull him in for a kiss, your other hand sliding down his chest, then his abs until your fingers reach the hem of his shirt. As you move your hand under his shirt, he pulls away from the kiss, just enough to see your face. “Hey,” he says softly, cupping your face in his hands. "We don't have to-"
"I want to," you say quickly. "I just... it feels different now."
"I know." His forehead touches yours. "Good different?"
"Yeah." You close your eyes, breathing him in. "Really good different."
He kisses you then, soft and slow, like he has all the time in the world. Like he's savoring it. His hands slide from your face to your neck, your shoulders, down your arms. When he pulls back, his eyes are dark with want.
"Bedroom?" he asks, voice rough.
You nod, taking his hand and leading him down the short hallway to your bedroom. Your heart is pounding so hard you're sure he can hear it. Inside your room, you turn to face him, and suddenly you're both just standing there, looking at each other.
"Come here," he says softly, and you step into his arms.
This kiss is different, deeper, more urgent. His hands find your belt first, undoing the large buckle and casting it off to the floor. Then the hem of your dress, and you lift your arms so he can pull it over your head. "Fuck," he breathes, looking at you in just your bra and tights. "You're so beautiful."
You've heard him say it before, but it lands differently now. Now it means something.
Your thumbs hook into the waistband of your tights, sliding them down your legs before stepping out of them. He watches you the whole time, and as you step closer to him, hands finding the hem of his shirt again, his breath catches.
"I love you," he says. "I need you to know that. This isn't just- it's not like before."
"I know." You slide his shirt up and over his head, pressing your hands to his chest after discarding it to the pile of clothes forming on your floor. "I love you too."
He kisses you again, walking you backward until your legs hit the bed. You sit, and he follows you down, his weight pressing you into the mattress. His mouth moves to your neck, your collarbone, the swell of your breast above your bra. You arch into him, fingers threading through his hair.
"Garrett," you breathe, and he groans against your skin.
"Say it again."
"Garrett-"
"No." He lifts his head to look at you, eyes intense. "Say you love me."
"I love you," you whisper, and something in his expression cracks open. "I love you, I love-"
He kisses you hard, swallowing the words. His hands are everywhere, unhooking your bra, sliding your thong down your legs, touching you like he's memorizing every inch. When his fingers finally slip between your thighs, you gasp into his mouth.
"So wet already," he murmurs, and you can hear the satisfaction in his voice. "This all for me, Baby?"
"Yes," you manage, hips rolling against his hand. "Always. Fuck, Garrett-"
He works you with practiced ease, knowing exactly how to touch you, but there's something different in the way he watches your face. Like he's cataloging every reaction, every sound you make. Like he never wants to forget this.
When you're close, trembling on the edge, he pulls his hand away. You whimper at the loss, and he smirks.
"Patience," he says, standing to shed his jeans and boxers. He opens the drawer of your nightstand, shifting a few things around until he finds a condom.
You watch him, taking in the familiar lines of his body. The broad shoulders, the defined abs, the way his cock juts out, hard and ready. You've seen him naked countless times, but right now it feels like the first time.
He climbs back over you, settling between your thighs. The weight of him, the heat, it's overwhelming in the best way.
"You sure?" he asks, even though you've done this so many times before.
"I'm sure." You cup his face, pulling him down for a kiss. "I want this. I want you."
He reaches between you, lining himself up, and then he's pushing inside. You both groan at the sensation. He goes slow, giving you time to adjust, and when he's fully seated, he drops his forehead to yours.
"Fuck," he breathes. "You feel so good."
"D-don’t stop," you urge, wrapping your legs around his waist. "Please, Garrett-"
He listens, pulling out almost all the way before sliding back in. The rhythm is slow at first, deliberate, like he's savoring every thrust. His eyes never leave your face.
"I've wanted this for so long," he says, voice strained. "Wanted you like this. Not just the sex. All of it. Wanted to be able to tell you-"
"Tell me," you gasp, nails digging into his shoulders as he hits that perfect spot inside you.
"That you're mine." He punctuates the words with a harder thrust that makes you cry out. "That I'm yours. That this means everything to me."
"It m-means everything to me too," you manage, and then you're kissing him again, desperate and messy.
The pace picks up, both of you chasing that edge. His hand slides between your bodies, finding your clit, and you arch off the bed with a broken moan.
"That's it," he encourages, voice rough. "Come for me, Baby."
The orgasm crashes over you, hot and overwhelming. You cry out his name, clenching around him, and he groans, his rhythm faltering.
"Fuck, I'm-" He buries his face in your neck, hips stuttering as he comes with a low moan escaping his lips.
For a long moment, you just lie there, breathing hard, hearts racing in sync. He's still inside you, his weight pressing you into the mattress, and you've never felt more complete.
Finally, he lifts his head to look at you. His hair is a mess, his lips swollen from kissing, and there's something soft and vulnerable in his expression.
"Hi," he says.
You laugh, breathless. "Hi."
"That was-“
"Yeah."
He kisses you again, soft and sweet, before carefully pulling out. You both wince at the loss, and he rolls onto his back, pulling you against his side. You curl into him, resting your head on his chest. "Stay," you whisper.
"I'm not going anywhere," he promises, pressing a kiss to the top of your head as he pulls the comforter over the two of you.
You tilt your head up to look at him. "We're really doing this? Like, for real?"
"For real." He tucks a strand of hair behind your ear. "You're stuck with me now, Bug."
"Good," you say. "That's exactly where I want to be." You smile softly, closing your eyes while listening to the steady rhythm of his heartbeat. "Garrett?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm really glad you asked me to talk tonight."
He's quiet for a moment, and when he speaks, you can hear the smile in his voice. "Me too, Bug. Me too."
You fall asleep like that, wrapped up in each other, knowing that tomorrow you'll have to face your friends and their inevitable teasing. But that's tomorrow. Tonight, it's just the two of you, finally on the same page, finally admitting what's been true for months.
You knew better..like REALLY knew better. But it didn’t stop you. Out of all the seven devil kings, you just had to make an inappropriate joke towards Asmodeus.
In your defense, it was a joke from the human realm , you haven’t expected him to understand it.
It was your fault really for sneaking off from Satan, knowing that you weren’t to go to Abaddon..let along by yourself.
You also forgotten that although your in hell they sell some things similar to the human realm, well at least in Abaddon.
And the things they didn’t have you would just picture it in Minhyeok’s room so you could have access to it.
The joke wasn’t serious just going aprons telling them if you had a baby it would be half human half devil.
Besides Asmodeus had a child before so you diddnt think much of the joke..until you were dragged to his room that is.
“Be a good girl for me”Asmodeus says eyes full of lush as he looks up at you.
This was bullying, you HIGHLY considered it bullying, your hands were bond to your ankles , this allowed your legs to be spread open as he kneeled between them.
You couldn’t do anything but lay there , his horn brushed against your soft skin as your hips jolt the best they could , his warm tongue licking up your inner thigh as you pussy throbbed with need.
To make matters worse than there already are, you weren’t the only two in the room. You weren’t even in HIS room , no instead he had dragged you on the floor level that held the cells.
Dantalian who was located in the cell in your right while Zepar was in the cell to your left. Both you and Asmedous being in the cell between the two, face heating up as your eyes try to look anywhere but at the eyes you felt boring in your skull.
“U-untie me M-Modeus.” Reader whimpers looking at him, you could bare being watched but not being tied..at least by Asmodeus.
His warm tongue licks up the trail of melted chocolate, slowly the slit of your pussy , up your stomach towards the valley of your breast.
Your clit throbs as you let out small whimpers causing his cock to twitch. Clenching around the butt plug as his tongue flicks at one of your nipple, fingers tugs and pinches at the other.
The tip leaking precum, pushing past your slit collecting your juices around his tip as it pushes past your tight entrance.
Your walls pull him in hungrily, a satisfied sigh leaves his lips once he bottoms out inside you , hips jolting as you feel the tip of his cock pushing against your cervix.
His eyes boring into yours as he thrust into you , your walls tighten as your nails dig and scratch at your ankles.
“Such a sweet girl. Can’t believe your Solomon’s daughter”Asmodeus says in a flirty tone , his face flustered as a blush cover his face.
His tongue sticking out of his mouth as his eyes watch the way your mouth hangs open , a sweet melody of moans filling his ears.
Your nipple harden and sore , the clamps feeling like that would rip from your sect nipples at any moment.
The chain that connected to the clamps swayed with your breast , his cock stretches your walls , his tip bullying at your cervix.
Walls tighten around him as you loud out a moan mixed with a small whimper, eyes fighting to stay open as you look at Asmodues his gaze filled with love and list as you scratch at the bandage. Eyes rolling back as your brain goes blank, not being able to think of anything.
“G-G..T-To..mhm!!”Reader moans words turning into small babbles not forming full words. Eyes rolling to the back of your head , feeling like they could roll out of your skull.
Nails scratching at the bondage , drool slipping out of your mouth as both Dantalian and Zepar eyes never leaving you as they watch in a corner of Asmodues private chambers.
Your hips jolts as you try to wiggle your body away, Asmodues chuckles in a teasing tone , licking his lips as his hand holds tighter in your hips.
His sharp nails slowly dig in your brown flesh , a moan leaves you , back arching slightly off the soft mattress.
Curly hair sticking to the sweat in your forehead, one of your acrylic nails breaks from your nail causing your finger to throb as it bleeds a bit.
But you couldn’t even process the slight pain it caused only fueling more to the pleasure as you turn your head biting down on your lip.
“So sweet and lovely”Asmodues says tone full of lust, free hand reaching to grab your chin before forcing you to look at him.
His bright red eyes that seemed to glow it that very moment bore into your soul. A chill runs down your spine as a chocked moan gets caught in your throat.
Loud groans and pangs fill the corner of the room, the sound of skin slapping skin mixed with the groans of the two devils that stood in the corner of the room.
The pace of their hands moving faster as they stroke their harden cock to match the pace of their king.
His cock pushed deeper into your womb as your bottom lip starts to quiver.
His balls slaps against the pump flesh of your ass , his hand moves to give it a squeeze as he leans down capturing your lips in a kiss.
You were to fucked out to think as you body reacted to his touches, lips moving in sync with his , biting at his lip with a tug causing his cock to twitch inside you.
Your walls clench , his large horn throbs leaking a thick creamy substance that soaks into his long black hair.
Sweat rolls down his board chest, trailing down his abs as it rolls down slowly mixing with the juices from your pussy that glistened around his cock.
“C-Cum..C-Cumm..M-Modues!!”Reader moans in the kiss, pulling back as a string of saliva connects to from his mouth to yours.
A grin forms on his lips, red eyes staring down at you, hands rubbing up your sides as his thrust becomes harsher.
The head of his cock pushing against your sweet spot, legs shaking as you dig in the flesh of your ankles.
Walls tightening by the second as your eyes tear up from pleads, looking up at him. A loud gasp leaves your lips as your eyes widen hitting your climax, your juices soaks his lower abdomen before soaking the sheets beneath you.
Asmodeus looks at your with a loving yet lustful gaze as he kiss you once more, pumping his cock into your trembling walls as his halts his cock deep inside your womb, shooting warm ropes of his seed inside you.
Making sure it stays where it needs to before as a thick milky substance erupts from the tip of his thick horn.
Summary: A drabble of Joonie leaning on his girlfriend after the news about the Grammys became public ⸜(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝♡
wc: 1.3k
Pairing: Namjoon x Fem!Reader
A/N: I've been wanting to write something ever since yesterday's news, and I just couldn't resist lol. It's a little short, but I didn't really have much of a plot to work with :< anyway, I hope you enjoy it!
Dividers | Masterlist | Taglist
The news had broken just a few hours earlier, right as you were finishing dinner, accompanied by nothing more than an old glass of liquor and a half-eaten meal. It had felt like a bucket of ice cold water dumped straight over your head, leaving every part of your body numb, unable to move.
It hadn't just come as a surprise to the media, the recording academy, or the fans, it had even caught you off guard, despite being his girlfriend for years. You had witnessed firsthand how hard they'd worked for that award, fighting their way into the biggest category, determined to win it, determined to break through every barrier the language had placed in front of them.
'BTS Withdraws from the Grammys.'
At first, you thought it was just another gossip site trying to stir up controversy. Then you saw their instagram stories. Your boyfriend's story, too, with that ridiculous photo he'd taken while filming the 2.0 music video. The caption, entirely in korean, carried one unmistakable message:
They refused to let the Academy box them in.
This time, the feeling was different, calmer... happier.
You couldn't even stop yourself from laughing out loud at the thought that they'd turned down the biggest music awards in the industry simply to make a statement.
And they'd done it in their fucking native language.
You moved faster than you ever had before, clearing the table, rushing to your bedroom to change into something better suited for the weather, clutching an old pair of sneakers in your hands, ready to run to the studio Namjoon had told you he'd be working at until late that night.
"Shit, my battery's almost dead," you muttered, grabbing your charger. There'd probably be an outlet somewhere in the building, you just hoped your phone lasted long enough to get there.
Your eyes stayed glued to the screen as you searched for the address on your map, trying to figure out which route to take. You were so absorbed in your own little world that you didn't hear the front door close just a few steps away, followed by the dull thud of shoes hitting the floor and footsteps making their way toward the bedroom.
"Hey."
Your fingers froze over the screen, and your head immediately lifted to find the owner of the voice.
It was strange, in a way, how you'd lived beside this man for years, yet he still managed to reveal new sides of himself every so often. Some better than others, but every single one of them belonged to the man you'd fallen in love with.
The man who still made your heart melt every time he smiled.
Only now, his shoulders were slumped, his smile held together by nothing more than politeness, and the sparkle that always lit up his eyes whenever he looked at you was gone.
A much rawer version of Kim Namjoon.
"I saw the news," was the first thing you managed to say, setting your things aside so you could give your boyfriend your full attention. You watched his hands clench and unclench at his sides, his breathing slow and deliberate.
"How are you feeling?"
"I... I'm okay, I guess," he answered, sitting down on the edge of the bed beside you, though he still couldn't bring himself to meet your eyes. "We've been talking about this for a while... but now that it's actually happened... it feels real, you know?"
You couldn't think of a response.
It was hard to find the right words for something you'd never experienced before. This wasn't like turning down a promotion at some office job. They'd just put themselves at odds with the academy, an institution that practically ruled the music industry, at least in the united states.
"Do you think... Do you think we did the right thing?"
Hearing his voice crack hurt far more than you wanted to admit.
Namjoon wasn't someone who cried easily. He always held himself together, counted to ten, breathed through it, gave himself time to sort out his emotions. Whenever that façade finally cracked, something inside you always broke too. How much had he been carrying these past few days? How long had he forced himself to stay strong in front of the members just to keep up the image of the dependable leader?
"Joonie..." you whispered, stepping in front of him and gently cupping his cheeks. There weren't any tears yet, but you could see them threatening to spill over. "I've never been prouder of you. Of all of you. Was this the smartest decision? Maybe not. Maybe you risked too much. But it was the decision you believed was right for your music... and that's enough."
"They'll probably ban us for life."
"They might." You leaned down and pressed a gentle kiss to his forehead. "But at least the whole world knows it was your decision, not theirs. Besides I'm pretty sure the public's going to love this."
"You really think so?"
He rested his forehead against your stomach, his hands sliding up to your hips to pull you a little closer. You took that as your cue to thread your fingers through his hair. His blond strands barely caught the dim bedroom light. They'd grown much longer since the tour had started, and somehow they suited him even better now.
"Honey," you murmured, "that was the most badass thing you've ever done. I'm willing to bet people are going to treat this announcement like an early christmas present or something."
"You're only saying that because you're my girlfriend."
"I'm saying it because, besides being the love of my life, you're one of the smartest and bravest people I've ever known." Gently, you tugged at his hair until he looked back up at you. This time, the dimples decorating his cheeks were genuine. The heaviness you'd seen when he'd walked through the door had finally disappeared. "None of you need that ugly little megaphone to prove you made the best album of the year."
"It's actually a gramophone."
"Same thing."
The two of you stared at each other for a moment before breaking into laughter. Not the loud, uncontrollable kind you'd share in a room full of friends after an evening spent eating and drinking together. It was quieter than that, the kind of laugh you exchange in secret with your best friend when no one else is watching. The kind that only exists in moments too intimate to share with anyone else.
"You're right," he whispered against your shirt, leaving a soft kiss just below your navel. "Who needs a fucking grammy when you've got the most beautiful woman in the world waiting for you at home?"
"Just beautiful?"
"I could spend the entire night listing every wonderful thing about you if you want."
You rolled your eyes at his cheesiness, though it didn't surprise you in the slightest when his hands slipped behind your knees, lifting you effortlessly onto his lap.
You gave him a moment to settle in, his palms wandering slowly over your thighs, your hips, your waist, while yours traced the lines of his chest, slid over his shoulders, and finally came to rest around his neck.
"Thank you, babe."
You smiled as the words left his lips, gently guiding his face toward yours before kissing him. It started softly, his lips barely moving against yours as his hands tightened around your waist.
Little by little, the kiss grew more frantic, clumsier, more desperate, interrupted every so often by smiles that neither of you could suppress, followed by quiet laughter and whispered I love yous shared against each other's lips.
At least for tonight, if only for a few hours, he'd be able to forget about the world outside those four walls, forget the consequences of that announcement. Forget everything except the one thing keeping him grounded through it all; you. The person who really loved the man behind the idol.
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Can you write some shameless pre-relationship Sebastian x mc flirting? Like pining, comparing hand sizes, teasing about height, all that cringe cute stuff! Just go off on that however you like!
hello anon!! here's a quick 1.5k pg-rated words for you because i'd just started a little drabble of MC working at j pippin's for the summer and it turned into two goofy teens in love 🥹
edit: i felt like this deserved a name so i'm calling it "the potioneer's apprentice" and i personally love a potion-loving MC characterization very much so i may return to this 'verse later on xoxo
"I happen to know that you can make a perfectly good batch of Wiggenweld yourself," you point out.
Sebastian watches distractedly while you untie your hair, shaking it loose as it falls down to your shoulders.
"W-well, yours is better," he insists. "Always has been, even Sharp said so."
"It's even better now," you say proudly, pulling one of the bottles out of your bag to hand to him. "...You're not actually hurt, are you?"
"No, just bored," he admits. "I wanted to see you."
Staring down at the order slip in your hands, you bite the inside of your cheek to keep from smiling.
Mr. Sebastian Sallow
Feldcroft Hamlet
x3 Wiggenweld
x1 Focus
x1 Felix Felicis
“Simple enough,” Parry Pippin says cheerfully, tucking a knut into the pocket of the postal owl that had just dropped off your latest order. “I’ll put together the Liquid Luck, I know that’s a tricky one.”
Bustling over to his potions station, he adds, “I trust brewing the Wiggenweld and Focus draughts should be no problem for you?”
“Of course,” you say, quickly tying up your hair before lighting a fire beneath the cauldron at your own station.
You’ve been an apprentice at J. Pippin’s Potions for just over a month, refining your potions skills over the summer break – and helping keep an eye on things in Hogsmeade. In that time, your brewing skills have improved significantly, and Parry is more than happy to pass on some of the simpler potions to you.
Attempting to be casual, you ask, “Will this be a delivery?”
“Oh, I should think so,” Parry confirms. “Though it’s not exactly my neck of the woods.”
“Would you like me to drop it off?” you offer hopefully.
“How about this,” Parry offers. “I’ll send you down to the hamlet to drop these off, and then you can call it a day.”
“Thank you, Mister Pippin,” you say with a grin.
Your boss smiles approvingly as you carefully pour some horklump juice into your cauldron, precisely tapping the side of the bottle as he’d taught you.
“Besides,” he says cheekily. “I think this is the third time this month that young mister Sallow has ordered from my shop and requested delivery, even though Fatimah’s shop is much closer.”
You nearly spill the entire bottle.
“Any idea why a Hogwarts student on summer break would need so many potions?” Parry asks, smirking to himself as he pours some lacewing flies into his cauldron.
“W-well, I – I suppose he could be clumsy,” you mumble unconvincingly. “O-or stocking up, perhaps. We’ve got N.E.W.T. classes next term, some of these spells are quite challenging, a-and the beasts, we’ve got Grindylows to examine, you know how they bite…”
You trail off feebly, blushing a bright red. The Wiggenweld potion in your cauldron signals its completion with a puff of smoke, offering a welcome distraction.
“Aye, of course,” Parry murmurs, sounding very much like he doesn’t believe you in the slightest. “In any case, as soon as you finish that Focus potion I’ll send you on your way.”
Quickly ladling three portions of Wiggenweld into Parry's glass vials, you scrub out your cauldron and prepare the last draught, wrinkling your nose at the smell of dugbog tongue. Once it starts to smoke and bubble, you measure out a generous portion and collect the Felix Felicis from your boss, tucking the lot into your satchel.
“Please thank young Sebastian for his order, and tell him I said good day,” Parry tells you with a wink. “And to kindly stop pilfering my apprentice so often.”
“Yes, sir,” you reply sheepishly.
Outside the shop, you trek outside the boundaries of Hogsmeade to hop onto your broom and head south toward Feldcroft. It had been more than a week since you’d seen Sebastian, which felt like an eternity compared to how often you saw him during the school year.
One month into your break and you feel like a simpering wreck.
You miss him like crazy – not that you’d tell him like that, of course. He’s your closest friend, and the two of you have been through so much together in the past two years. You aren’t about to ruin it by confessing that you’re hopelessly in love with him.
—
Sebastian is not moping.
And even if he was, why shouldn’t he mope? He’s alone, it’s swelteringly hot in the hamlet and he hasn’t seen his best friend in a week.
He’s bored, and when Sebastian gets bored, he gets creative.
Really, it’s almost too easy to summon you to Feldcroft. All it took was a quick trip to see the owl post stand and another superfluous order for some potions (with a little bit of Liquid Luck thrown in on a whim), and he knew you’d arrive by the time the heat broke.
He conveniently manages to be tending to his small garden when you touch down beside the Sallow home, his sleeves rolled up past his elbows while he pats some dirt around a sprig of fluxweed.
“Sallow?” You call out teasingly. “I have an order here for Sebastian Sallow?”
“Must be a lazy bloke, ordering all those Wiggenwelds instead of making them himself,” he answers, sitting back on his heels and wiping some sweat away from his brow with the back of his wrist. “Or perhaps just daft.”
“I happen to know that you can make a perfectly good batch of Wiggenweld yourself,” you point out.
Sebastian watches distractedly while you untie your hair, shaking it loose as it falls down to your shoulders.
“W-well, yours is better,” he insists. “Always has been, even Sharp said so.”
“It’s even better now,” you say proudly, pulling one of the bottles out of your bag to hand to him. “...You’re not actually hurt, are you?”
“No, just bored,” he admits. “I wanted to see you.”
If Ominis were here, he’d likely pick up on how those words make your heart race a little faster, but mercifully, Sebastian does not.
“Here I am,” you say. “And I’m all yours for the day, Mister Pippin gave me the rest of the day off.”
“Oh, really?” he replies, brushing some stray dirt off of his trousers as he stands up. “Whatever could we get up to with an entire afternoon?”
You blink in surprise as he stands, realizing for the first time that Sebastian has gotten taller.
“What?” he asks, catching your gaze.
“You’ve grown,” you say dumbly. “I – I mean, you’re tall.”
“Am I?” he asks, a teasing smirk on his lips. “Perhaps you’re just short.”
“I am not short,” you protest, following Sebastian as he leads the way into the old Sallow home.
It feels different now, obviously. Less like a family home and more like a chaotic bachelor pad, Sebastian’s strewn-about books and haphazard notes covering up a distinct lack of coziness.
It’s only for the summer, Sebastian had told you the first time you’d seen it.
(You know he doesn’t really have anywhere else to go anymore, what with the Gaunt household becoming more toxic by the day. You wouldn’t be surprised to find Ominis squatting there as well by the time July rolls around.)
“You’re practically pocket-sized,” Sebastian teases, closing the door behind you to keep some of the midday sun out. “I think it’s why you’re so powerful – it’s concentrated, your magic.”
You scoff and shove at his shoulder, wondering to yourself when he became so broad.
It had only been a few weeks since school had let out, hadn’t it? And suddenly Sebastian was walking around in a man’s body, one you were sure wasn’t there in Charms class in May. Or maybe it was, hiding beneath his suit jacket and his robes…
You blink rapidly to clear your head.
“Um. Your potions,” you mumble, pulling the rest of the bottles out of your satchel and placing them on the front room table.
Then you can’t help but ask, “What’s the Felix Felicis for?”
“Not sure yet,” Sebastian admits. “But I’m sure it will come in handy at some point.”
You hum under your breath, picking up the delicate vial and examining it in the light.
“Hand it over,” Sebastian demands with a laugh. “I don’t like the way you’re looking at that bottle, I know what temptation looks like on your face.”
Blushing, you place the vial in his outstretched hand, letting your own hand linger a beat too long. Sebastian quickly catches your wrist, turning your hand palm-side up.
“Merlin’s beard, your hand is small,” he observes.
“Not this again,” you groan.
“I’m being serious, you hold your wand with this tiny thing?” he jokes. “Poor Ollivander had his work cut out for him.”
“Let’s see yours, then,” you insist, holding your hand up to him. “Go on.”
Sebastian presses his palm against yours and you raise your eyebrows. His hand dwarfs yours to the degree that he could wrap the tips of his fingers overtop yours if he wanted to.
“See?” he says, his voice suddenly much quieter in the empty home. “Tiny.”
“And yet I can still beat you in a duel,” you retort, trying to calm your racing heart.
Just like that, the tension in the room dissolves away and Sebastian lights up.
“A duel, hmm?” he echoes. “Is that an offer?”
“Seriously? That’s what you want to do today?” you laugh. “It’s thirty degrees outside and you want to duel?”
“We could practice on the training dummies,” he offers hopefully. “You know you want to.”
…Damn him, he’s right.
“Fine,” you relent. “But if I sweat through this chemise, it’s your head, Sallow.”
Sebastian tries very hard to not think about you in a sweat-soaked white shirt as you lead him back outside, and if he trips over the doorframe on his way out, he’s happy to let you continue to assume it’s just his clumsy streak.
hi you totally don’t have to if you don’t want to, but could you do max hatter x Ariel and Eric’s daughter? Who has the same sort of fascination with wonderland that her mother had with the shore. Maybe she also sort of ignores the HK/VK thing bc Uma is her cousin (first cousin once removed) and she’s great so what’s the issue. Your choice and totally up to you tho.
Part of Your World Pt 1
A/N-I hope this is similar to what the requester had in mind! I also received another Ariel's daughter request that I'll be combining it with in future chapters
Pairing: Max Hatter x Ariel's daughter! reader
Words: 1k
Synopsis: Max originally planning to steal from you becomes intrigued by your collection on Wonderland items
Max Hatter Masterlist Here
As a young child, your mother Ariel would read you stories of far off places such as tales of pirates and fairies in Neverland, or even stories that she was told as a young mermaid in Atlantica. Although she never shared the ones that warned about how awful humans are. But your favorite has always been of Alice and her adventures in Wonderland. You would make Ariel reread those stories over and over again as a kid. Since you discovered that Wonderland is a real place it has been your mission to learn as much as possible and eventually visit there. It should be no surprise, knowing who your mom is, that you have grown quite the collection of trinkets from Wonderland.
After the barrier to the Isle of the Lost came down when you were little, your interests in far off places only continued to grow. When your mother found out that Ursula had a daughter, Uma, she welcomed her with open arms. It was a bit of a struggle at first with the new family dynamics, but eventually Uma became one of your favorite people. I mean you have a cousin that is a pirate which is pretty awesome. When she became principal of Auradon Prep you were her biggest supporter. Over the years Uma taught you that you should never judge someone based on whether they are a VK or an HK.
Unfortunately, your kindness towards everyone led to some people assuming that you were gullible and an easy target.
“You have to trust me on this one Max. I think Y/N is the perfect test subject for our new pickpocketing act. She apparently always has some treasure on her that we can take,” Felix tells Max.
“And you know this, how?” Max questions his friend.
“The Smee twins were telling me about how they bumped into her the other day, and she showed some of it to them,” Felix says.
"Did they say what the treasure was" Max asks.
"No, but I mean it must be good. Y/N is royalty after all." Felix reassures him.
“Fine, let's go check it out and see if she has anything worth stealing. If she does then we can enact the plan,” Max concedes, trusting that his friend knows what he is talking about.
The boys eventually find you lying down in the gardens, cloud watching.
“Y/n?” Max calls out in the friendliest way he can muster.
“Hmm” you respond, confused. Sitting up, you see that it's Max who said your name. You have always found Max intriguing but stayed away not wanting to scare him with how much you’ve studied Wonderland.
“Max, right?” You smile, trying to hide that you know exactly who he is. “And you’re Felix. What can I do for you boys?”
“We just heard about your collection from the Smee twins and were wondering if we could see it for ourselves” Felix smiles, innocently.
“Wait really” you exclaim excitedly. You love showing people your trinkets. “Sure, I’d love to! Why don't you sit down while I figure out what I have on me.”
As you’re distracted pulling things out of your bag, the boys can’t help but smirk at each other at how this is going. You don't suspect a thing.
“I don’t have much on me at the moment, just a couple of teacups, a pocket watch, and some playing cards” you say laying out the items for the boys to see.
Felix, realizing that the Smee twins were wrong about you having treasure immediately loses interest. Not a single item you have pulled out has any monetary value.
“Are all of these from Wonderland” asks Max, examining one of the teacups.
“Yes” you respond excitedly, and move closer to Max. “You wouldn’t know just by looking at the teacup, but it's actually enchanted to always keep the tea warm!”
“That’s actually kinda cool,” Max says with a small smile, genuinely intrigued. “Do you have any more things like these?” he asks.
Felix, seeing his chance to escape before this conversation gets anymore boring, lets out a weak excuse “Hey I’m really sorry but I just remembered that I promised I’d help Hazel with something” and leaves, not that you or Max notices.
“Yeah, I have a full collection of small items like these that look ordinary but are not all what they seem” you smile.
“And they are all from Wonderland” Max questions.
“Yes” you exclaim. “Well at least most of them are. I also have a small collection of items from other places like Neverland.”
“Why do you specifically collect from Wonderland?” Max asks, curious. “I mean there are so many different places out there. What makes it so special?”
“My mom used to read stories to me about Alice’s adventures when I was little, and I’ve always dreamed about visiting. Over the years I’ve found a trinket here or a teacup there and grew my little collection.” You say glancing at your hands a little embarrassed.
“I’m not entirely sure of how they all work or what their purpose is, but that’s the best part. It means I get to figure it all out” You add glancing at Max.
“I could help you figure it out” Max feels strangely compelled to say. “Since my family is from Wonderland.”
“You’ll help me” you say in disbelief, eyes lighting up with excitement. “Thank you, Max,” you exclaim, pulling him into a hug.
“Of course,” Max stammers out, surprised by the sudden physical affection. “Anything to help a pretty princess.”
“You have to see the rest of my collection! Is there anything you have to do this afternoon,” you ask him.
“No” Max responds, remembering the only thing he was going to do this afternoon was steal from you which he no longer wants to do.
“I can show it to you right now! Normally most people aren’t interested in it, so you’ll be the first person to see it!” you say packing up your collection and standing up.
“Sounds fun” Max says standing up, and before he can continue, you are grabbing his hand and pulling him along as you ramble on about your collection.
Max is not entirely sure how a planned theft ended up leading into an afternoon with a pretty princess, but he definitely does not mind in the slightest.
A/N - Hi everyone my taglist is currently CLOSED and at capacity. Btw make sure to check out the rules for my taglist as there were updates made a couple of days ago.
She’s Just Not That Into You | Love Island!Garrett
SUMMARY All it takes is a kissing challenge, a new bombshell, and a white lingerie set, and suddenly Garrett’s an artist.
CONTENT love island au, fem reader, love island relationship dynamics, lots of making out/kissing, very suggestive but no smut yet, some of the stuff I mention in this part hasn't been written yet—I tried not to make it too confusing (hopefully), I tried to keep her actual physical appearance unspecific but reader's outfit is described in detail so I may have missed something on accident, reader sits in Garrett's lap, Garrett picks reader up, you can listen to 'good girl' by Isabel LaRosa while reading this if you want (it's what I imagine would be playing during reader's turn in the episode lol), like 4k words of Logan ragebaiting Garrett, barely edited
A/N okay the wait is over, here's the bombshell fic lol also I have beef with the system tumblr uses to flag mature content bc tell me why I had a pic of Garrett having an attitude and tumblr flagged it?? mind you, all the pictures I tried of people half-naked covered in paint? fine, totally good, but god forbid a man be a little sassy ig 😔 I think I'll definitely be adding on to this more later, but my brain can't understand the concept of a "one shot" and this was getting long.
love island masterlist
It’s not every day you find yourself clad in nothing but white lingerie and a blindfold while your man is handcuffed to a giant bed in nothing but a pair of white boxers, but, hey, when in the Love Island Villa!
You hadn’t been totally sure what to think when you all walked out for the evening to see a massive bed in the middle of the Villa and the more Ariana Madix explained the rules, the more excited—and nervous—you became.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” she explains as you and the girls move to sit on the chairs set up next to the bed. “Boys, you’ll be locked up at the headboard. Girls, you’ll be blindfolded and armed with your own personal paint color. Once those blindfolds go on, you’ll have to rely on touch, chemistry, and instinct as you make your way around the boys, feeling your way through to find your man.”
Garrett looks up, stifling a groan.
“Don’t be afraid to enjoy the journey and have a little fun as you go,” Ariana winks. “And you’re literally leaving your mark so, by the end of this, everyone will be able to see exactly where you’ve been… And who you’ve been with.”
Garrett is no longer able to stifle his groan.
Ariana turns to face the girls—though you can’t see it through your blindfold. “When you think you’ve found your boy, lock in your answer by handcuffing yourself to any part of him.” She turns to the boys warningly. “Boys, no talking, no helping, and definitely no giving yourselves away.”
Hannah goes first to start the game, crawling onto the bed slowly as Ariana helps her up. She dips her hands into the bags of blue paint around her thighs before patting her hands out. Garrett had—quite smartly, he thinks—chosen the spot closest to you and the girls making him the first guy Hannah reaches. And the first guy you’d reach.
A blue hand print stains his thigh as she crawls up his body. They share a kiss as she feels him up but it’s nowhere close to the one they shared on their first date, and as soon as she realizes that he isn’t Justin, she moves on to Tucker who is sitting next to him. When she reaches Justin, she gives him a much longer kiss, clearly recognizing him, and handcuffs herself to his wrist.
Dionne’s next, holding out purple covered hands as she shuffles forward on her knees. She places an awkward hand on Garrett’s chest, before moving it up to—somewhat heavy-handedly—feel his face. She stops when her fingers smash into his nose and mouth, a cheeky smile on her face as she pats his nose and mouth a few more times.
“Oh… I think I know who this is.”
She gets off his lap and whispers smugly, “Don’t worry, champ, I’ll spare you.”
Garrett shakes his head with a chuckle as she moves on to Tucker and then Justin, who she also recognizes. Like Hannah, she’s also able to find her partner, handcuffing herself to Paul after a brief kiss. It would almost be impressive if she didn’t seem so uninterested.
Finally it’s your turn and Garrett perks up as Ariana helps to lead you to the bed—only to watch as she bypasses him completely and leads you to the other side of it. Suddenly Garrett’s genius plan is feeling much more stupid as he realizes in horror that you’ll have to get through Dean, Paul, Justin, and Tucker before getting to him.
The boys all watch you eagerly as you grab onto Ariana’s hand for support and wobble onto the mattress.
The thing is that—while, at this point, they’d all kissed you multiple times and seen you almost exclusively in bikinis—to your core, you’re a lover girl. Meaning that, while you did truly try to get to know all of them, you preferred to do it more through talking than anything else, reserving more physical stuff for your current partner.
You also have an objectively goofy personality. You usually never took challenges too seriously, choosing to mess around with the guys instead of going full throttle. In a weird way—(that Garrett did not understand at all)—the fun, entertaining relationships you had with the other guys made them sometimes seem to forget that you were attractive.
However, right now, in that lingerie you’re wearing, nothing can distract from the fact that you are, inarguably, attractive.
When Garrett first saw you walk down the stairs with that delicate lace hugging your body, he legitimately thought he died and went to heaven.
The white corset accentuates your figure, ending just below your sternum and cupping your breasts with a lift that has them peaking out of your bodice, highlighting your cleavage. Sheer stockings cover your legs, stopping just above your knees. The soft skin of your bare thighs acts as a teasing trail up to the barely-there bottoms you’re wearing. They wrap around your front and hips with a frilly lining that connects to a small triangle of fabric at the back that only covers about as much as your tailbone, the rest of your butt curving out from under the hem.
You look like the embodiment of seduction, with the white sleep mask covering your eyes and your slightly overlined lips coated in your favorite lip gloss.
Garrett knows it, the guys know it, all of America probably knows it.
You dip your hands into your paint bags, letting out a small squeak at how cold it is as it covers your hands and forearms in pink. Dean looks all too pleased when you trip over yourself and end up stumbling into his chest. Your hands feel up his body slowly as you dip down to kiss him, your mouth moving against his without its usual reserve as you try to figure out if he’s Garrett or not.
Dean makes a small noise as you open your mouth, catching his bottom lip and trying to feel the outline of it, your fingers pressing along his shoulders and biceps. Garrett watches as he tilts his head to try to deepen the kiss, but you’ve gotten all the information you need and pull away.
“No…” You whisper to yourself. “Garrett has bigger muscles than that.”
It takes Dean a second to process your words, still slightly dazed. When he does, his mouth drops open in offense, but Ariana silences him with a pointed look and a finger to her lips. Garret can’t help but smirk proudly.
You reach Paul next, unaware of Dionne, who’s sitting on the opposite side of him. Sitting up on your knees, you line up one of your legs with the outside of his thigh, leaning over him at a slight angle to find his face. Paul’s hand settles a little too close to your ass for Garrett’s liking as you kiss him with a similar amount of forwardness as your kiss with Dean. Your hands travel up to his hair and, as soon as you feel the short strands, you move on from him too, turning away so that he can’t see the way your nose scrunches in dissatisfaction—but Garrett certainly can.
Your hands land on Hannah before they can find Justin and you giggle, pressing a kiss to her cheek. You move to skip Justin entirely, but you’re struck with the worry that maybe Hannah is wrong and this isn’t Justin—really, you just don’t want to mess this up and the thought of taking your blindfold off and being cuffed to anyone who isn’t Garrett is genuinely mortifying.
You turn back, just to check, pressing your lips to his slow enough to actually feel them. You don’t even bother feeling his hair, he and Garrett have similar enough curl patterns that you don’t want to overthink it and confuse yourself. Instead you scratch your nails along his abdomen and, when he flexes into it instead of shivering at the feeling, you pull back with a resolute nod and crawl away, discreetly wiping your mouth with the back of your hand.
While Garrett certainly isn’t enjoying watching you make out with every other guy in the Villa, he can’t pretend that the fact that you’ve reacted to every kiss thus far with visible displeasure doesn’t make it almost worth it.
You have a bit more trouble finding Tucker, needing to cup his face with both hands to locate his mouth. Your kiss with him lasts longer than your previous ones and, to his credit, he keeps his uncuffed hand to himself. You’re not even fully in it, more distracted by the fact that you know you’re getting closer to the last boy and, while you’re almost positive you haven’t kissed Garrett yet, a small part of you still can’t help but worry that maybe you have and didn’t realize.
Still you move on from Tucker and, finally, make your way into Garrett’s lap. Almost as soon as you feel the broad width of his shoulders, you know it’s him, running your hands up and down his chest as your mouths meet. Now positive you’ve found your man, you try to convey a silent apology for the fact that he had to wait and watch as you kissed the other guys, putting in more effort for him than all the other boys combined.
You drop your head to press hot, open-mouthed kisses down his neck as your nails scratch against his pecs, smiling knowingly when you feel goosebumps pebble his skin. Garrett throws his head back in a mix of relief and slight disbelief as you continue kissing along his throat, wrapping your arms around his neck as you try to get as much paint on him as possible.
He lets you do it for a few seconds longer, before grabbing your jaw with his hand that isn’t currently cuffed to the headboard and guiding your face back to his. He slips his tongue in your mouth without an ounce of decorum, sitting up to get a better angle as your head tilts, nose nudging against his cheek with a happy sigh.
Garrett drops his hand from your face when you move both of yours to cup his cheeks and lets it travel down to search blindly for one of the bags of paint strapped to your thigh. Once he’s found it, he dips his own hand inside, covering it in the pink paint. You let out a gasp against his mouth when he suddenly grabs your ass, squeezing it possessively until he’s satisfied with the large, pink handprint he’s left behind.
The other guys silently lose it at the sight, covering their mouths to not give themselves away—except for Tucker who is trying to discreetly move away so that he isn’t sitting right next to you. When you finally pull away, your lips are shiny and swollen, Garrett has pink paint everywhere, and he’s never been smugger.
“Hmm… I don’t know…” You tease, but you’re already moving to grab your handcuff and click it around his wrist.
Allie’s turn is next, leaving yellow hand prints all across the white bedding as she somewhat loses her bearings, though Garrett’s attention is quickly drawn away from her when Justin lets out a surprised gasp.
He points subtly behind them and Garrett stretches his neck to see a girl he doesn’t recognize walk into the Villa in her own set of white lingerie. When she sees them, she waves coyly. The guys all look between themselves—some excited, some confused, some both.
“Bombshell?” Tucker mouths and Garrett shrugs.
The new bombshell dips her hands into a bag of red paint that had been left behind one of the ledges of the Villa, before creeping quietly to the opposite side of the bed. Allie had finally been able to track down one of the boys, none the wiser that, as she makes out with Justin, Dean is currently being covered in red paint.
When they both finish, the new girl falls into a pattern of sneaking around Allie to kiss the guy that she just finished with. As she gets closer, she leaves an intense trail of red paint in her wake and Garrett shifts uncomfortably. His eyes fall to where you’re sitting next to him, completely oblivious and still somewhat out of breath from your kiss.
The new bombshell crawls onto Tucker’s thighs, luring him in for a heated kiss, and Garrett takes it as his chance to pull you into his lap, causing you to jolt slightly in surprise. His free arm ends up hanging over one of your shoulders, his hand hovering just over your breast.
For good measure, he leaves a pink hand print there too. You pinch his thigh in reprimand, but have to tuck your bottom lip in between your teeth to hide your smile.
Ariana watches, deeply amused, as the bombshell pulls away from Tucker, turning to kiss Garrett and faltering when she realizes you’re now sitting against his chest and directly in her line of access. Garrett shoots her an awkward smile, giving her a half-hearted, one-armed shrug that somehow perfectly encapsulates the “Oh well, what can you do?” attitude of a man that has created a problem entirely of his own free will and has no desire to resolve it.
From the other side of the bed, Allie giggles, “I definitely missed a few boys, but I think I can stop here.” And handcuffs herself to Dean.
With Allie’s turn now over, the new bombshell gets up from the bed silently and disappears back out the entrance.
Finally, Ariana helps lead a blindfolded Kendall to Dean’s side of the bed and green hands start making their way across the mattress. That’s when the guys notice another figure walk into the Villa and suddenly are much less excited than they were for the previous bombshell.
The new guy stops just behind the headboard, coating his hands in orange paint, before giving all the boys a teasing salute and climbing onto the bed. He doesn’t waste any time, cupping just under your jaw with both orange hands and drawing you in for a passionate kiss.
You let out a muffled noise of surprise, but you genuinely think that it’s Kendall—which is also kind of surprising, but kissing a bunch of guys blindfolded can be nerve wracking and you don't want to knock her confidence.
Garrett watches with a clenched jaw as the new bombshell seems to find no issue with pinning you up against Garrett’s chest—because you’re still sitting in his lap, by the way—to deepen your kiss. And then he has the audacity to wipe at your bottom lip with his thumb, leaving a streak of orange behind as he moves on to the next girl.
In Garrett’s opinion, the new bombshell doesn’t kiss any of the other girls with the same amount of vigor—he’s done before Kendall is, who had to go back and forth between Justin and Tucker a few times before eventually locating Tucker. Once she cuffs herself to him, the bombshell does the same thing as the one before him and quietly walks out of the Villa.
“Alright girls, go ahead and take off your blindfolds,” Ariana instructs.
You pull your blindfold off slowly—and Garrett helps you—blinking a bit to adjust to the light. When you are able to see him and confirm that it is, in fact, Garrett that you’re cuffed to, you light up with a bright smile.
As you look around at the other Islanders to see if all the other girls were able to correctly identify their partners too, your eyes widen in slight embarrassment as you notice just how much pink paint you left on the other guys in your determination to find Garrett. Still, they’re covered in a bunch of other colors too—so it’s not like you were the only one who got a bit too carried away—and Allie also accidentally skipped half the guys on her turn. And Garrett definitely has other colors on him too.
But none of the guys or paint colors hold a candle to the amount of pink paint that is currently drying on Garrett’s skin.
“Okay,” Allie laughs, though it’s a bit strained. “Which one of you is red? Because Dean is covered in it.”
The boys look between each other, unsure what to say.
Paul clears his throat, covered in an equal amount of red paint. “I think it’s just some of the paints mixing together, you know?”
“Red’s a primary color, idiot.” Dionne shoots him an unimpressed look.
You turn to Garrett in confusion.
“Oh, my bad,” Ariana interrupts you all with feigned innocence. “I forgot to tell you all one more thing. You weren’t the only ones getting up close and personal with the boys. Please welcome your newest bombshell Lola!”
The new girl scampers into the Villa—covered in red paint—to varying reactions from the other girls, but you’re a bit more focused on looking between her and Garrett, trying to hide your delight when you realize that he doesn’t have a drop of red paint on him.
You look down to reign in your expression and that’s when you notice all the orange paint on your body. A glance around shows that none of the guys have any orange paint on them and almost all the girls do, though you and Hannah noticeably have more.
You snort. “Geez Kendall, did you even kiss any of the boys? There’s more orange on us than them.”
“I’m not orange…” Kendall cocks her head as she holds up her green hands.
Another wave of confusion hits the girls as Ariana grins. “You girls didn’t think I’d forget about you, did you? Of course, I brought someone for you too. Please welcome Logan!”
Your eyes widen as a tanned brunet walks into the Villa, orange paint staining his hands as he checks you all out confidently. You look at him, and then down at yourself, and then whip your head to Garrett.
“It’s okay,” he assures you quietly before you can say anything, though he makes a point of holding your chin in place with two fingers so that he can wipe the orange paint off your lip.
You wait patiently until he’s finished, relaxing as his body language confirms to you that he isn’t secretly upset.
Your voice takes on a playful lilt as you bat your lashes and ask, “You gonna clean the paint off my ass too?”
Garrett drops his hand from your chin, dragging it slowly through some of the wet paint on his chest. Without warning, he slides it under the frilly elastic hugging your hip, pressing another pink hand print to the inside of your thigh, the tips of his thumb and index finger brushing the soft skin that connects your inner thigh and pelvis.
He removes his hand from your lingerie bottoms before anyone else can notice, but you can still feel the warmth from his skin underneath the fabric. He takes in the shock and helpless arousal on your face with a smirk.
“Nope.”
The game finishes shortly after, Ariana waving goodbye to you all as you and the girls uncuff your boys from the headboard—(you teasingly tell Garrett that you want to see him in handcuffs again and he, very seriously, says “Only if you keep the blindfold.”)—and the evening continues as you get to know the new bombshells, all of you still barely clothed and covered in paint.
The girls take Lola to go talk on one of the large couches and the guys and Logan move to the fire pit. Garrett’s not particularly interested in getting to know him, but he enjoys the view he has of you on the other side of the Villa, speaking animatedly with the girls—with two distinct, pink handprints on your ass and breast and one he can’t see, but knows, is splayed out across your inner thigh.
The small talk between the guys trickles off and Dean follows Garrett’s gaze.
“Okay, can I just say what we’re all thinking?” Dean asks finally, before turning to face Garrett. “Your girl’s a good kisser, man.”
Tucker chokes on his water. “That is not what we’re all thinking.”
Aside from Tucker, no one else chooses to voice that that wasn’t what they were thinking about.
Garrett crosses his arms, running his tongue along the front of his teeth. “Shame she didn’t like kissing any of you though.” He says simply.
“Well, that’s not entirely true.” Dean nudges his head towards Logan.
“I will actually kill you.”
Dean holds his hands up. “Hey, don’t shoot the messenger!"
At the invitation into the conversation, Logan gives Garrett a single nod. “She is a good kisser,” he supplies.
“She thought you were a girl.” Garrett reminds him flatly.
Logan tilts his head slightly at the challenge. “You scared of a little competition, Garrett?”
“No, I like to think that me and Kendall have a mutual respect for each other,” Garrett smiles sarcastically.
Tucker looks away with something between a wince and a laugh. Logan just smirks which pisses Garrett off more, and Garrett decides he’s done with the conversation, getting up without explanation and heading over to pull you from the girls.
A bit later, you and Garrett are cuddled up on one of the couches. He’s tracing the skin of your thigh with his finger idly as you ramble on about a dream that you had last night that you can only remember half of. The two of you are waiting for the showers to free up, still covered in—now fully dried—paint.
“Hey.” The sound of Logan’s voice stops Garrett’s finger in its tracks. “Can I pull you for a chat?”
Before you can respond, Garrett turns to look at him, deadpan. “No.”
“Garrett,” you chide, getting up from the couch—much to his dismay.
You lean down, cupping his face and giving him a sweet kiss before he can protest.
“I’ll be right back,” you promise against his lips. “Be nice.”
Logan waits politely as you untangle yourself from Garrett, shooting you a charming smile when you walk over to give him more of your attention.
“Where did you want to chat?”
Logan shrugs. “I was thinking we could play ping pong?”
You freeze, grimace in preparation, and turn to look at Garrett hesitantly. Sure enough, when you look back, he’s staring at the two of you like he just witnessed Logan shoot Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
“I don’t know, I’m really tired,” you say quickly, before the situation can escalate to World War I levels of confrontation. “How about we go to Say Less?”
“I’m good with that,” Logan agrees readily.
You can feel Garrett shooting daggers at him as you walk away and you make a mental note to keep this conversation as brief as possible.
“Hi, my baby.”
Garrett’s exactly where you left him when you return from your enjoyable—but uneventful—conversation with Logan, currently looking like a dog who thinks it’s about to be rehomed.
And, honestly, it shows how down bad for him you are, because you find the whole thing incredibly adorable and endearing.
“How was your chat?” Garrett grumbles sarcastically, but still grabs you by the waist as soon as you’re in reach and hauls you onto his lap.
“It was good,” you tell him, kissing him before he can get offended and gently peeling a pink paint chip from his cheek. “Logan’s nice. I actually think you’d really like him.”
Garrett sniffs bluntly. “I doubt it.”
“And, if you must know, we had a short, friendly conversation where he told me he was interested in pursuing me and I told him that I’m happy in the couple I’m in and not really looking for anything else,” you continue to reassure him.
Garrett considers your words carefully.
“...That’s it?”
“That’s it,” you confirm and then you make a show of squinting in thought. “Well… I did also tell him that I needed to go shower... And that I’d probably need some help because someone got a bunch of paint on me in places I can’t reach.” You pout.
Garrett angles his head to give you an unimpressed look. “You told Logan you’ll need help showering?”
“Uh-huh,” you tease, voice dropping to a murmur as you lean tantalizingly closer to Garrett’s lips. “Weird how I’m out here with you, huh? Still covered in paint…”
You let out a delighted shriek as Garrett gets up suddenly and throws you over his shoulder before racing to the showers.
please don't copy, repost, or feed my work into ai, thanks!
oscar piastri being exactly the type of guy to give very nonchalant, everyday dominance.
when he sees you in the paddock and notices your skirt that was already short enough had ridden up he casually strolls behind you and pulls it down, pressing a kiss to your temple before hes back off doing something to the car.
*
he invited you to hang out on test days and as it keeps dragging on with you just sitting at the side you start getting tired and irritable and he pulls you to the side
"you want something to eat? you want me to take you somewhere or something?" and when you convince him youre fine and you can eat when you leave he gives u a little look of warning "be good then."
*
"osc?" you called out to your boyfriend who sat on the hotel bed, watching you to make sure you studied for your math exam and he just shook his head in reply. you had come to visit him between races but you had take some time away from school. he made you promise you’d keep up your studies and not let him distract you and he wasn’t sticking to that plan. “back to work angel, be good and then we can go get dinner. yeah?" "okay." you pouted.
"no pouting. be good for me."
*
youre leaving the hotel after race weekend and he’s signing autographs and taking photos with fans whilst you linger next to him. he looks down to see where he’s writing and your undone lace sticks out to him and he’s quick to lean down rety the lace before getting back to the fans. the casualness in how he takes care of you leaves you blushing.
summary: as you adapt to a new team, a new car, and a new teammate, the pressure only grows. meanwhile, rookie kimi antonelli struggles under the weight of replacing you, forcing you to confront the complicated emotion of leaving behind the team that made you.
pairing: formula one + female!driver!reader
warnings/tags: smau + irl, slight toto slander, paddock politics, making kimi suffer a bit for both his and driver!yn's character development
notes: chapter 2, baby! so sorry for the wait, guys :(( ur girl has been so busy w work lately and i do try my best to regularly update you guys when i can! lmk what you guys think of this chapter and what more you'd like to see from driver!yn and i'll get to you guys as soon as i can. all my love to yall x
f1 ✔
liked by yourinstagram, lewishamilton, and 2,349,480 others
f1 ✔ Ahead of the first cars hitting the track at Bahrain International Circuit, drivers met with the media to discuss new beginnings, new challenges, and the season ahead.
Testing starts tomorrow. 🏁
#F1 #F1Testing
view all comments
user3 CRIMINAL that you put these sequence of photos
user29 max, y/n, and kimi sitting next together???? whoever planned this deserves a raise
user1 seeing y/n in a different team is still SO weird
user7 watch the first question somehow be directed to kimi and then immediately become about y/n 😭
user63 these pictures felt like a gunshot after gunshot to the head
user80 kimi just blink twice if you need help
user12 i just need one good maxyn interaction and i'm good for the rest of the week
user21 oh I KNOW y/n's manager backstage is fighting for his life telling her what not to say
To your right sat Max.
He was the picture of absolute, unbothered indifference. Slouched slightly in his chair, fiddling with the cap of a water bottle, looking very much like a guy who was desperately waiting for this meeting to end.
To your left sat Kimi.
The young Italian was sitting bolt upright, his shoulders rigid. His hands were placed flat on the table, his thumb repeatedly tracing the edge of the tablecloth over and over again.
Every time a photographer shouted his name from the front row, his face flashed a practiced smile that vanished the absolute second the flash faded.
You knew that look. You had worn that exact expression.
Different car. Different team. Same unrelenting chaos.
The moderator had barely cleared his throat to introduce the panel before a dozen hands shot up into the air. He didn't bother calling on a specific outlet, he simply pointed to a journalist sitting in the third row.
"Question for Y/N," he began, his voice echoing clearly through the microphone. "After the highly public and turbulent nature of your exit from Mercedes, there are many in the paddock who view your signing with Red Bull as political."
"Some would go so far as to suggest that Red Bull didn't sign you because they believed you were the absolute fastest driver available, but because taking you away from Mercedes was the ultimate power move to embarrass Toto Wolff. How do you respond to claims that you are merely just a revenge plan?"
Before you could even reach for the small black switch on your microphone, another voice barked out.
"Follow up to that!" a reporter added without waiting to be called on. "Did signing that contract feel like personal revenge? Do you feel any anger on how they easily filled your seat, or do you think Toto Wolff is already regretting letting you walk?"
Your hand hovered over the microphone. You gathered your breath, preparing the neutral, PR response you'd rehearsed fifty times in your head.
Before your finger touched the button, a loud click echoed through the room's speakers. Max had leaned forward.
He rested his forearms on the desk, tilting his head with a look of boredom. He scratched the back of his neck.
"I think," Max said, "that if anyone here is trying desperately to make a movie out of this..."
He raised his eyes and looked directly at the first journalist who had spoken. "...it's probably you."
Chuckles broke out across the room. A couple of photographers lowered their cameras, smirking.
Max shrugged, tapping his fingers once against the tabletop. "The car is quick. She is quick."
He gestured toward you. "Red Bull wants quick drivers. Mercedes lost one. It's not exactly rocket science, is it?"
The moderator jumped on the opportunity to regain control before the press could recover. "Thank you, Max. Moving on--"
Max switched off his mic with a click and leaned back in his chair, folding his arms across his chest. But as he settled back, his eyes shifted toward you.
You clicked your microphone on.
"I signed with Red Bull Racing because they offered me the best deal and the clearest path to winning a world championship," you said. "If people want to turn this into a sob story, that's their choice. My job hasn't changed."
You paused, folding your hands together on the table, letting the quiet sink into the room. "Drive fast. Give the engineers good feedback. Win races. The time doesn't care what team I'm on, and neither do I."
At the very back of the media center, leaning against the door frame beside three more people, stood Toto Wolff. His arms were folded tightly across his chest, his eyes locked on the stage.
Then, he turned his head away.
The moderator cleared his throat loudly. "Moving to the left. Question for Kimi."
"Kimi, an enormous amount of media focus had been placed on the void left behind by Y/N's departure. Do you feel that replacing a driver like her creates an unfair level of pressure on your debut season?"
Kimi's mouth opened slightly. "Um..."
His hands slid off the table, disappearing into his lap. From where you sat, just two feet away, you could see what the cameras missed. His fingers were locked together, trembling with enough force to shake his wrists.
"I... I am just focused on my work," he stammered, his voice cracking slightly before he managed to pull it back down an octave. "The team has been very supportive. I am very grateful for the opportunity from Toto and the board."
Before he could finish his train of thought, a journalist from the second row chimed in. "Do you feel like you're sitting in someone else's seat, Kimi? How tense was the handoff between you two during the break?"
The young driver froze, looking like a deer caught in high beams. The sheer weight of the expectation, the media, and his own raw youth seemed to press down on his chest all at once.
For a brief, desperate fraction of a second, his eyes darted to his right. Looking at you.
You caught his eye, inclined your head slightly, and offered a calm, steady smile. It was a tiny gesture, invisible to the cameras focused on his face, but Kimi caught it. He swallowed hard, took a slow breathe through his nose, and straightened his posture.
"We're both professional drivers," Kimi said, his voice more stable. "We both have a job to do on the track."
Leaving the press conference was never a clean getaway.
The exit corridor was a long, narrow road running behind the hospitality structures. It was jammed with sound engineers wrapping up cables, camera operators walking backward while trying not to trip anyone over, and nervous PR managers barking into phones while waving their hands to clear pathways for their drivers.
You stepped out into the bright light of the hallway, flanked by a press officer who was keeping a tight grip on her clipboard. You had barely taken ten paces down the corridor when the crowd parted slightly, revealing a cluster of silver shirts coming from the opposite direction.
Mercedes.
George was at the front of the group, a bag slung over his shoulder. The moment his eyes met yours, his guarded face softened into something warm, if slightly conflicted.
Then Toto stepped out from behind him.
The corridor seemed to contract instantly. The air grew thick, the background noise of chatter and camera shutters fading into a distant buzz.
Toto called out your name. His voice was the same calm, authoritative tone he used in board rooms and team radio.
You stopped moving. Your PR officer paused two steps behind you, her eyes darting nervously between the two of you.
"Toto," you replied smoothly.
"I hope you're finding everything to your satisfaction," Toto said, his eyes flicking down to the Red Bull crest on your chest before returning to your face. "The transition appears to have been... smooth."
"So far, so good," you answered. "The team's been very welcoming."
"Good," Toto said softly. A small, polite smile formed on his lips, but it never quite reached his eyes. "It'll certainly be... an educational environment for you. Red Bull operates very differently than we do."
"Different isn't necessarily bad," you replied. "Sometimes a change is what we need."
Toto's smile didn't slip, but the muscle in his jaw ticked. "Of course. I genuinely hope it delivers the results you felt you were lacking with us."
Standing slightly behind him, George looked uncomfortable. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, looking down at his shoes before finally raising his eyes to meet yours.
"It's... really good to see you," George offered, his tone lacking any of Toto's sharp one. "I hope everything went okay."
"It's been perfect, George. It's good to see you too."
An awkward silence threatened to stretch again.
"There you are!"
A hand rested firmly on your shoulder. You turned your head slightly to see Mekies stepping up alongside you. He wore a warm, easy smile, but his eyes were sharp, reading the room immediately.
"Toto," Mekies said, extending a polite hand toward him.
"Mekies," Toto acknowledged.
"I have to steal her away, I'm afraid," Mekies said smoothly, his arm shifting to gently position his body between you and Toto, blocking his line of sight yo you.
He looked down at his watch with a well-acted look of mild panic. "If I don't get her into the debrief in three minutes, everyone's going to start throwing car parts at me."
The joke was light, but it was clear that Mekies had built an invisible wall between you and your past.
"Of course," Toto said, stepping back slightly to allow room. "Don't let us hold you up."
Mekies kept a protective hand on the back of your shoulder, guiding you past the silver shirts and down the corridor toward the Red Bull garage.
Only when you had rounded two corners and were far out of earshot of any lingering media did Mekies lean in slightly, his voice dropping to a low, quiet murmur.
"You held yourself well back there," he said. "Let's not waste our time on them, alright?"
f1gossip
liked by user81 and 6,238 others
f1gossip The paddock has been buzzing after footage surfaced of a tense-looking interaction between former Mercedes driver Y/N L/N and Team Principal Toto Wolff following today’s pre-season testing press conference.
The clip, which has now gone viral across F1 social media, shows Y/N stopping in the paddock corridor after being approached by the Mercedes camp.
👀 What fans noticed:
Y/N remained composed while speaking with Toto, showing little of the emotional reaction many expected after her controversial departure from Mercedes.
George Russell appeared noticeably softer during the interaction, with fans pointing out his smile when he saw his former teammate.
The biggest talking point is he arrival of Laurent Mekies, who stepped in moments later and guided Y/N away toward the Red Bull garage.
No audio from the conversation has been released, leaving fans to speculate about what was actually said.
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user73 the way mekies appeared like “yeah no, my driver has somewhere to be” 😭😭😭
user10 everyone is making this dramatic but george literally just looked happy to see his old teammate
user5 toto’s face when he looked at the red bull logo on her shirt??? somebody check on him 💀
user23 Imagine telling rookie y/n that one day she’d walk away from Mercedes and become Max Verstappen’s teammate.
user66 max defending her in the press conference and mekies backing her in the hallway??? red bull said THAT’S OUR DRIVER
yourinstagram ✔
liked by judebellingham, michaelbjordan, and 6,237,168 others
yourinstagram ✔ back to work
view all comments
maxverstappen1 ✔ Finally someone who knows how to set up a car properly liked by yourinstagram ❤️
kimi.antonelli ✔ Good luck today! 🙌
↪ yourinstagram ✔ ty kimi 🤝 see you out there champ
user57 LMFAOOO her entire comment and like section becoming a celeb meetup
lewishamilton ✔ Go show them what you can do liked by yourinstagram ❤️
↪ yourinstagram ✔ learned from the best
user8 lmfao why are there more celebrities than f1 drivers in her comments
georgerussell63 ✔ Good luck! Except when you're in front of me
↪ yourinstagram ✔ so basically always? 😕
user43 so NOW yall suddenly discovered motorsport the second y/n joined red bull
djo ✔ so when's the hot lap?
user79 girlie changed teams and unlocked a whole new fandom
lando ✔ guys calm down she loses at bowling
↪ yourinstagram ✔ you are literally the worst person to talk about losing
user44 someone explain why this comment section looks like the guest list for the met gala and monaco gp combined
raye ✔okay but when are you teaching me how to drive this thing
judebellingham ✔ that's a fast car
↪ yourinstagram ✔ it's a very faaaaast car
↪ user6 brother you are NOT slick 😭
↪ user24 are you fucking kidding me
↪ user91 no shame on the main account bro... there's no car in sight in this post
The Red Bull garage was different.
The moment the doors closed shut behind you, the noise of the paddock vanished, replaced by the noise of the garage. Air hoses hissed, fans whined softly, and the distinct scent of oil filled the air.
You pulled on your balaclava over your head, tucked the radio wiring neatly down the collar of your undersuit, and stepped up to the side of the cockpit.
You stepped onto the seat, slid your legs deep into the car, and lowered yourself inside.
Immediately, the differences between Mercedes and Red Bull became starkly apparent.
The Red Bull seat cradled your hips significantly higher, tilting your torso slightly forward into a far more aggressive driving position. The steering wheel sat nearly to inches closer to your chest, its handgrips thicker and angled differently against your palms.
Down in the narrow footwell, the pedal box required a sharper, stiffer angle from your ankles. Even the sightlines were different; the lower nose profile meant the front tire bulkheads sat higher in your field of vision, forcing you to re-calbirate how you aimed for corner apexes.
Your new race engineer, who goes by name of Harry, leaned over the cockpit rim, his headset dangling around his neck as he pointed down at the complex array of switches on the wheel face.
"Alright," he said, "We've loaded your base brake migration profiles in here. It'll automatically shift the brake bias toward the rear as you downshift through the gears to keep the entry stable."
"Copy," you said. "What about the differential entry settings?"
"Differentials are configured a bit more aggressively than what you're used to," he explained, pointing to a blue switch. "Max likes a very free mid-corner rot. The car is designed to turn the moment you hint at the wheel. If the rear feels too loose on entry, dropping the differential entry map down to setting two."
"I'll try setting one first," you replied, pulling your helmet down over your head and snapping the visor shut. "I want to feel what the car wants to do before I try and control it."
Harry smiled. "That's what we like to hear. Buckles coming in."
You've always thought you get lucky with the race engineers you have. Harry's an absolute sweetheart. Listening attentively to your requests, checking in if you have any concerns, and welcoming you into the team more than anyone else did.
God, how you missed Luca.
"Radio check."
"Loud and clear."
"Engine start on five... four... three..."
The starter motor whined sharply, and then the engine erupted into life with a deafening, violent roar the vibrated through your spine, through your ribs, and straight into your chest.
"You're clear to go. Mind the traffic in the pit lane."
The mechanics dropped the car off the stands. You eased the clutch paddle out, and the car surged forward, its tires rolling smoothly across the floor before breaking out into the sunlight of the pit lane.
The first three warm-up laps were a revelation.
The Red Bull RB22 didn't handle like any car you had driven before. Where your old car required patience, this one responded to the absolute smallest input with instant precision.
"How's the front end feeling?" Harry asked over the radio as you swept through the high-speed sweeping section.
"There is... so much front grip," you admitted, your breath coming in hitches as the force pressed against your neck. "It's unreal."
"That's our tunnel layout working," he replied, a hint of pride in his voice. "You can carry far more entry speed that what you think you can. Trust the floor."
By lap six, your brain had begun to re-wire itself. You pushed your braking points deeper into the heavy deceleration zones, feeling the brakes bite into the discs with tremendous force.
Ahead of you on the long back straight, a familiar shade of silver appeared.
It was George. And you caught him fast. Astonishingly fast.
You maintained a tight line behind him. Through your visor, you could see George's car fighting for traction, its rear end stepping out slightly as he tried to put the power down out of the corner.
By contrast, your RB22 felt locked to the earth, the floor sucking the chassis down to the track with authority.
You stayed behind him through the main straight, choosing not to use DRS to blow past him. You didn't need to pass him to make a point.
"Alright, new kid," Harry's voice cracked over the radio. "We're dropping the fuel load to low-run levels. Fresh set of softs going on. Let's see what she can really do when we turn the engine up."
You pulled back into the pit box. The crew worked with breathtaking speed, hydraulic jacks lifting the car in a fraction of a second while tire guns whirred.
"Clear in pit lane. Fire it up."
You existed the pit lane, weaving aggressively back and forth across the tarmac on your out-lap to scrub the glossy layer off the cold rubber and build heat into the core of the tire carcass.
"Gap's clear behind. Push when you're ready."
You rounded the final corner, straightened the wheel, and crossed the line.
The RB22 screamed down the main straight. You stomped on the brake for Turn One. The deceleration hit you like a punch to the gut, your body thrown forward against the belts. You clipped the apex perfectly, hit the throttle early, and shot out of the corner.
Sector One: Purple. Fastest overall of the session.
"Great start," Harry noted. "Keep it tidy through Sector Two."
You fed the car into the turn with a subtle flick of the wrist, letting the downforce lock the tires down. The next turn followed immediately; a tight hairpin where lock-ups were common. You trailed off the brake with precision, rotating the car mid-corner and getting straight back onto full throttle.
Sector Two: Purple again.
Confidence surged through your veins. The initial unfamiliarity of the cockpit had vanished, replaced by the sheer, exhilarating flow. The car felt light, infinitely capable, and blindingly fast.
Then came the next turn.
It was one of the highest-speed, most demanding corners on the Bahrain circuit. You turned into the corner, eyes locked firmly on it, your foot hovering over the brake just in case, but your foot was pinned on the accelerator.
Suddenly, a flash of bright silver flared in your peripheral vision.
It was Kimi. He had been running a slow cooldown lap after aborting his own flying run, cruising off-line along the far right side of the tracking exiting the turn.
It should've been a non-issue.
Except Kimi, misjudging the blinding speed at which your Red Bull was closing the distance behind him, checked his mirrors a second too late. Seeing a car charging up behind him, he panicked.
He swerved to the left to give you the outside lane. Straight into the primary racing line. Directly into your entry path.
"What the fuck?!"
There was no time to brake. At this speed, braking would've have locked the front tires instantly and launched your car directly into the rear of Kimi's car like a missile.
Instinct, honed by thousands of hours of racing at the edge of human reaction times, took over instantly.
You yanked the steering wheel hard to the right to avoid the collision.
The sudden, violent change at extreme speed unseated the car's floor. The rear end of your car broke completely loose.
The world went sideways. The car rotated violently beneath you, the rear end swinging around toward the outer barrier at a terrifying angle.
The steering wheel ripped wildly through your hands as the front wheels kicked against the force of the slide.
You snapped your wrists to the left, counter-steering with everything you had, fighting the forces attempting to spin the car across the gravel trap.
Tires screamed in agony, laying down thick bands of black rubber as the car skidded sideways at massive speed. A massive cloud of dust and debris swept over the visor, obscuring the track completely.
The rear end snapped back violently to the right, a violent snap that threatened to throw the car backwards into the concrete wall. You caught it again with a lightning-fast countersteer, your arms working in a blur of pure reflex.
The car bucked, bounced hard over the outer exit, and finally slithered to a halt in the deep asphalt runoff area, pointing sideways to the circuit, its engine whining angrily.
For one second, everything completely quiet inside your helmet. Only the sound of your own ragged, heavy breathing.
"Are you okay? Did you make contact?"
"No contact," you managed to choke out, your voice rough, heart pounding like a sledgehammer against your ribs. "No contact with the Mercedes. I caught it."
Through the dust clearing from your visor, you looked down your side mirrors.
A hundred yards ahead, Kimi's Mercedes had come to a near-complete stop on the far side of the track. Through his rear-view mirrors, you could see the young driver looking back, his hands raised to his helmet in a gesture of utter shock and horror at what had almost been a season-altering crash.
You clicked the clutch paddle in, engaged first gear, and turned the car back toward the track.
"Car's rolling," you reported, your voice slowly settling back into a calm register as you drove back onto the circuit. "I'm coming back in."
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SUMMARY - Spider-man needs Ex-Avenger!Reader’s help in investigating..
CONTENTS - taking care of each other, soft , humor and… unspoken thing? Mentioned a situationship?
WORD COUNT - 3.1k
AUTHOR’S NOTE - I actually had some of this written before BND so I just kept writing and added some tweaks. I don’t know what this is. Also I am not a professional writer at all so expect that going into this.
You sat cross-legged on your pink rug, your back resting against the painted cedar chest at the foot of your bed. Books lay scattered around your open notebook, and you absentmindedly gnawed at the end of your pen as you reread the same sentence.
The windows beside you were wide open, the sheer curtains blowing gently with the night breeze. You’d long since tuned out the city’s noise. People always imagined New York as something glamorous, but after living there long enough, it became nothing more than blaring horns, distant arguments, sirens and the constant rumble of construction repairing whatever had been destroyed that week.
The main light stayed off, leaving your bedside lamp to cast a warm amber glow across the room. A few candles flickered nearby, making the pages of your notebook dance with shifting shadows.
You stopped reading when your mind became aware of another.
You side-glanced towards the open window.
“You know I can sense you, right?” you called out looking back at your notebook.
Silence.
You pulled the pen from between your lips and when you looked up again, there he was.
Spider-Man stood awkwardly in your window, still dressed head to toe in the familiar red-and-blue spandex. Lately, it felt like that was all he’d ever worn.
One hand rested against the frame while the other was propped in his hip.
He was forcing himself to act casual like he hadn’t just been outside your window for five minutes. Like he hadn’t been admiring you trying to focus on whatever you were reading. Your hair over your shoulders, the pen between your lips that you kept biting down on and apart of him wished it was him-
“I was gonna knock,” he blurted, louder than intended.
“But you didn’t.”
“You… didn’t exactly give me the chance.”
“At my window?”, Your tone was dry but held teasing.
He had never been more grateful to be wearing the mask. He was certain his face was as pink as the night-gown you were wearing.
“…It was open?” He looked back at the window and back to you.
A smile tugged at your lips.
“Hey, last time I tried your front door,” he continued, pointing an accusing finger, “that cat declared war on me.”
“He’s harmless.”
“‘Harmless’-“ He used his fingers to make quotation marks “-doesn’t usually involve attempted murder.”
“You showed up dressed as Spider-Man.” Because it’s not like the cat knew who he was.
“I was working.”
“You scared him.”
He scoffed in disbelief “He scared me.”
“He-“ You emphasized, “-doesn’t like spiders.”
He paused to say something but then muttered under his breath. “Well I don’t like cats but you don’t see me biting him.”
A giggle escaped you. He was ridiculously easy to wind him up.
Peter let out a defeated groan before stepping inside, carefully closing the window so that it wouldn’t slam in the breeze. He wandered over with the sort of tired shuffle that suggested he’d been on his feet for far too long before letting himself drop onto the rug opposite you, crossing his legs to mirror your own.
His mask tilted towards the candles.
“…Are we summoning something?”
You blinked.
“What?”
He gestured vaguely around the room.
“The candles… the circle of books…” He looked between you and your notebook. “I’m just saying, if a ghost appears, I’m leaving. I can’t deal with that today.”
You snorted with a laughter knowing he was half-serious.
“No, you idiot.” With a lift of your finger, the study books closed showing him the front covers. “I’m studying.”
“Oh.”
“You know… like normal people our age.”
He looked down at himself.
“I am currently sitting on your bedroom floor as Spider-Man.”
Touché.
“And you’ve got…” He motioned around the room again.
Then looked back up at you in your frilly gown, one sleeve hanging off your shoulder.
You raised your brow slightly with smile of amusement.
“I’ve got…?”
“…Super cool witchy powers?” He tilted his head which made you believe he was hiding that cheesy grin under there.
You shook your head with a small smile, “By New York’s standards, I’d say we’re probably the normal ones.”
Spider-man considered it for a second before sighing,“…That’s actually a little concerning.”
“It really is.”
He noticed you smiled a lot more with him. Maybe because you were laughing at him but he liked to think he was just hilarious. The way your eyes would twinkle or the way you’d laugh suddenly and place your hand over your mouth to downplay it. It warmed his heart every-time. Every-time he’d decide to keep a distance with you. He didn’t know whether it was a coincidence or a test for him.
You reached over, stacking a few textbooks together.
He picked one up.
“‘Introduction to Quantum Mechanics?’”
“Mhm.”
He opened it, pretending to read.
“I know… some of this.”
“Do you?”
“No.”
“I was gonna say.”
“I recognized ‘quantum’ and ‘mechanics’.”
“Well done, you’ve learnt it all now.” Your words dripped in sarcasm.
He half shrugged, “Well I understand you and that’s a reward in itself.”
You smiled, watching him carefully place the book back where he’d picked it up from.
“Besides, what do you need these for?” He asked, turning his attention back to you.
“Trying to learn abit about myself and what I can actually do or try to do.”
“That’s good. For you.”
He nodded slightly and managed to get his fingers on the hem of your dress. He took the lace frill between his gloved fingers and started playing with it like a child.
You looked at him with amusement.
“Speaking off, I had lunch with Kamala yesterday.” You suddenly remembered.
“Oh?” He said, now not really listening.
“At Dal’s.”
“…Delmar’s.” Or maybe he was.
You frowned, “I knew that.”
“You absolutely didn’t.” His tone was flat.
“I was close.”
“You were alphabetically close.”
You gave him a puzzled look.
“How did you even know that?”
He shrugged, “It’s on my patrol route.” Now tugging at the lace.
“So you’ve just happened to see me there?”
“…Maybe.”
You gave him a look,“Peter.”
He snapped his head up, “What?” His voice went high again.
He cleared his throat,“I’ve… happened to see you there a couple of times.” He said casually.
“A couple?” You questioned, believing it to be more than that.
“…Three.”
“You counted?”
“I didn’t count.”
“Right, you just remembered.” You lightly mocked him.
“I did!”
A smile tugged at your lips,“That’s oddly sweet.”
“Really?” He asked, almost hopeful.
Then you shrug, “Or a little creepy.”
He slouched down,“I was hoping that wouldn’t be it.”
You smiled playfully and nudged his knee with yours.
“Kamala’s been asking about you.”
“Oh no.”
“‘Oh no?’” You brows furrowed and you whacked his hand away.
“Ow-“ He pulled his hand to his chest.
You gasped, “You don’t like her?”
“No-no, I do-I do.”
“That doesn’t sound convincing.”
“It’s not that.” A quiet laugh escaped him. “Last time we talked she asked me, like… seventeen questions.”
“Seventeen?”
“I counted those.”
“Why do you keep counting everything?”
He ignored you, “And in the space of like 5 minutes.”
You extended your legs beside him, “What about?”
“‘Why are there so many rules in time-travel?’ ‘Do the Avengers know fanfiction about them exists?’ ‘And why am I not in the New Avengers?’ ‘Why didn’t Thanos just double the resources in the universe?’” He threw his hands up exasperated.
You grinned.
“Well?”
“I don’t know!” He threw his hands up animatedly.
“You were there.” You pointed
“So were you!” He nudged your finger and pointed back.
You drop the pen and cracked your knuckles, “Yeah I was a little busy trying not to y’know, die.”
“But I’ll tell her you’ll swing by if I see her.”
His hands lifted immediately, “Woah, don’t promise anything.”
“I didn’t.” You already did.
“You implied.”
“I suggested.”
He let out a dramatic sigh and propped his chin on fist.
You smiled fondly, watching him. You always did around him. A part of you wanted to peel the mask off him. But you knew this was ‘Spider-Man’. And technically on duty. Which means he was here for something.
“So,” you said, “you’re either avoiding patrol…”
“I’m not.”
“…or you need something.”
He let out a feigned insulted gasp, “I don’t always need something.”
“You climbed through my bedroom window.”
“I was in the neighborhood.”
“You live twenty blocks away.”
“Can I not just say hello?”
His voice turned smug and his fingers found your ankles, almost caressing it, “You know they do call me the friendly-“
You pulled your ankle back, “Don’t. Finish that.” You shook your head.
He sighed like a child who was just told no, “…Okay.”
“I need your help.” He piped up again.
I knew it.
Your gaze softened, “You know you can just ask.”
“I know.”
He rubbed the back of his neck again.
“I just… don’t want to drag you into things.” His tone shifted heavier and you could tell he was avoiding your gaze.
You extended your hand and placed it on his knee in assurance, “You’re not ‘dragging’ me to anything. It’s my choice.”
He then looked at you and down at your hand. For a moment, he just let himself embrace it.
He tilted his head up, “Have you ever heard of something called V-Max?”
Your eyebrows pinched together.
“Drugs?” You suggested.
“Not drugs.”
He leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees, “I keep hearing the name.”
“From who?”
“Different people.”
“Different how?”
“You know the attacks that have been happening recently?” He asked.
You nodded, “The thing jumping into different bodies?”
“Exactly that. Whoever is behind all this is looking for V-max”
You straightened up, “But nobody actually knows what it is?”
“Nope.” He shook his head.
“So you’ve looked into it?”
“I’ve looked everywhere.”
“Police records?” You questioned.
“Nothing.”
“Online?”
“Nothing.” He shook his head again.
A quiet huff escaped beneath his mask.
“But I did speak to Bill Metzger.”
You quickly recalled where you remembered that name, “The head of Damage Control?”
“Yep.”
“What’d he say?”
“That he’d never heard of it.” He said back almost immediately.
You frowned, picking up on the doubt in his tone,“You don’t believe him.”
Peter was quiet for a beat.
“…I don’t know.”
“I asked Yelena. She didn’t know either.”
“You asked Yelena before me?” You tilted your head slightly.
He paused and you’re certain his white lens widened.
“…No?”
“That’s not the point-“ he waved his hand, “I don’t have any proof.”
“So why ask me?”
“Because…” He shrugged. “I don’t know what I’m chasing.”
You thought about his words momentarily.
“You think Damage Control knows more than they’re saying.”
“I think…” He paused. “I think Metzger knows… something.” The frustration evident in his tone.
“But?”
“But the last thing I need is to start accusing the people who are supposed to be helping this city.”
You nodded slowly, “I get it.”
He let out a quiet breath, “I just… I can’t shake the feeling.”
“And if maybe that thing is a telepath then you could possible track it down - better than anyone else here?” He said quieter, like he didn’t really want to ask.
“You got a face or name?” You ask but you already knew what the answer would be.
“Not yet.”
You clasp your hands together, “If I start trying to go through the minds of everyone in New York, it’ll give me an aneurism.” You said straight and honest.
“I-I know, and I’m not asking that. I’ve seen what can happen when you do that. I just- If I find anything, could you possibly maybe try - when I narrow it down?”
You looked at him for a few moments and for a second you weren’t looking at the mask, you were looking at the eyes behind the lens.
“Yes, I’ll try.” You agreed on a softer tone.
Your hand leaves him and you pick up the pen again, tapping against your notebook.
“Well, I haven’t heard anything about V-Max.”
Spider-man sighed, knowing he wasn’t getting anywhere with this.
“But…”
His head lifted.
“I have heard some things. Not anything specific.”
“But?” He gestured to go on, more intrigued.
Anything would be better than nothing right now.
“I don’t know…” You frowned. “Call it a gut feeling.”
“Telepathy?”
“Gut feeling.”
“The powers?”
“Peter” You said flat.
“Sorry-sorry. It’s just-they’ve done a lot of good, y’know. They clean up after attacks and they keep dangerous tech out of the wrong hands.”
You understand where he’s coming from. Spider-man was working alongside the city right now and he’s already had the world turn against him before.
“I’m not saying they’re the bad guys but you have to remember the way the people believe , the others don’t always.” You advised him.
You gestured between the two of you, “They trust heroes until heroes start asking questions and I mean we’ve seen that first-hand.”
Peter didn’t interrupt.
“Sometimes I feel their fear and doubt.” You paused looking down at your hands.
“That doesn’t stop just because they’ve decided to work with us. Not for us, for themselves.”
Spider-man was quiet but he didn’t look away from you. He knew you had your own fears, mostly about yourself. About not knowing. And he was going through the same thing, not that he’d share it.
“If I were you,” you said quietly, “I’d keep looking into V-Max.”
You looked back up at him and he nodded once.
“But I’d keep an eye on Damage Control too.”
“You really think so?”
You gave a small shrug, “I just think it’s better to be safe than sorry. Hope can turn into fear very quickly, Pete.”
He let out a low exhale and was about to speak up.
Peter suddenly winced, groaning. His hand flew up to the side of his head.
You practically lunged over to him, “Peter?”
“I’m fine.” He said through gritted teeth.
“You’re not fine.” You said concerned, your hands holding him by his shoulders.
“I thought you weren’t getting them anymore.” You said quieter, examining him as he avoided looking at you.
“They’re… mostly gone.”
“Mostly?” You lowered your head.
He looked away.
“Once or twice.”
“They’re manageable.”
You knew that tone. And you knew it meant it definitely was not manageable.
You used one hand to turn his chin so he’d look at you, “Let me help.”
“It’s okay.” He raised his hands to stop you.
“It’ll take a minute.” You pushed, trying to get him to let you help.
“I-I’m fine, really-.”
You reached for the edge of his mask but stopped before you could lift it.
He paused when he felt you about to unravel him. He stiffened up, like he was bracing himself.
You felt his eyes on you but he didn’t stop you.
You peel the mask back enough to rest on the tip of his nose.
His lips pressed into a thin line like he was trying to hide any emotion. To protect you and himself.
Like he hadn’t used these very lips to kiss you some nights. To make you feel at peace when the world was too loud.
His jaw was clenched and tight, and for a second you both held your breath.
You lifted your hand, your fingers grazing his jaw.
You applied a light amount of pressure and the tension beneath your touch eased almost instantly.
He let out a sigh of relief and his mind and senses suddenly became clearer.
His shoulders relaxed.
He looked peaceful. Which for Peter Parker was a rare sight. Something you only ever saw when he’d rarely let his guard down and let you help him. You didn’t understand, you could ease his mind. Help him so much more. But he never wanted that to be your burden.
His head lulled forward and he placed his hand over yours, holding you against him. He laid his other hand on your thigh, feeling your skin through the thin fabric.
You let your eyes close.
His forehead rested against you and then the hand over yours slid down to wrap around your wrist. You turned slightly, nose bumping into his as you let him lean on you.
His fingers tightened around your wrist, and you continued to relieve his mind and body at peace.
You didn’t look into his mind, you never did.
Not unless someone gave permission but even then, a part of you dreaded it. Because whatever emotions they’d felt, it stayed within you. You knew you’d do it for him. But ever since four years ago, this was the closest he would let you come.
BEEP. BEEP..
“Armed robbery in progress. Helll’s Kitchen. Officers requesting immediate assistance.”
The police scanner built into his suit crackled to life.
Peter opened his eyes.
“Close your eyes.” You gently commanded.
“The city’s got great timing.” He forced a light tone and the corner of his lips lifted as an attempted smile.
He wished he could stay. He so desperately wished he would.
Your eyes open and you looked at him in longing and something else… not disappointment, just wistful.
He turned his head, his lips press against your inner palm, lingering for a few moments before he pulled the mask back down.
Your gaze softened and your hand catches his wrist.
“Peter-“
“I have to.” He doesn’t let you finish. Because he knows it’s easier this way. He doesn’t let you ask because when you do it makes him want to just be Peter Parker. But that’s not him anymore.
You let out a heavy sigh and you know what the inevitable is between you two but every night you hope for a different outcome.
“I know.”
He climbed to his feet and crossed towards the window.
You followed behind.
He rested a hand against the frame and turned to you.
“Swing by later?” You offered.
“You’ll still take me in?” His voice was softer and tired.
“Kept you so far, haven’t I?” You attempted to ease the tension.
You felt the more genuine smile on his face this time.
“I’ll hold you to that.” He opened the window again, wide. He climbed over the ledge, one leg still dangling in.
“Be careful,” you murmured.
His head dipped in a small nod.
“Always.”
Then he was gone.
You stood there for another moment before looking down. You used your other hand to trace your fingers over your palm. Where his kiss lingered.
You heard a jingle and snapped your head up to see the familiar black cat perched on your window.
Conspectus | The number one rule of Korea National Sport University is to never allow their elite figure skater and the captain of the ice hockey team be in the same room. Or in their case, on the same ice rink. They are infamously known for riling each other up in any way possible, and for having a mysterious history that even their closest friends know nothing about.
But when their coaches decide it is finally time to put an end to their five year rivalry, the pair of them certainly have very conflicting views about it.
Warnings | Heavy swearing. Angst. Severe injuries and blood. Mentions of trauma. Hospitals. Implied sexual content. Is there going to be a happy ending, you ask? Well, you will just have to find out for yourself! Also, there are many flashbacks throughout this, which are marked by passages of italics. If the line-breaks between scenes are not working, a new scene is signified by a perspective shift.
