Levex

You finished the last set of grand battements, legs burning in that satisfying way that only ballet could deliver. The studio was quiet now, the rest of the company already gone, leaving only the soft hum of the air conditioning and the faint echo of your breathing. You moved to the barre for your final stretches, one hand resting lightly on the worn wood as you lifted your right leg high, folding it into a perfect développé. The mirror reflected the long line of your body—back arched just enough, core tight, the thin fabric of your leotard clinging to your skin from the sweat of rehearsal.

Your phone buzzed on the floor beside your bag. Then again. And again. You didn’t need to look to know who it was.

Still, you lowered your leg gracefully and glanced down. Dean’s name lit up the screen with a string of messages, each one more impatient and teasing than the last.

> Dean: Almost there, baby. You better be ready for me.

> Dean: How’s my favorite ballerina doing? Still stretching that pretty body?

> Dean: Fuck, I’ve been thinking about you in that leotard the whole drive. Hurry up and finish so I can pick you up.

> Dean: 5 minutes out. Don’t make me come in there and drag you out myself.

A small smile tugged at your lips as heat curled low in your stomach. You shook your head, trying to focus, and returned to the barre. You hooked your heel onto the wooden rail, stretching forward over your extended leg until your chest brushed your thigh. The position pulled everything tight—hamstrings, back, hips—and you held it, breathing through the deep burn.

Another buzz.

> Dean: I’m pulling up now. You have no idea what I’m gonna do to you tonight.

You straightened up slowly, rolling your shoulders as the familiar thrum of anticipation settled under your skin. Outside the studio windows, you could already see the headlights of his car cutting through the evening darkness. Dean Di Laurentis had arrived, and from the tone of those texts, he wasn’t planning on being patient for long.

You reached for your towel, dabbing at the sweat on your neck, heart already beating faster than it had during the entire rehearsal. You grabbed your bag, slung it over your shoulder, and pushed open the studio door, the cool night air hitting your flushed skin. Dean’s car was idling right outside, the headlights cutting through the darkness like a promise.

The second you opened the passenger door, his eyes locked on you—dark, hungry, and already undressing you in that way only he could.

You slid into the seat, barely closing the door before you leaned over the console and kissed him. Hard. Dean’s hand immediately cupped the back of your neck, pulling you deeper into it, his mouth hot and demanding against yours. When you finally pulled back for air, his lips curved into that signature smirk.

“Fuck, baby,” he murmured, voice low and rough. He leaned in closer, nose brushing along the side of your neck, inhaling deeply. “I love how you smell when you’re all sweaty like this. Sweet and worked up… like you’ve been dancing just for me.”

You laughed softly, cheeks warming, but the sound died in your throat when his hand slid down your side, fingers catching the edge of your oversized hoodie. The zipper had slipped down a little during the drive over, and as you shifted, the fabric gaped open just enough for him to catch a glimpse of the tight black leotard underneath—clinging to your damp skin, the high cut of it showing off the curve of your waist and the long lines of your legs.

Dean froze for half a second, eyes darkening.“Fuck me…” he breathed, voice dropping an octave. His thumb traced the exposed edge of the leotard, brushing warm skin. “You just made the happiest man in the fucking world, you know that? Sitting here in nothing but this tiny little thing under that hoodie… Christ, I’m already losing my mind.”

His hand lingered, possessive and teasing, fingers pressing lightly against your ribs as he pulled you in for another kiss this one slower, filthier, his tongue sliding against yours like he was already imagining everything he was going to do to you once you got home.

He didn’t pull away immediately. Instead, he rested his forehead against yours, breathing you in again, that perfect mix of clean sweat and your usual sweet scent driving him crazy.“You’re gonna be so flexible for me tonight, aren’t you, baby?” he whispered against your lips, the words dripping with filthy promise.

You couldn’t help it—you let out a soft giggle against his mouth, the sound light and breathless.

“Keep it in your pants, Di Laurentis,” you teased, nipping at his bottom lip before kissing him again, deeper this time, your fingers threading through his hair.

Dean groaned low in his throat, the sound vibrating against your lips. Before you could pull back, his hands gripped your waist and he hauled you across the console with ease, settling you right on his lap. Your knees straddled his thighs, the steering wheel pressing lightly against your back as your hoodie rode up even higher, exposing more of the sleek black leotard underneath.

“Fuck keeping it in my pants,” he muttered, voice thick with want. His hands slid under the hem of your hoodie, palms hot against your bare sides, thumbs stroking the damp fabric of the leotard. “Not when you show up looking like this.”

Dean’s eyes flicked toward the empty parking lot outside, then back to you, dark and wicked.“It’s late… you think anyone’s still coming around here at this hour?” he asked, voice rough as his fingers dug into your hips, pulling you down harder against the growing bulge in his jeans. “Because I don’t know if I can wait until we get home, baby. Not with you smelling like sin and wearing this tiny fucking thing.”

His lips trailed along your jaw, then down your neck, sucking lightly at the sensitive spot just below your ear.“Tell me no one’s gonna walk by and see me fucking you in this car,” he whispered hotly, one hand sliding up to cup your breast through the leotard, thumb brushing over your nipple. “Or tell me you don’t care if they do.”

You let out a breathy laugh, your forehead resting against his as you glanced out the fogging windows at the completely deserted parking lot.“Nope,” you whispered, still giggling softly. “No one’s coming by at this hour. We’re good.”

Dean’s eyes flashed with pure heat. “Good,” he growled. He didn’t waste another second. His mouth crashed into yours in a hungry kiss, all tongue and teeth and raw need. One arm banded around your waist as he somehow managed to maneuver both of you between the seats with that effortless strength of his. You ended up in the back, Dean pulling you down on top of him so you were straddling his lap again, your hoodie now completely unzipped and hanging off one shoulder.

You broke the kiss just enough to laugh against his lips, playful and a little dizzy from how fast he moved.“You’re so crazy, baby,” you murmured, fingers tugging at his hair.

Dean’s hands roamed greedily over your body, sliding under the leotard to grip your ass, squeezing hard as he rocked you against the thick ridge of his cock trapped in his jeans.

“So fucking crazy about you,” he rasped, voice low and wrecked. He kissed you again, deeper, filthier, like he couldn’t get enough of your taste. “Been thinking about this tight little body all damn day. You have no idea what you do to me, ballerina.”

His fingers slipped higher, tracing the edge of the leotard between your thighs, teasing the damp fabric there as he nipped at your bottom lip.“Gonna stretch you out so good tonight… but first I need to taste how wet you already are for me.”

You pulled back just enough to press a hand against Dean’s chest, laughing breathlessly as his fingers kept trying to slip under the crotch of your leotard.“Nuh uh, wait a bit, you greedy boy,” you teased, biting your lip to hide your smile. Your voice came out softer than you meant, already husky from the way he was looking at you.

Dean’s eyebrows shot up, but that wicked grin spread across his face. His hands settled on your thighs instead, squeezing the toned muscle there like he couldn’t stop touching you.“Oh yeah?” he murmured, voice low and rough. “You’re gonna show me that perfect split angle of yours, baby. Right here. I’ve been dying to see how flexible my little ballerina really is.”

You giggled again, cheeks warm, but you shook your head and tugged playfully at the collar of his shirt.“Nuh uh. I just think it’s unfair you’re still all dressed while I’m sitting here in nothing but this leotard and tights,” you said, running your fingers down his chest. “If I’m gonna stretch for you, you have to lose some clothes first, Di Laurentis.”

Dean groaned, the sound deep and needy, his hips rolling up against you so you could feel exactly how hard he was.

“Fuck, you drive me insane,” he rasped, already reaching for the hem of his shirt. He yanked it over his head in one smooth motion, tossing it to the front seat. The sight of his bare chest and those defined abs made your mouth water. “Better?”

His hands immediately returned to your body, sliding up under your hoodie to push it completely off your shoulders, leaving you in just the tight black leotard and the sheer tights that clung to your legs.“Now be a good girl and show me,” he whispered hotly against your neck, teeth grazing your skin. “Spread those pretty legs for me.”

You smiled down at him, slow and teasing, your hands sliding down his bare chest as you rocked your hips once, just enough to make him groan.“Shhh,” you whispered, pressing a finger to his lips. “Let your ballerina have some fun first.”

Dean’s eyes darkened with lust, but he stayed quiet, watching you with that intense, hungry stare that always made your stomach flip. Your fingers trailed lower, dancing over his abs until they reached the waistband of his jeans. You popped the button open slowly, deliberately, then dragged the zipper down. The sound was loud in the quiet car.

You slipped your hand inside, teasing along the edge of his boxers, feeling the hard, hot length of him straining against the fabric. Dean hissed through his teeth, hips twitching up into your touch. “Fuck, baby…” he breathed.

You didn’t answer with words. Instead, you tugged his boxers down just enough to free his cock, wrapping your fingers around the thick, throbbing shaft. He was already leaking at the tip, hot and heavy in your palm. You gave him one slow stroke from base to head, thumb swirling over the sensitive tip, spreading the wetness.

Dean cursed again, head falling back against the seat, one hand gripping your thigh hard while the other fisted in your hoodie.“That’s it,” he rasped, voice wrecked. “Touch me, ballerina. Been hard as fuck for you since I picked you up.”

You leaned down, brushing your lips against his jaw as you kept stroking him with long, teasing pulls, feeling him twitch and pulse in your hand. The way he looked at you—like he wanted to devour you whole—made heat flood between your legs.

Dean’s cock throbbed hot and heavy in your palm, veins pulsing under your fingers as you squeezed just the way you knew he liked.

“You get so fucking hard just thinking about me dancing, don’t you?” you murmured with a playful little smile, eyes locked on his face. “All those tight leotards and splits… bet you were sitting in class earlier imagining me bending like this for you.”

Dean let out a wrecked chuckle that turned into a groan when you swiped your thumb over the slick head again.“Guilty as charged, baby,” he rasped, hips rolling up into your fist. “Fuck, the second I picture you in that studio, legs spread wide, ass up in those tiny tights… I’m done. Look at me. Rock fucking hard because my ballerina’s been stretching all afternoon.”

You giggled softly, leaning in to kiss the corner of his mouth while your hand kept working him, faster now, twisting at the head on every upstroke.“And tonight?” you teased, voice sweet and filthy. “You’re really gonna try to fold me in half, huh?”

Dean’s eyes flashed with pure heat. His hand slid up your thigh, gripping hard as he pulled you closer.“Oh, I’m not gonna try, baby,” he growled, voice low and dripping with promise. “Your pretty little feet are gonna touch your ears by the time I’m done with you. Gonna bend you into every position that tight body can handle and fuck you so deep you forget your own name.”

He groaned again as you squeezed him tighter, precum dripping down over your fingers.“Keep stroking me just like that and I might not even make it to the stretching part… but I’m still gonna have you split open for me tonight. That’s a fucking promise.”

Dean didn’t let you finish another stroke. He surged up, cupping your face with both hands, and kissed you hard deep and possessive, tongue sliding against yours like he was claiming every moan. You melted into it, your hand still loosely wrapped around his cock until he gently pulled it away so he could move.

In one smooth, strong motion, he flipped you onto your back across the backseat. Your head landed on the cool leather, legs parting naturally as he settled between them, his body pressing you down. The car felt even smaller now, windows fully fogged, the air thick with heat and want. “You’re so fucking flexible, baby,” he murmured against your lips, voice rough and low, “but I’m strong. Gonna hold you exactly how I want you. Bend you open and keep you there while I fuck you stupid.”

You let out a soft, breathless laugh, looking up at him with sparkling eyes even as your heart raced.“You’re so cocky,” you whispered, reaching up to thread your fingers through his hair. “I love you.”

The words barely left your mouth before you pulled him down into another kiss, slow and sweet for half a second before it turned filthy again. Dean groaned into your mouth, the sound vibrating through your chest as his hips rocked against you, his bare cock sliding against the thin, damp fabric of your leotard.“Love you too, my perfect little ballerina,” he rasped between kisses, nipping at your bottom lip. “So fucking much it’s ridiculous.”

His hands gripped your thighs, already starting to push them wider, testing that flexibility he was obsessed with.

You smirked up at him, that playful challenge sparkling in your eyes. Without a word, you hooked your hands behind your thighs and slowly opened your legs all the way into a perfect split right there on the backseat feet pointing in opposite directions, the stretch pulling deliciously through your hips and hamstrings.

Dean’s breath caught hard.“Fuck… that’s my girl,” he growled, eyes glued to the way the leotard strained tight over your center. He didn’t wait. His fingers dug into the sheer tights and ripped them right at the crotch with a sharp tearing sound, exposing the damp black fabric of your leotard underneath. With one impatient tug, he hooked it to the side, baring your glistening pussy to the cool air of the car.

Dean groaned deep in his chest, leaning down until his face hovered right there. He inhaled slowly, eyes fluttering half-shut as he breathed you in.“Goddamn, baby… you smell so fucking good when you’re this wet for me,” he murmured, voice thick with lust. “Sweet and needy after all that dancing.”

He wrapped his hand around his cock and gave it a slow stroke before tapping the heavy head against your swollen clit—once, twice, three times—wet smacks that made your hips twitch and a soft whimper slip from your throat.“Shit,” he breathed, doing it again, rubbing the tip in tight little circles over your sensitive bundle of nerves. “Look at you… all stretched open and dripping. You’re gonna take me so deep like this.”

His free hand gripped your thigh, holding you spread exactly where he wanted while he kept teasing your clit with lazy, filthy taps of his cock.

Dean’s eyes darkened with raw hunger as he watched you trembling in that full split. He gave your clit one last firm tap with the head of his cock before gripping both your thighs.“Not like that,” he murmured, voice gravel-rough. “I want you folded.”

He pushed your legs together, then slowly, powerfully, folded you in half. Your knees pressed toward your shoulders until the tips of your pointed toes brushed the sides of your head, your body bent in a deep, obscene stretch that only years of ballet made possible. The position left your pussy completely exposed and tilted up for him, slick and glistening.“Fuck, look at you,” he groaned, lining himself up. “So goddamn flexible for me.”

You barely had time to catch your breath before Dean thrust forward in one smooth, hard stroke—burying every thick inch of his cock deep inside you in a single motion.

A sharp cry escaped your lips at the sudden, overwhelming stretch. He bottomed out completely, hips flush against your ass, filling you so full you could feel him pulsing against your walls.“Shit—baby,” Dean hissed through clenched teeth, eyes squeezed shut for a second as your tight heat clamped around him. “So fucking wet… so deep like this.”

He stayed buried for a moment, letting you adjust, his hands gripping the backs of your thighs to keep you locked in that folded position. Then he opened his eyes, staring straight down at you with pure lust and adoration.“You okay?” he rasped, voice softer for half a second even as his cock twitched inside you. “Tell me you can take it, ballerina.”

You reached up, fingers tangling in his hair, and yanked him down into a messy, desperate kiss. Your lips moved against his with pure need, tongues sliding hot and urgent as you breathed into his mouth.

“Move, Dean,” you whispered against his lips, voice shaky but demanding. “Please—fuck me.”

He didn’t need to be told twice. Dean growled low in his throat and pulled back just enough to slam into you again, hard. His pace turned feral instantly—deep, punishing thrusts that drove his cock into you over and over, the folded position letting him hit so deep it stole your breath every single time. The sound of skin slapping against skin filled the car, wet and filthy, mixed with your broken moans and his rough grunts.

“Fuck—yes, just like that,” he rasped, forehead pressed to yours, eyes locked on you as he railed you. “Taking me so fucking good, baby. Look at you… all bent up and creaming on my cock.”

His hips snapped faster, wild and relentless, the car rocking slightly with every brutal thrust. One of his hands kept your legs pinned high against your shoulders, the other braced beside your head as he fucked you like he’d been dying to all night. Sweat slicked both your bodies, your leotard twisted and ruined, tights torn open.

You could barely think—only feel the way he stretched you open so perfectly, the drag of his thick cock hitting that spot inside you again and again until your eyes rolled back.

“Shit, I love you like this,” he groaned, kissing you hard between thrusts, never slowing down. “My flexible little ballerina… gonna fuck you until you can’t walk tomorrow.”

You both moved together in a frantic rhythm, the car filled with the obscene sound of skin slapping wetly against skin. Dean fucked you with deep, powerful strokes, hips snapping hard enough to make your whole body jolt with every thrust. You met him as best you could in that folded position, rolling your hips up to take him even deeper, your nails digging into his shoulders.

It felt too good.

“Oh my god—Dean!” you cried out, voice breaking into a loud, shameless moan that was almost a scream. You couldn’t hold it back. Every brutal drag of his thick cock against that perfect spot inside you made your vision blur and your toes curl near your ears. “Fuck—right there, baby! It’s so deep—ahh!”

Dean groaned loudly, the sound raw and wrecked as he drove into you even harder, sweat dripping down his chest onto yours.“That’s it, baby—let me hear you,” he rasped, voice hoarse with lust. “Scream for me. Fuck, you’re squeezing me so tight… such a good little ballerina taking every inch.”

Your head fell back against the seat, mouth open as another loud cry tore from your throat. The pleasure was overwhelming, building fast and sharp, your pussy clenching around him with every wild thrust. You were almost screaming now, moans turning high and desperate as he pounded into you relentlessly, the folded position making everything feel impossibly intense. “Dean—fuck—I’m gonna—!” you gasped, voice cracking, legs trembling in his iron grip.

He leaned down and kissed you messily, swallowing some of your cries while still fucking you like he was trying to ruin you for anyone else.

Your walls clenched around him so tightly it was almost painful, the pleasure coiling sharper and hotter with every wild thrust. Dean’s rhythm started to falter, his hips slamming into you harder, deeper, losing all control as he chased the edge right along with you.

“Fuck—baby, I’m so close,” he growled against your mouth, voice wrecked. “Come with me. Want to feel you milking my cock when I fill you up.”

You could only nod frantically, nails raking down his back as another broken scream tore from your throat.

“Dean—yes—oh god, I’m—!”

Your orgasm hit you like a freight train. Your whole body seized up, legs shaking violently in his grip as you came hard around his cock, pussy pulsing and gushing wetly with every brutal snap of his hips. The pleasure ripped through you so intensely your vision whited out and you screamed his name, loud and shameless.

Dean cursed loudly, burying himself to the hilt one last time as he came right with you. His cock throbbed hard inside your spasming heat, pumping thick ropes of cum deep into you while he groaned your name like a prayer, hips grinding against your ass as he rode out every last pulse.

For a long moment, the only sounds in the car were your heavy breathing and the faint creak of the leather seats.

Dean slowly lowered your legs, careful even in his post-orgasm haze, and collapsed on top of you, burying his face in your neck. His arms wrapped around you tightly, holding you close as you both trembled through the aftershocks.“Jesus Christ, baby…” he murmured against your sweaty skin, voice soft and hoarse. “You’re fucking perfect. I love you so much.”

You let out a weak, breathless laugh and hugged him back, fingers threading gently through his damp hair.“I love you too,” you whispered, pressing a soft kiss to his temple. “Even when you’re crazy and fold me like a pretzel in your car.”

His hair is flattened on one side from sleep and curling wildly on the other, a line from the pillow still faintly visible along his cheek. The thin chain around his neck catches the grey morning light coming through the window above the sink each time he reaches for something, flashing briefly against his chest before settling again.

He’s been trying to make coffee for six minutes. She’s been preventing him from completing any individual step for more than twenty seconds.

Garrett reaches for the mugs. She hooks her foot more securely around the back of his knee and pulls. It doesn’t move him far, because he has the stability of a building designed to withstand coastal weather, but it gets his attention. 

He glances over his shoulder, the corner of his mouth already shifting. “What?”

She lifts her brows. “Nothing.”

“Your foot’s trying to climb into my pants.”

“It likes you.”

Garrett turns properly then, abandoning the mugs with the weary acceptance of a man who understands the coffee is no longer the main task. His hands settle on either side of her thighs, palms warm against the cold stone counter, and she catches his chain between two fingers before he can say anything else. 

It’s a gentle pull, barely enough pressure to bring his mouth closer, but Garrett follows immediately, chin tipping down until his breath moves warm over her face.

“Needy this morning,” he murmurs.

She studies the chain rather than him, thumb moving over the small metal links. “That’s rich.”

“Is it?”

“You tried to follow me into the bathroom.”

“You were gone a long time.”

“I was brushing my teeth.”

His mouth twitches. She gives the chain another small pull, and Garrett leans in the last inch without making her ask. 

The kiss lands soft and warm, morning-slow rather than hungry, his mouth tasting faintly of toothpaste and sleep. His hand slides from the counter to the outside of her bare thigh, thumb passing once along the hem of her shorts while she kisses him again because the first one feels too brief now that she has him there.

The new title hasn’t changed the mechanics of Garrett’s mouth. It hasn’t altered the weight of his hand or the rough-soft brush of his curls beneath her fingers or the way his body fits into the space between her knees like it has been doing so for months without formal permission. 

Still, something in her keeps testing it. Pulling him back when he moves away. Touching the chain at his throat. Catching his shoulder when he turns toward the cupboard. 

Because he’s her boyfriend now and her body has interpreted that as unrestricted access to his general vicinity.

Garrett seems to have reached the same conclusion. He kisses her once more, then presses his mouth to the corner of hers, her cheek, the warm place beneath her ear where the jersey collar slips wide over one shoulder. 

His hand spreads over her thigh as she tips her head to give him room, and the small pull through already-tender muscles makes her inhale differently.

Garrett stops. It’s almost irritating, how quickly he catches it. His mouth lifts from her neck, eyes moving over her face with the immediate focus of someone who’s spent enough time in hospitals around her to believe every bodily sound comes with follow-up questions.

“You sore?”

She looks at him. “You’re smug.”

“I’m asking.”

“You’re asking smugly.”

“Can you answer, baby?”

Her fingers stay looped loosely in his chain. “A little.”

Garrett’s mouth curves.

She narrows her eyes. “Don’t.”

He kisses her forehead, the smile still pressing into her skin. “You want ibuprofen?”

The question comes out so sincerely practical that a laugh slips through her before she can stop it. Her throat objects halfway, roughening the sound, and Garrett’s grin deepens into something unbearable.

“Oh, wow.”

She presses her palm over his mouth. “Don’t.”

Garrett kisses the centre of her hand.

“That’s not an invitation to become worse.”

His fingers circle her wrist, holding her hand against his face as he says, muffled into her palm, “Your voice is gone.”

“My voice is fine.”

“You sound like Dean after a three-day bender.”

She pulls her hand away to glare properly. “I worked an eleven-hour shift yesterday.”

“Mhm.”

“I was tired.”

“Right.”

“The heating dries out my throat,” she argues. 

“Baby.”

She catches his chain again, hard enough this time to bring his mouth down before he can finish whatever deeply self-satisfied contribution was coming next. 

Garrett laughs into the kiss, one hand sliding behind her neck while the other grips her thigh more firmly. She bites lightly at his bottom lip because he deserves it. He makes a rough sound and steps closer until the soft fabric of his sweatpants brushes between her knees.

The coffee machine clicks off behind him. Neither of them moves.

Then a floorboard groans in the hallway, followed by the dragging sound of someone approaching the kitchen with no meaningful interest in surviving the morning. 

Garrett pulls back by half an inch. She keeps her fingers around his chain, mostly because releasing him would suggest shame and she’s currently too comfortable for that.

Dean appears in the doorway wearing black sweatpants, one sock and no shirt, his hair standing up at the back as though he’s been electrocuted. He makes it three steps into the kitchen before seeing them. 

His gaze moves from Garrett standing between her knees to her hand wrapped around Garrett’s chain, then to the coffee machine like it has personally betrayed him by placing this scene along the route.

“No,” Dean says.

Garrett doesn’t turn. “Good morning.”

“It isn’t.”

She smiles at Dean over Garrett’s shoulder. “Morning.”

Dean’s expression changes immediately. “Morning, sweetheart. Sleep okay?”

Garrett pulls back enough to stare at him. “What the fuck?”

Dean ignores him and crosses to the cupboard, opening it with the careful dignity of a man refusing to engage with something below his moral standards. “There any coffee?”

“I just made it,” Garrett says.

“Great.” Dean reaches for a mug, pauses, then glances at Garrett’s bare back. “Didn’t realise you still had the upper-body strength. Good for you, man.”

Her face warms instantly. Garrett lets go of her thigh and turns around, placing himself between her and Dean as though modesty can be installed retroactively by shoulder width. “Can you not?”

Dean blinks at him. “Can I not get coffee?”

“You know what you’re doing.”

“I’m standing six feet from the kitchen counter because there’s a private event happening near the mugs.”

She presses her lips together.

Garrett looks back at her, catches the beginning of the laugh in her face and points one warning finger. “Don’t encourage him.”

“I haven’t said anything,” she says smiling.

“That’s because you can’t,” Dean says pleasantly, pouring coffee.

Garrett’s head snaps toward him. “Dude.”

Dean brings the mug to his mouth and blows across the top with complete serenity. “What?” Dean’s eyes widen with exaggerated innocence. “I was expressing concern about the house’s dry air.”

She folds in on herself, laughter catching silently in her chest as she presses her forehead to Garrett’s shoulder. His skin is warm beneath her face. 

Garrett mutters something that sounds like unbelievable and reaches automatically, one hand settling at the side of her neck to hold her there even while he glares at Dean.

Another set of footsteps sounds on the stairs, quicker and heavier. Logan comes into the kitchen in a backwards cap and a faded Bruins shirt, scratching one hand over his stomach. 

He stops beside Dean, takes in the arrangement and looks toward the ceiling. “Huh,” he says. “Still structurally intact.”

Garrett’s shoulders tighten. “Morning to you too.”

“I genuinely thought your headboard was going through the wall.”

“That headboard’s cheap,” Garrett grumbles.

“That headboard’s loud,” Tucker says from the hallway before appearing behind Logan, hair rumpled, grey hoodie pulled over sleep shorts. He carries his phone in one hand and looks more awake than the rest of them. “Or it was last night.”

Garrett turns enough that she can see his face. “Why does everyone keep talking about the headboard?”

The three boys stare at him.

Dean takes another slow drink of coffee. “Did you smack your head?”

She makes the mistake of laughing aloud. Her voice cracks visibly enough that Logan’s mouth drops open.

Garrett points at him immediately. “Don’t.”

Logan shuts his mouth, cheeks puffing as he holds the comment inside. His eyes water with the effort. Tucker looks toward the refrigerator with the strained neutrality of someone witnessing a minor car accident. Dean lowers his mug and bites down on his own knuckle.

“Oh my God,” she groans, putting both hands over her face.

Garrett steps closer at once, crowding between her knees again as he reaches up and catches her wrists. “Hey. They’re assholes.”

“No,” Dean says. “You’re the asshole. We’re witnesses.”

“Hostages,” Logan corrects.

“Tucker made popcorn,” Dean adds.

Tucker’s brows pull together. “I was hungry.”

“You made enough for everyone.”

“You were all downstairs.”

“Because nobody wanted to risk the upper floor.”

Garrett looks at Tucker. “You too?”

Tucker has the decency to appear slightly apologetic. “The vents carry sound.”

“The vents,” Logan repeats darkly. “A design flaw.”

Garrett releases one of her wrists but keeps hold of the other, thumb passing over the inside as he turns back toward the boys. “Okay, why are you all chirping me?”

Dean glances toward her. “Because you’re here.”

“So is she.”

All three faces change. There’s only a small, collective stillness, like Garrett has asked why they don’t kick puppies for sport and the room has to recalibrate around the moral deficit required to form the question.

Dean lowers his mug. “Don’t be dumb.”

Garrett frowns. “What?”

“We’re not chirping her.”

“Why not?”

Logan looks offended now. “Because we have manners.”

Garrett stares at him. “You told a campus cop his moustache looked like a cry for help.”

“He was harassing Tuck.”

“He asked Tucker to move his car,” Garrett argues.

“It was the tone.”

Tucker opens the refrigerator and peers inside. “Also, she’s our friend.”

Dean points his mug toward her, careful not to spill. “She’s basically my little sister.”

Her hands lower from her face. “Basically?”

Dean looks at her with immediate sincerity. “Emotionally. Not biologically. I would’ve remembered you at Christmas.”

“You got Tucker a gas-station gift card for Christmas.”

“He loves fuel.”

“I do drive,” Tucker says, taking the eggs from the fridge.

Garrett’s still looking between them, genuinely bothered by the imbalance. “She was up there too. Louder than me, actually.”

The comment earns him a smack to the stomach. 

“No,” Logan says.

Garrett’s brows draw together. “What do you mean, no?”

“I mean I didn’t hear anything.”

“You just said–”

“Heard you,” Logan says. “Loud and clear. Like a fucking podcast.”

Dean nods. “Mostly you announcing relationship updates.”

Her stomach drops with a warm, humiliating lurch. Garrett’s hand tightens reflexively around her wrist.

“What relationship updates?” she asks grinning, though her voice comes out rough.

Dean’s mouth twitches. “Couldn’t tell you, sweetheart.”

“Selective hearing,” Tucker says, setting the eggs on the counter.

“It’s a trauma response,” Logan adds.

Garrett looks at all three of them, then back at her. His expression has gone from annoyed to openly betrayed. “You were saying it too.”

The boys look away simultaneously. Dean studies the inside of his coffee mug. Logan becomes fascinated by the magnets on the refrigerator. Tucker opens a drawer and begins searching for a spatula that has lived in the same place for two years.

Garrett’s eyes narrow. “Oh, fuck all of you.”

She laughs again, quieter this time, and lets him step back between her legs. He places both hands on her knees, looking up at her like she has personally failed to defend him in court.

“They love me more,” she whispers.

“Apparently.”

“Maybe I’m nicer.”

“You’re not.”

Her foot hooks around the back of his calf again. “Maybe I’m prettier.”

Garrett’s gaze moves over her face, then drops briefly to the jersey hanging loose over her body and the small strip of thigh above the cotton shorts. His annoyance softens around the edges in spite of himself. 

“Yeah,” he says. “That one’s probably true.”

She catches his chain and pulls him in. This kiss is smaller, mostly the press of her smiling mouth to his, but Garrett’s hand moves to her waist like no part of him understands the concept of casual contact anymore.

Dean makes a disgusted sound into his coffee. “See, this is what I mean. She’s being cute. You’re disgusting.”

Garrett kisses her once more before turning his head. “I’m making coffee.”

“You stopped making coffee ten minutes ago.”

“The coffee is made.”

“For her,” Logan says, spotting the second mug near the machine. “You made exactly two coffees.”

Garrett follows his gaze. “Make your own.”

Dean lifts the mug he is already drinking from. “I did.”

“Then why are you still talking?”

“Because your girlfriend’s funny.”

Garrett’s mouth presses together. She can feel the retort building in him before he gets it out, but Tucker interrupts by setting a pan on the stove.

“Eggs?”

“Yes, please,” she says.

Garrett glances at her. “You hungry?”

She makes a considering noise. “Starving.”

Dean opens the bread bag and takes out two slices. “You want toast?”

“Oh– I’m okay.”

He puts the bread in the toaster anyway. “That wasn’t the question.”

Garrett gestures toward her as though presenting evidence to a jury. “There. Chirp her for that.”

Dean gives him a flat look. “We’re feeding her.”

“That’s not chirping,” Garrett frowns.

“She works eleven-hour shifts and thinks crackers are a food group,” Logan says, reaching around Tucker for the orange juice. “There’s no sport in it.”

“It’s actually sad,” Dean adds.

She presses one bare foot against Garrett’s stomach. “Defend me.”

Garrett catches her ankle, palm circling it easily. “Eat the toast.”

“Traitor.”

“Girlfriend.”

The word is quiet, almost absent-minded, but it lands with embarrassing precision anyway. Her toes curl slightly against his skin. Garrett feels it. His eyes lift to hers, and something pleased moves slowly through his expression.

Dean watches both of them and sighs. “I hate that one word has made this worse.”

“You made this worse,” Garrett grumbles. 

“You were excited last night,” she reminds him.

“I was excited that you finally made an honest man out of Graham,” Dean corrects. 

Garrett snorts. “What does that even mean?”

“I don’t know. It’s what people say when a woman saves some asshole from himself.”

“That’s not what happened.”

Dean looks at her. “Is that not what happened?”

She considers Garrett’s hand still warm around her ankle, the coffee cooling behind him because he has once again forgotten to hand it to her, the way he stood outside the hospital asking whether a title could turn him into someone allowed to know she was safe. 

Her chest draws tight around something too soft to expose before breakfast. “Little bit,” she says.

Garrett looks up at her, deeply wounded. “Baby.”

She smiles and draws him closer with her foot until his hips bump lightly against the counter. “But you’re very trainable.”

Logan nearly chokes on the orange juice.

Tucker slides scrambled eggs onto plates while Dean handles the toast with the reckless confidence of someone who didn’t contribute to cooking it. Logan takes bacon from a container in the refrigerator, sniffs it, receives three immediate objections and puts it back. 

The kitchen fills gradually with heat and the warm, buttery smell of eggs, coffee and bread, everyone moving around one another with the unspoken choreography of people who have shared too many mornings in too little space.

Garrett finally remembers her mug. He pours in the small amount of milk she likes without asking, stirs it once and places it into her hands. She takes a sip and makes a soft sound of approval.

“Good?” he asks.

She nods, and he reaches up to push a piece of hair behind her ear. The motion is so gentle and ordinary that it catches somewhere strange. 

His knuckles brush her cheek. His fingers linger near her jaw for half a second before dropping to her knee, and he looks at her with the quiet attentiveness that usually comes after pain, bad shifts or arguments, except nothing is wrong. 

Nobody is bleeding. No doors are locked. His father is nowhere near them. Garrett’s only standing in his kitchen on a cold morning, shirtless and sleep-creased, touching his girlfriend because he can.

She takes another sip to give herself something to do with her mouth.

Garrett’s thumb moves once over her knee. “Away game this weekend.”

Her eyes lift to his.

“You coming?”

The question is casual enough that it could almost disappear into the noise of Dean complaining that Tucker has overcooked one side of the eggs, but Garrett’s attention stays fixed on her face. 

She thinks through her schedule first. No placement. Assignment work she can technically carry with her and then absolutely ignore in a hotel room. The drive is manageable. The ticket probably is too. Then the hotel cost arrives.

Her mouth pulls to one side. “I can’t afford the hotel, baby.”

He smiles immediately. It’s the smile of someone who already encountered this problem in his own head and quietly removed it before asking the question. “I’ll sneak you into my room.”

From inside the refrigerator, Logan says, “Whoa.”

Garrett doesn’t look away from her. “What?”

Logan straightens with a yoghurt in one hand. “Your room?”

Garrett’s thumb continues moving over her knee. “Yeah.”

“Our room,” Logan corrects.

There’s a brief silence.

Garrett glances at him. “You can stay with Dean.”

Dean’s head lifts from his toast. “Why am I being volunteered?”

“Because you love him.”

“I don’t love him enough to sleep beside him.”

Logan looks offended. “We’ve shared rooms before.”

“You kick,” Dean argues.

“You talk in your sleep.”

“I narrate.”

“You said, ‘No, officer, the horse consented,’ at three in the morning,” Logan says, shooting him a look.

Dean’s expression remains completely composed. “Sounds contextual.”

Tucker closes his eyes. “Why was there a horse?”

“It was a dream,” Dean says.

“That doesn’t answer anything.”

Garrett turns back to her as the argument begins widening behind him. His hand slides from her knee to the outside of her thigh, warm and steady beneath the jersey hem. “Come.”

The single word moves through her more softly than it should. She looks past him at Logan, who has now begun negotiating room compensation in the form of Garrett paying for all road snacks. 

Dean’s objecting on principle to having his sleeping arrangements treated like a public utility. Tucker’s trying to determine whether the hotel beds are doubles or queens, believing accurate dimensions may restore order.

Then she looks at Garrett. His hair still flattened strangely from sleep. The faint scratch she left near one shoulder visible when he turns. The chain she’s been using as a personal retrieval system all morning lying warm against his chest. 

He’s watching her without trying to hide how much he wants the answer to be yes. Her foot catches around the back of his leg again.

“Yeah,” she says, smiling before she can stop it. “I wanna come.”

Garrett nods once, like something has settled exactly where he wanted it. His hand squeezes her thigh. “Good.”

She lifts her brows. “Good?”

“Yeah.” He steps closer, fitting between her knees again despite having never moved especially far. His free hand comes up to her face, thumb passing lightly over her cheek. “Want you there.”

There’s nothing polished in the way he says it. Only the plain, warm weight of want you there, spoken while Tucker scrapes eggs from a pan and Logan tries to extort minibar privileges in exchange for losing his bed.

Her chest tightens anyway. She curls two fingers into Garrett’s chain and draws him in, kissing him slowly enough that his hand slides from her cheek to the back of her neck.

Behind them, Logan says, “Okay, but I’m serious. Where exactly am I sleeping?”

Garrett’s mouth stays against hers when he answers, “Not my problem.”

“It becomes your problem when I climb into the other bed at three a.m.”

She laughs into the kiss. Garrett pulls back enough to glare over her shoulder. “You do that and I’m locking you in the hallway.”

Dean picks up one of the plates Tucker has made and brings it toward her. “Here, sweetheart.”

Garrett turns back. “Why are you serving her?”

Dean sets the plate carefully beside her on the counter. “Because you made coffee and then spent fifteen minutes letting her lead you around by the necklace.”

She looks down at the chain still curled around her fingers. Garrett looks down too.

Dean gives a small, vindicated nod. “Exactly.”

Tucker hands Garrett another plate. “Eat.”

Logan takes the final one and leans against the opposite counter, yoghurt abandoned. “I still think I deserve compensation.”

“You’re getting a whole room with Dean,” Garrett says.

“That’s not compensation.”

Dean points his fork at him. “You’re lucky I’m taking him at all. What do I get?”

Garrett looks at her. “Privacy.”

Dean follows his gaze, then closes his eyes briefly as though receiving spiritual guidance. “Right. Yeah. Fine. Separate room. Far end of the hall, ideally.”

“Different floor,” Logan says.

“Different hotel,” Tucker adds.

She hides her smile behind her coffee. Garrett catches it anyway, his hand returning to her knee beneath the edge of the counter.

“See?” he says quietly. “They’re assholes.”

“They’re helping you smuggle me into a team hotel.”

“They’re still assholes.”

Dean points his fork toward Garrett without looking up from his eggs. “And yet we’re not the reason she can barely talk.”

Garrett throws a dish towel at his head.

Dean catches it one-handed and places it politely beside his plate. “Violence won’t restore your dignity.”

“I have dignity.”

Logan looks around the kitchen. “Anybody seen it?”

Tucker shakes his head. “Not since last night.”

Garrett mutters something beneath his breath and turns toward her, clearly expecting support. She takes another bite of toast, chewing slowly as if considering the available evidence.

“Sorry,” she says once she swallows. “Selective hearing.”

For one beat, Garrett only stares. Then his hand tightens around her knee, and she laughs as he leans in, crowding her back slightly against the cupboard. 

His mouth finds her cheek first, then the corner of her smile when she turns her face, the kiss warm and full of the grin he’s trying not to give her.

“My own girlfriend,” he murmurs.

She hooks her heel behind his thigh and keeps him there. 

Across the kitchen, Dean groans so loudly the refrigerator hum briefly loses the competition. Logan throws a crumpled napkin at Garrett’s back. Tucker moves the pan off the warm burner.

Garrett kisses her anyway, one hand sliding into her hair and the other steady on her bare thigh, while coffee cools in her mug and the boys complain around them and plans for the weekend form in pieces across the kitchen: tickets, rides, room keys, Logan’s threatened exile. 

The house is loud again now, properly awake, full of cupboards shutting and forks scraping and Dean insisting he never consented to becoming part of anybody’s romantic logistics.

She keeps Garrett close with two fingers in his chain. He lets her.

to be notified when i post new fics, follow @kooksandpearls-library and turn on notifications! i no longer use a taglist for garrett fics.

It was never easy finding time where all three of you could have a weekend completely free. But the moment you had, Dean had whisked you and Allie away to Cape Cod, where you’d spent most of your time stretched out on Beau’s family’s private boat.

Dean had insisted he wanted nothing but the best for his girls, and his own boat was going through an upgrade.

Weekends like this were your favourite kind of luxury. Dean had picked the destination. Then, Allie had packed your bag before you’d even thought to do it. They remembered your favourite snacks, reminded you to drink water, and quietly took care of all the little things before you’d even noticed they needed doing.

Normally, you were the one making every decision. Between your demanding major and the need to plan three steps ahead these days, your brain rarely got a chance to switch off. By the end of the semester, even deciding what to eat for dinner felt exhausting.

But being with Dean and Allie felt like finally being able to take a deep breath after being constrained for so long. You so naturally let go, trusted them to know you in a way that you didn’t know yourself. With them, all you had to do was exist and that was enough.

Behind you, Allie shifted on the lounger until her knees rested on either side of you. She leant forward, her chest warm against your back as she loosely wrapped her arms around your waist. the familiar scent of her perfume mixed with the salty summer air had you relaxing almost instantly.

The afternoon grew warmer as the boat drifted across the water, the sun beating pleasantly against your skin.

“I think it’s time for sunscreen,”  Dean suddenly announced, reaching into the cooler for another bottle of water.

You instinctively reached for the sunscreen beside your towel. Dean’s hand shot out to catch your wrist. “No.”

Blinking, you turned looked up at him. “No?”

“No,” he repeated, gently taking the bottle from your hand. “Your only job today is to sit back, look beautiful, and let us take care of you. Can you do that for me?”

Heat crept into your cheeks despite the breeze; it always did take a reminder for you of your role. “Yes, Dean,” you whispered.

“Good girl,” Allie praised softly, her lips brushing just beneath your ear. “You’re doing so well already.”

You shifted against her, she knew how much you liked praise and always made sure to keep you full of it.

Dean squeezed a generous amount of the sunscreen onto Allie’s palm.

“It’s cold,” she warned you.

The warning was appreciated, but it didn’t stop you from jumping slightly as the first touch of the cream hit your shoulder.

“I did warn you,” she giggled.

“I know,” you whined.

Dean laughed from where he sat in front of you both, one hand absentmindedly rubbing slow circles over your knee while the other rubbed the cream over your leg. Behind you, Allie carefully worked the sunscreen across your shoulders and down your arms.

“Lean forward for me, babe, so I can get your back,” Allie murmured, her hands gently guiding you forward. You complied easily, leaning forward and sighing as she massaged it into your back.

Neither of them rushed.

Allie made sure to cover every bit of exposed skin, even lifting your arms so she could get the backs of your hands before carefully rubbing over and between your fingers.

“There,” she said proudly. “No sunburns on my watch.”

Dean leant forward, studying you with exaggerated concentration. “Hmmm, I think you missed a spot.”

“What? Where?” Allie frowned, she took her job very seriously.

“Right...” Dean cupped your cheek, his expression looking far too serious for about half a second before he leant in and pressed a deliberately sloppy kiss to your mouth. “...here.”

You giggled against his lips as Allie theatrically gagged behind you. “Oh, boo!”

Dean pulled back just enough to look at her over your shoulder, one eyebrow arched. “So, you don’t want one?”

“When did I say that?” She retorted.

“Did you not just boo me?”

“I was booing the drama.”

Dean grinned. “You wouldn’t love me without the drama.”

Allie huffed before reaching over your shoulder, wrapping her hand around the back of Dean’s neck, and tugging him across the small space. “Shut up and kiss me, Di Laurentis.”

Dean barely had time to laugh before she gave him a quick kiss. He kissed her back eagerly, before she shoved him away with an eyeroll.

Nestled comfortably between them, you couldn’t help but smile. This was where you always loved being, sandwiched in the middle of their constant back and forth, equal parts flirting and bickering.  

“I could get used to this,” you sighed.

“Aren’t you already spoilt?” Allie teased, pinching your waist lightly.

“I am,” you admitted, “you really know how to look after a girl.”

“That was the plan,” Dean said as he reached into the cooler for snacks. “You’ll never be able to settle for less than us.”

Leaning further back into Allie, you smiled once again. The most difficult decision you had to make right now was whether to take a nap now, or after lunch. Thankfully, it was one that Allie and Dean were more than happy to make for you.

“hey, hey..”

her voice was a whisper.

“stand for me, please.”

you couldn’t.

“you’re okay, it’s okay..”

a lie.

“i got you.”

the gym faded out - the buzz of sneakers and chatter all dulled as the pain came into full focus. you blinked fast, willing the pain to pass but the throb only spread deeper.

when the nurse rushed over it felt like background noise. your brain locked onto the way paige’s thumb brushed the side of your hand, anchoring you.

aziaha slipped under your other arm, voice low and steady as she helped carry you towards the bench. chris stood midcourt just watching. when your blurry gaze found his, he sighed hard and shook his head, turning away, already running worst-case scenarios through his head. nai looked at you with a curious eye, a ‘you okay?’ kind of look, and you nodded yes.

the nurse was cool and quick when you sat down on the bench. she pressed her fingers into and around your kneecap, asking questions as she went along.

“where does it hurt?”

“everywhere.”

paige crouched on the bench next to you as the nurse continued to examine you, one hand resting on your lower back. aziaha stood next to her, grabbing paige’s shoulder like she needed steadying.

“let her work,” chris said, walking over. “you two, back on the court.”

paige’s head snapped up, “wait-“

“nope, cmon. let her breathe paige.”

paige looked at you hesitantly, waiting for you to give a reason for her to stay. but you didn’t wanna hold her back.

“it’s okay guys.” you said.

paige nodded and stood up slowly, her hand stroking your back as she went, a silent reassurance. and then, she turned away, aziaha walking beside her as they got back on the court.

they settled into a passing drill together. paige gave the ball a spin, then fired it towards aziaha with the snap of her wrist. she caught it clean and they exchanged something you couldn’t hear. a smile, a joke, they laughed together and fell into a rhythm.

it wasn’t really jealousy, more dull. it was nobody’s fault but your own that you chose to feel irked by something so small.

paige didn’t look at you as she played, she was in her element with the ball in her hands. watching the two of them laugh together under the court lights, your chest tightened. you’re supposed to be her duo.

that was practice, and now? you’re still benched for indiana. the pain had already subsided. but you’re not in the tunnel with the others, not running out under the lights, not lacing up.

you’re wrapped in your dallas hoodie on the sideline, legs outstretched with one bound in a black brace that hugs the joint tight. your hand smooths over the brace, like it’ll heal instantly with the pressure.

the crowd roars as names are called, and paige gets the loudest pop. 20,000 fans, historical. you should be on the floor, soaking it all in. instead, you’re swallowed by it.

you inhale and it almost stings, a mixture of pride and jealousy rising in your chest like smoke. the arena feels too big from this angle, too bright.

chris steps beside you.

he doesn’t look down when he talks.

“back at practice tomorrow, yeah?”

you squeeze your eyes shut and nod.

the team rolls out onto the court but for now you keep your head down. everything still feels slow and you hate it, watching like you’re stuck behind a glass pane just forced to observe.

chris calls out the names of the starters and you finally open your eyes to look at the court. paige is locked in already, lips pressed tight and head nodding at something arike said. then, her eyes flick towards you, just briefly. you give her a half smile, one that doesn’t touch your eyes,and she returns it, looking away just as fast.

the first few possessions are clunky, both teams feeling eachother out, but then something clicks. paige stands at the center of the court - tall and calm. she bounces the ball once, twice, then seamlessly threads a pass to aziaha cutting in from the wing.

you know that pass, you’ve caught it hundreds of times. but it’s not you this time, she’s throwing it to someone else.

aziaha drains the mid-rage, easy and fluid. the arena erupts.

paige jogs back on defense with a grin, bumping aziaha’s shoulder as they fall into step. it’s a natural chemistry, you think to yourself.

the bench explodes.

but you don’t blink.

by the second quarter, indiana is running the game. dallas is trailing by 20 and it seems like its only getting worse.

but, paige starts heating up.

she crosses over once, splitting two defenders, and finishes through contact. light work for her. the crowd screams, but she doesn’t smile yet, she’s too dialed in.

when she turns to run back, her eyes flash to you on the bench clapping for her, and she finally smiles.

your stomach twists.

the ball is moving faster now, and on the next play, paige swings it across the court without even looking - right into aziaha’s hands. another bucket.

they run at each-other and shout, grinning ear to ear, hands on each others shoulders.

nai leans towards you and hums in a suspicious tone.

“hmmmm. aziaha’s getting close, huh?” her eyebrow arches up.

“don’t starttt, nai.”

her voice drops to a whisper,

“what!? you got nothing to worry about anyway. she doesn’t look at anyone the way she looks at you.”

“but we aren’t even..”

“even…..???” she quirks.

you face her and attempt to look serious.

“focus on the game, dijonai.”

in a second you both start laughing, hands flying to your mouths to stifle the giggles, but you’ve both been caught on the big screen. oops..

but now, you feel better - the occasional tease from teammates on you and paige is kind of comforting, even when you don’t know what it is yet.

you didn’t join the huddle in the lockers at half time, instead you were dragged away by trainers into the empty room just across. they asked you the general questions, how you’re holding up, does it hurt here? what about here? how’s the swelling?

you answered mindlessly, attention drawn to the sound of paiges laughter. the locker room door is cracked open just enough.

paige is loud and breathless when she speaks. it comes out muffled due to the distance.

“z, that play was all you.”

it hurts more than it should.

by the last quarter, everyone is gassed. earlier, paige made another seamless play with aziaha and they bumped shoulders again, paige reached up to ruffle her hair. its still hitting you now, the jealousy clouding your judgement of the game.

paige is at 27, still clawing for points in her last few minutes. she’s carrying the team on shaky legs, and you can see the stiffness clearer whenever she stills on the court. at one point you both glance at eachother and her jaw flexes. it yanks you back to a memory, like a string tied to your ribs.

-

you’re half in her lap, half on the couch in her apartment. there’s game film playing on the tv but it’s muted, the light casted from it flickers over her face. you weren’t talking, you didn’t really need to, that’s how it always is.

her fingers danced on your thigh. she was the first to lean in - as usual. she kissed you with a lazy, practiced confidence. soft and familiar, with no trace of hesitation.

her hands found your jaw and your hands twisted into her sweater. the kiss deepened but stayed slow, neither of you were in a rush.

at some point you just were resting on her shoulder, and she returned to running a thumb along your thigh absentmindedly.

no questions. no confusion. this was what you did, and it felt normal, it had been your normal for weeks.

-

you’re brought out of the memory by the buzz of the crowd. the wings can’t close the gap and the fever have now basically pulled the win for good. chris pulls paige out with four minutes left and she jogs toward the bench.

there’s a cold towel to her neck, jersey clinging to her body with sweat. you can’t help but stare. she walks slowly towards you and doesn’t sit down immediately. you catch each others eyes and just stare.

“i wish you were out there.” she says, softly, just for you.

your throat tightens.

“yeah, me too.”

post-game you stay seated long after the crowd dissapears, your knee feels stiffer, heavier. in the locker room, there’s a humming but nobody is saying much, not after a loss like that. your arms rest on your knees and you let your head rest on the locker rooms bench.

across from you, paige pulls her shirt over her head, muscles taut and still glistening from the game. she’s quiet too, focused on stretching her wrists and arms.

she hasn’t looked at you since the game ended, but you’ve felt her orbit around you. like she’s waiting for you to say something, to tell her what’s wrong.

you want to be mad, jealous, distant. all of it, but instead? you feel small, tired and left out. alone in a kind of way that paige only seems to notice.

when the room clears out you start to zip up your bag, and suddenly she’s there.

paige drops to sit next to you, gently prying your hand away from the strap of your bag. her hands are warm and they adjust to hold both of your own. her body faces you.

your eyes meet.

finally you spoke. “you played so good.”

she smiled but brushed off the compliment.

“I missed you out there today.” her voice low. she wasn’t just referring to your playing presence, but just the real you. today, you were quiet, tense. not as loud for the team as you’d usually be. not as obvious with your cheers and game talk. this whole injury had you thinking about what you really meant to the team, maybe more so to paige.

you laugh, short and somewhat bitter.

“you say that like it means something.”

“it does.”

she’s still holding your hands, fingers brushing yours. you look at her flushed face, hair a little messy and curled at the base of her neck, the towel still draped on her shoulders.

you stare back, vulnerable and tired, terrified to ask what this is or what you are to her.

“i don’t know what im allowed to feel.” you whisper.

“you’re not mine, but i can’t. i felt sick watching you play with her. i felt like I wasn’t a part of anything, i hated it.”

she knew you were talking about aziaha, and she pressed her lips together. processing, understanding.

“should i be jealous? like- i don’t know. can i feel like that. is it that serious? i’m sorry, i’m being weird.”

paige doesn’t flinch, she doesn’t look uncomfortable or caught off guard.

“you’re not being weird, baby.” she says softly.

“you’re stressed and hurt. I know I was with aziaha the whole game, and I know watching that hurt because I feel it too when I watch you play without me.” her hand moves to cup your cheek and you lean into it without thinking. the ache in your knee, the roar of the crowd, aziaha on her hip all game, it all disappears.

“i was thinking about you the whole time. every pass and shot, i was thinking about you. you’re not out of this. I get it.”

you look at her through your lashes, embarrassed but loving. you want this with paige, you want to go further. you want everyone to know she’s yours, and you are hers.

she speaks again, this time her voice a rare shy tone. “do you wanna come home with me? we don’t have to do anything or like… yeah.. let’s just talk. about all of it, us. or not? whatever you want.” she rushes the last part, a red blush flooding the tips of her ears.

you lean into her and smile. “yeah, I do.”

her forehead pressed against yours and she smiles back. then, she kisses you. unhurried and meaningful, her hand resting on the skin of your neck and jaw.

then - a cough.

you both look to the door at once.

arike stands in the doorway, holding her water bottle like a mic with her mouth dropped open but smirking.

“oh! my bad guys.” she says, grinning.

“didn’t mean to interrupt the post-game press conference..”

you all laugh, but you drop your head in your hands. paige groans quietly and leans her head on your knee.

“training tomorrow will be fun.”

————————————————————

this like one of my first attempts at a fic and also in wnba so hope yall like it please leave requests my brain does not go well when it comes to having ideas 🥲

She doesn't, obviously. She never could say no to your brother.

That's what she tells herself as she pulls off the PCH and onto the long coastal road that winds toward the address Tyler texted her three days ago, windows down, the smell of salt air replacing the recycled AC she's been breathing since Connecticut.

It's the last week of June. Her season is over , her team fell in the second round, which still sits in her chest like a stone she can't cough up, and when Tyler had called two weeks ago with the offer of a summer at his family's beach house, she'd said yes before he'd even finished the sentence.

"You need to decompress, Paige. You always do this! you lose and you disappear into a gym somewhere and don't come out until October. Just come. The house is huge. My parents are barely there. It'll be like college, minus the dining hall food."

She'd laughed at that. It felt like the first real laugh she'd had in weeks.

What Tyler had failed to mention, conveniently, she thinks now, gripping the steering wheel a little tighter as the house comes into view at the end of the private drive, is that she wouldn't be the only guest.

The house is beautiful. Of course it is.

She's known Tyler since they were both eighteen, freshman orientation at UConn, and she's always known his family had money the way some people have good bone structure. quietly, obviously, like it was just a fact of nature.

But she's never actually been here before. He talked about it constantly — "the Malibu house, the Malibu house" — and now she understands why.

It sits right on the bluff, all white cedar shingles and floor-to-ceiling glass, a wraparound deck that looks straight out over the Pacific. The sun is already dipping toward the water, painting everything gold and coral, and for a moment Paige just sits in her car with the engine off and lets herself feel something other than the weight of the season she couldn't finish the way she wanted.

Then the front door opens.

And everything she thought she was feeling gets knocked clean out of her.

°•○●○•°

You don't see her at first. You're looking back over your shoulder, laughing at something Tyler said from inside the house, one hand braced on the doorframe, the other holding a glass of white wine.

You're wearing a white linen dress that the ocean breeze is doing absolutely nothing to keep still, your hair longer than Paige remembers, sun-streaked at the ends. You look like a painting someone made specifically to ruin her summer.

When you turn and see the car in the drive, your expression shifts. Surprise, then recognition, then something that smooths itself out so quickly Paige almost misses it.

You smile.

"Paige."

Just her name. Just one word. But you say it like you've practiced being casual about it, and she doesn't know what to do with that.

She gets out of the car because she has to. She grabs her bag from the back seat because her hands need something to hold.

She walks up the stone path because Tyler is already appearing behind you in the doorway, arms open, grinning that grin that hasn't changed since he was eighteen.

"She lives!" he says, pulling her into a hug that lifts her off the ground slightly, which she tolerates because she's known him long enough to have no dignity left around him. "I was starting to think you weren't coming."

"Traffic on the 1," she says into his shoulder.

"It's always the 1." He pulls back, holds her at arm's length, looks her over with the focused concern of someone who has watched her play basketball for seven years and therefore knows how to read her body the way other people read faces. "You look tired."

"Gee, thanks,ty ."

"I mean it affectionately." He releases her, steps aside, and gestures at you with the casual ease of a man who has absolutely no idea what he's just done. "You remember my sister."

Paige looks at you.

You look at her.

"Yeah," Paige says. "I remember."

The thing is, she does remember. That's the problem.

She remembers you at fifteen, all elbows and attitude, rolling your eyes at her and Tyler from across the living room while they argued about basketball stats. She remembers you at seventeen, sharper somehow, quieter, reading thick books on the couch with your legs thrown over the armrest while the rest of the house was loud around you.

She remembers Tyler saying, offhand, "my sister got into Harvard" like it was the most expected thing in the world, and Paige had thought, of course she did.

She does not remember you looking like this. Gone was the nerd that sat in her room all day with braces and glasses too hig for her face. Your glasses turned to contacts and your braces were gone and replaced with perfect pearly whites.

She tries not to think about it too hard as Tyler gives her the tour, the kitchen that opens onto the deck, the living room with its enormous sectional and fireplace, the bedrooms upstairs with their ocean views.

You trail along behind them, refilling your wine glass at some point, offering one-word commentary that makes Tyler groan and makes Paige bite the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling.

Your room is at the end of the hall. Hers is two doors down.

Great.

"Dinner's at eight," Tyler says, stopping at her door. "I'm grilling. Don't argue with me about it."

"I wasn't going to argue with you about it."

"You were thinking about it." He points at her face. "I know your argument face. Get settled, come down whenever." He claps her on the shoulder and disappears back down the hall, already pulling out his phone, already distracted, already Tyler.

She pushes open her door and drops her bag on the bed.

The room is airy and white, with a sliding glass door that opens onto a small private balcony. She stands out there for a minute, hands on the railing, looking at the water. The sun is almost gone now, just a thin line of fire at the horizon. The waves are steady and low. Everything smells like salt and warm wood.

She hears the balcony door two rooms down slide open.

She doesn't look over.

She goes back inside and starts unpacking.

°•○●○•°

Dinner is hard but Tyler makes it easy he always does, filling silence with commentary, asking Paige about the season with enough gentleness that it doesn't feel like picking at a wound.

You sit across from Paige at the outdoor table, legs tucked under you in your chair, eating grilled salmon and asking your brother questions about his job in that way you have of sounding genuinely interested while also being slightly devastating about it.

"You're working sixty-hour weeks for a firm that made how much last quarter?" you say, tilting your head.

"A lot," Tyler says.

"And you're happy?"

"I'm comfortable."

"Mm." You take a sip of wine. "Those aren't the same thing."

"Y/N is pre-law," Tyler says to Paige, as though Paige needs the footnote. "She's going to save the world and make me feel bad about my life choices simultaneously."

"I'm in law school, actually," you correct mildly. "Second year."

Paige does the math without meaning to. You're twenty. Second year at Harvard Law at twenty.

She knew you were smart, she always knew that, but sitting across from you in the warm light of the deck, watching you talk about constitutional litigation with the same ease most people use to talk about the weather, she feels the number land differently than she expected.

Twenty.

She's twenty-five. She's been in the WNBA for two years. She's been playing basketball since she could walk. She has a brand and a platform and a championship she still hasn't won. She has a life that is loud and watched and scheduled down to the hour.

And you are twenty years old and already more certain of yourself than most people she's ever met.

She looks away.

"What about you?" you ask.

She glances back. You're looking at her directly, the way you've been careful not to do for most of the evening. Your eyes are steady. Curious. Like you're used to asking questions people don't expect.

"What about me?"

"Are you happy?" A beat. "Or just comfortable?"

The table is quiet for a second. Tyler is looking between the two of you with the mild alarm of someone who has realized a conversation has moved somewhere he wasn't tracking.

Paige holds your gaze.

"I don't know yet," she says honestly.

You nod, like that's an acceptable answer. Like you respect it more than if she'd said yes without thinking."Fair enough," you say, and look back at the water.

Eventually, the house quiets down.

Tyler goes to bed at eleven, citing an early call in the morning. You disappear not long after, saying goodnight without ceremony, barefoot on the deck stairs, wine glass in hand.

Paige stays outside with a beer she stopped drinking an hour ago, watching the water go dark and listening to the waves.

She stays out there long enough that the moon clears the roofline and the air gets genuinely cold and she has no more excuses.

She goes inside. Locks up. Climbs the stairs.

The hall is dark and quiet. Your door is closed. There's no light under it.

Paige stands outside her own room for a moment, hand on the door handle.

She's Tyler's sister, she thinks.

She's twenty years old. She's your best friend's little sister who you haven't seen in years and who is now somehow the most unsettling person you've ever shared a dinner table with and you have an entire summer left.

She goes inside.

She does not sleep for a very long time.

°•○●○•°

The first thing you notice about Paige Bueckers in the morning is that she runs.

Not like a casual, clear-your-head kind of run. Like an extreme run. You're up at six-thirty because you've never really been able to sleep past sunrise, some deeply annoying habit your body picked up during your first year of law school and never let go of, and you're standing at the kitchen counter waiting for the coffee to finish when you see her through the glass.

She's already on the beach. Tank top, shorts, hair pulled back, earbuds in. Moving like the sand isn't even a factor.

You watch her for probably longer than you should before the coffee maker beeps and gives you something else to do with your hands.

Tyler is useless before nine. You've known this your whole life. He comes downstairs at eight-fifty looking like he lost a fight with his own pillow, pours himself coffee without speaking, sits at the kitchen island and stares at the wall for a full four minutes before he becomes a person again.

You're used to it. You grew up with it.

What you're less used to is Paige coming through the back door at seven-fifteen, flushed from the run, pulling her earbuds out, going straight for the fridge like she owns the place.

Which, fair– she and Tyler have had that kind of friendship since college. The kind where you stop being a guest in each other's spaces pretty fast.

She doesn't notice you at first.

You notice everything about her.

The way she's breathing hard but not wrecked by it.

The way she grabs the orange juice and drinks directly from the carton and then seems to remember herself and checks over her shoulder.

The way she relaxes when she thinks no one's watching, shoulders dropping, jaw unclenching, like the version of Paige that exists when no one's looking is softer than the one she leads with.

Then she turns around and sees you at the counter and the soft thing shutters closed again.

"Morning," she says.

"You ran," you say, because apparently that's what your mouth decides to do.

She looks down at herself like she's confirming. "Yeah."

"How far?"

"Five miles maybe. The beach goes on for a while."

You nod. Pour your coffee. Slide the second mug you already pulled down toward her side of the counter without really thinking about it, because you'd heard her leave and figured she'd want something hot when she got back. It's not a big deal.

It's just coffee.

Paige looks at the mug. Looks at you.

Doesn't say anything. Just picks it up.

The day goes on and the lingering looks dont stop.

Tyler has a call at nine that runs until noon, which he apologizes for approximately seven times before disappearing upstairs with his laptop. You tell him it's fine. Paige tells him it's fine. You both mean it, probably for different reasons.

The house goes quiet in that particular way beach houses do in the morning — all light and salt air and the sound of waves doing most of the heavy lifting.

You take your coffee out to the deck. Paige follows, which you maybe weren't expecting, and sits in the chair diagonal from yours rather than the one directly next to you, which you maybe clock more than you should.

For a while neither of you says anything. Which should be awkward. Isn't, really.

The water is ridiculous this morning. All deep blue and glittering, the waves easy and slow.

There's nobody else on the beach yet, just some birds picking at the tide line and a sailboat way out on the horizon doing absolutely nothing at a very elegant pace.

"You always been a morning person?" Paige asks eventually.

"Since first year of law school. My body just decided six-thirty was a reasonable time to be conscious and never went back."

She makes a face. "That sounds like a nightmare."

"It was at first. Now I kind of like it. Everything's quiet." You look out at the water. "You're up early too."

"I run every morning. Doesn't matter where I am."

"Even in the off-season?"

She wraps both hands around her mug. "Especially in the off-season."

You don't push on that. You'd watched enough of her season, more than you'd told anyone, honestly, more than made total sense, to understand what the second round exit had cost her. It was written in how she carried herself like she was still doing the math on something that didn't add up yet.

"Tyler says you're going back to training in September," you say instead.

"August, probably."

"That's not much of a summer."

She glances at you sideways. "What do you do with yours? Between semesters."

"Read. Mostly." You tuck your feet up onto the edge of the chair. "I had an internship last summer. Public defender's office in Boston. This summer Tyler basically begged me to come here first before I find something else, so." You gesture loosely at the ocean. "Here I am."

"Harvard Law at twenty," Paige says. Not mean. Not sycophantic either. Just factual, like she's been sitting with it.

"Don't make it weird."

The corner of her mouth moves. Almost a smile. "I'm not making it weird."

"You said it like it was a diagnosis."

"I said it like it was impressive."

You look at her. She looks back. The almost-smile doesn't go anywhere.

"Tyler brags about you constantly," she says. "Like, constantly. I've known your GPA for three years."

"Oh god."

"3.98."

"I'm going to push him off this deck."

She does smile then, and it does something completely unreasonable to the morning. It's not like you haven't seen Paige Bueckers smile before, you grew up watching her come through your front door

you watched her play basketball on TV, you've seen her in interviews and on her Instagram and in all the places she exists publicly. But in person, six feet away, post-run with her coffee going cold in her hands, it's different in a way you don't have a clean word for.

You end up on the beach by ten.

It's not a planned thing. You'd gone inside to get sunscreen and come back out to find Paige already heading down the steps to the sand with two towels under her arm, and it would've been weirder to not follow than to follow, so you followed.

She picks a spot close to the water. Spreads her towel, sits down, pulls her knees up. You drop yours a foot or so away and lie on your back with your arm over your eyes and just let the sun do what it wants.

For a while it's just nice. Easy in a way you didn't really expect. The waves. The heat. The sound of the occasional bird. Paige doesn't feel like someone you have to perform for, which is more unusual than it should be.

Law school is full of people who make you feel like every conversation is a deposition.

"Can I ask you something?" you say to the inside of your elbow.

"Sure."

"What's it actually like. Playing in the WNBA."

A pause. "What do you mean."

"I mean , you've been doing this since you were what, eight? Like this has been your whole life. You go out and play in front of thousands of people and everyone has opinions about everything you do and your career has a clock on it in a way that most careers don't." You move your arm and look at the sky. "I just wonder what that actually feels like from the inside. Not the press answer."

She's quiet for long enough that you think maybe you overstepped.

"Honest answer?" she says finally.

"Yeah."

"It feels like the only thing that makes complete sense and also the most pressure I've ever felt in my life at the same time. Like every day." She pulls at the edge of her towel. "I love it more than anything. And it's also the thing that scares me most. Those two things don't cancel each other out, they just kind of exist together."

You think about that.

"That's how I feel about law," you say.

She turns her head and looks at you.

You turn yours and look at her.

You're close enough that you could count the freckles across her nose from here. You don't. You're careful not to.

"Yeah?" she says.

"Yeah."

Another beat. The wave that comes in is bigger than the others and rushes up the sand closer than expected, stopping just short of your towels, and you both react at the same time sitting up fast, pulling your things back, and then you're both just sitting there closer than you were before, laughing a little breathlessly at nothing.

Her shoulder is almost touching yours.

She notices. You feel her notice.

She shifts back. Just barely. Just enough.

"We should probably move back," she says.

"Probably," you agree.

Neither of you moves for another scond.

Then you both do, at the same time, gathering towels and relocating up the sand without making it a thing, talking about nothing, whether Tyler's going to actually grill again tonight or if you can convince him to go into town for food, what the water temperature is probably like, nothing — and it's fine.

It's totally fine.

°•○●○•°

Tyler emerges from his call at noon looking mildly traumatized and immediately improves upon seeing that you've brought lunch stuff back from the little market down the coast, bread, good cheese, tomatoes, some kind of fancy chips Paige picked up because she said she'd been thinking about them for an hour.

The three of you eat on the deck and Tyler is loud and funny and completely himself and it's easy in the way that being with your brother has always been easy, that specific comfort of someone who has known you your whole life.

You're grateful for it. Genuinely.

But you're also aware, in some back corner of your mind, that Paige laughs differently when Tyler's there. More open. Less measured.

Like with Tyler around she knows exactly who she is in the room, and without him she's still figuring out who she is around you specifically.

You don't know what to do with that information.

You file it away somewhere and eat your lunch and let Tyler talk.

It's not until later when it was almost nine, the sun fully gone, Tyler on the phone with someone from work inside that it actually happens.

You're on the deck with the string lights on and a glass of wine and your property law notes open on your lap because old habits, and Paige comes out and drops onto the couch across from you and looks at the notes and says:

"You're studying. On vacation."

"It's light reading."

"It's property law."

"I find property law soothing."

She stares at you. "Something is genuinely wrong with you."

"Multiple people have said that."

She shakes her head but she's smiling and she pulls her own phone out, probably to watch film or scroll or something, and for a while you're just both there. In the quiet. In the lights. The ocean going dark beyond the railing.

At some point you look up and she's not on her phone anymore.

She's just sitting there looking at the water with an expression you don't have a name for. Something unguarded. Something she didn't mean to leave visible.

You look back down at your notes.

You read the same paragraph four times.

You don't retain a single word of it.

The next day, it too hot for morning.

That specific Malibu heat that doesn't mess around, the kind that comes off the water and the sand at the same time and just sits on you.

You'd been inside most of the morning, coffee, notes, a call with your study group back in Boston that ran longer than it needed to,and by the time you come downstairs in your bikini with a towel over your shoulder, Tyler and Paige are already on the deck.

Tyler doesn't even look up from his phone.

Paige looks up.

And then looks away so fast she almost gives herself whiplash.

You clock it. You don't say anything about it. You go to the fridge and get a water bottle and when you come back through the sliding door Paige is very focused on something on her phone screen that she's definitely not actually reading.

"Beach?" you ask, mostly at Tyler.

"Can't," he says. "Another call in twenty." He says it with genuine suffering in his voice. "Go without me. I'll come down later."

You look at Paige.

She looks at you.

At your face. Specifically at your face.

"Yeah," she says. "Sure."

So you grab your stuff and head out.

She's quiet on the way down the steps. You're used to that from her now, three days in and you've already started learning her silences, which ones mean she's comfortable and which ones mean she's working something out. This one feels like the second kind.

The beach is busier than it's been. A few families further down. A couple of surfers out past the break. The water is that impossible California blue that still gets you even though you've been coming here your whole life.

You drop your towel and pull your shorts down without thinking about it, you'd thrown them on over your bikini bottoms for the walk down, and when you straighten up and reach back to tie your hair Paige is looking out at the water with the focused intensity of someone actively choosing not to look at something else.

The back of your neck gets warm and it has nothing to do with the sun.

You sit down. She sits down next to you, closer than yesterday, and pulls her knees up and wraps her arms around them and stares at the horizon like it owes her something.

"You surf?" you ask.

"No. Always meant to learn." She nods toward the guys out past the break. "Tyler tried to teach me once. Years ago. I fell off approximately every four seconds."

"Tyler's a terrible teacher."

"The worst." A pause. "You surf?"

"I do. Nothing imoressive or competition level, I just grew up coming here so I picked up most of it ."

She glances over. Just briefly. "Of course you did."

"What does that mean?"

"Nothing." But the corner of her mouth is doing that thing again. "You just, you do everything like it's the most natural thing in the world. It's kind of annoying."

You look at her. "You think I'm annoying?"

"See now, i didnt say that!" She cut you off."I think you make things look easy."

"They're not."

"I know." She says it quietly. Like she actually does know.

You lie back on your towel and close your eyes and let the sun press down on you and try not to think too hard about the way she said that

Okay so here's the thing.

You're not oblivious.

You noticed yesterday on the deck. You noticed this morning in the kitchen when you reached past her to get the coffee filters and she went very still in a way that had nothing to do with you being in her space.

You've noticed the way her eyes move and then stop moving and then find somewhere very neutral and specific to land.

You've noticed.

You just don't know what to do with it because the situation is complicated. She's Tyler's best friend. She's been Tyler's best friend since before you were old enough to have opinions about anything.

She's twenty-five and you're twenty and that gap felt enormous when you were fifteen and she was coming over to watch film with your brother, and it feels different now but it's still there, and beyond all of that –

You don't actually know if you're reading it right. You're good at reading people. Law school made you better. But Paige Bueckers is layered in ways that are hard to get underneath, and the last thing you want to do is mistake careful for something it's not.

So you just lie there. In the sun. In your bikini. Being extremely normal about everything.

"You're going to burn," Paige says a few minutes later

You open one eye. She's looking at you now, apparently having given up on the horizon.

"I have SPF 50 on."

"Your shoulders."

You lift your head and look at your shoulders. She might be right, they're looking a little pink. You reach for your bag and dig around for the sunscreen and twist to get your back and immediately realize the fundamental geometric problem with this plan.

You hold the bottle out to her without saying anything.

She takes it. Also without saying anything.

Her hands are warm from the sun. That's the first thing. Just warm, and careful, and she does it quickly and efficiently like she's trying to complete a task rather than touch you, which is somehow worse than if she'd been slow about it. Like the effort of keeping it neutral is the thing that makes it feel like anything but.

"Done," she says. Her voice is completely even.

"Thanks." Yours is too.

You lie back down.

The wave that comes in about thirty seconds later is big enough that the spray reaches you both and you sit up laughing, wiping salt water off your face, and Paige is laughing too and for a second everything is just light. Easy. Her laughing with her head tipped back, water on her eyelashes, the sun doing something completely unreasonable to her face.

You look away first.

"Wanna get in the water?"

"Not right now; but you can go in!"

"No ill wait"

She doesnt.

She goes in the water around one.

You watch her from behind your sunglasses like the coward you are.

She wades out to her waist and then dives under a wave clean and comes up pushing her hair back and she's just built like an athlete, obviously, you knew that, but knowing it and watching her move through water in real time are two different categories of information and your brain is filing this one somewhere it probably shouldn't.

She comes back up the beach dripping and drops back onto her towel and shakes her head like a dog, which should not be charming, and is.

"Cold?" you ask.

"Perfect actually." She lies back. Water running off her collarbone. Eyes closed. "You should go in."

"Maybe in a minute."

You look back at your book. You read the same sentence approximately six times.

Tyler comes down at two looking significantly more human than he had at noon, bringing with him a bag of snacks from the house and the energy of someone who has just gotten off a work call and is aggressively committed to not thinking about it anymore.

"Okay," he says, dropping onto the sand between you both like he belongs there, which he does, "someone explain to me why we haven't rented jet skis yet."

"Because we've been here three days," you say.

"Exactly. Three wasted days."

"We've been on the beach every day, Tyler."

"Sitting on the beach. Passively experiencing the ocean." He looks at Paige. "Back me up."

Paige has her eyes open now, propped on her elbows, looking at him with the fond exasperation of seven years of friendship. "I mean jet skis would be fun."

"See." Tyler points at her. "She gets it."

"She's agreeing with you to be polite," you say.

"I'm agreeing with him because jet skis are objectively fun," Paige says.

You look at her. She looks at you. There's something dancing in her expression that she pulls back before it becomes anything.

"Fine," you say. "Jet skis."

Tyler's already on his phone looking up rentals. Paige sits fully up, wrapping her arms around her knees again, and tilts her face up to the sun, and you watch the line of her throat for exactly one second before you look back at your book and commit, genuinely commit, to reading an actual full sentence.

You manage two.

The jet ski place is a twenty minute walk up the coast and Tyler chats the whole way about nothing in particular, which you're grateful for because it means you don't have to. Paige walks on his other side and you're just three people walking up a beach in the middle of the afternoon, easy and unhurried, and it's fine, it's all completely fine.

Except at some point Tyler stops to take a call, "sorry, sorry, two minutes" and suddenly it's just you and Paige standing on the wet sand watching the waves come in, and the thing about Paige when it's just the two of you is that the air gets different. Not bad different. Just heavier somehow. More present.

"He's never going to be off that phone," you say.

"He never is." She's looking out at the water. "He was like this at UConn too. Always three things at once."

"Did it drive you crazy?"

"Constantly." A beat. "He's also one of the most loyal people I've ever met so I forgive him basically everything."

You look at her sideways. "He talks about you the same way."

She doesn't say anything. Just nods, something soft crossing her face.

"He was scared, you know," you say. "When you got hurt that first time. Junior year. He didn't say it but I could tell."

Paige is quiet for a moment. "I didn't know that."

"He watched every game. Every single one. Still does." You pause. "We both do."

She turns and looks at you then. Really looks at you. And for a second there's nothing careful about it at all — just her, actually looking, like she forgot to put the guard up.

"Yeah?" she says. Quiet.

"Yeah," you say. Just as quiet.

Tyler's voice gets louder behind you and Paige looks away and you look away and by the time he jogs back over to you both you're just two people standing on a beach, easy and unhurried, completely fine.

The jet skis are fun.

You don't think about her hands on your shoulders for the rest of the afternoon.

You think about them the entire rest of the afternoon.

°•○●○•°

The bonfire was Tyler's idea, obviously.

Someone down the beach, friends of friends of whoever, the kind of loose social web that only exists in summer places like this, had texted him about it Thursday night and he'd said yes on behalf of all three of you before either of you knew about it, which is so deeply Tyler that neither of you even bothered being annoyed.

You wear a white sundress.

You don't think about who you're wearing it for.

It's already going by the time you get there, maybe forty people spread across the sand around a fire that someone clearly put actual effort into, big and clean and throwing gold light in every direction.

Music from a speaker somewhere. People with drinks. The kind of easy summer night that feels like it exists outside of real time, like nothing that happens here quite counts.

Tyler dissolves into the crowd within approximately four minutes. You watch him go with zero surprise.

"Every time," Paige says next to you.

"Every single time." You look around. "Drink?"

"Yeah."

You find the cooler and Paige grabs two beers and hands you one and you clink them together without making it a thing, which is how most things are between you now, small and easy on the surface, something else entirely underneath.

The fire is warm. The night is clear. Someone's playing a song you half recognize and like enough to not want to identify in case knowing what it is ruins it somehow.

You're standing close to Paige. Not touching. Just close, the way you've been getting close over the past few days, proximity becoming its own kind of language neither of you has named yet.

You see her before she sees you.

Across the fire, maybe thirty feet away, talking to a guy in a linen shirt who is gesturing about something with his beer. Dark hair. Leather jacket despite the heat, which tracks. She hasn't changed that much.

Your stomach does something complicated.

Maya.

You dated for eight months, sophomore and junior year of high school. It ended fine, as those things go, not dramatically, just the slow acknowledgment that you wanted different things, that you were heading different directions, that the distance between Boston and wherever Maya had ended up was a geographical fact neither of you wanted to argue with. You hadn't ended badly. You'd just ended.

You hadn't known she'd be here.

You take a sip of your beer.

Paige isn't watching you. She's talking to someone Tyler introduced her to earlier, a guy named something she's already forgotten, doing the thing she does at social things where she's polite and present and giving about sixty percent of her actual attention. The other forty percent she cannot fully account for.

She finds you in the crowd without really deciding to.

You're across the fire now, talking to a girl Paige doesn't recognize. Dark hair, easy smile, standing close to you in the specific way people stand close when they have history with the person they're talking to.

Not aggressively close. Just familiar close. The kind of close that doesn't ask permission because it doesn't think it needs to.

Paige watches you laugh at something she says.

The forty percent of her attention sharpens into something much less comfortable.

She looks away. Back at the guy she's been half talking to. Nods at something he says. Takes a long sip of her beer.

Looks back.

You're still talking to her. The girl has her hand on your arm now, briefly, the way you touch someone when you want to make a point land. You don't move away from it.

Paige's jaw does something she doesn't give it permission to do.

Tyler materializes at her shoulder the way he does, appearing from nowhere with a fresh beer and the energy of someone having an excellent time.

"You good?" he asks, following her eyeline without subtlety.

"Fine. Who's that?"

"Who?"

"Girl talking to your sister."

Tyler looks. His expression shifts into something recognizing. "Oh. That's Maya."

The name doesn't mean anything to Paige yet. "Friend of yours?"

"No." He takes a sip of his drink. "They dated. Like junior, senior year of high school I think."

The information lands somewhere in Paige's chest and just sits there, warm and unwelcome.

"Oh," she says.

"They ended fine apparently. She never really talked about it much after." He shrugs, easy about it the way Tyler is easy about most things. "She doesn't really do the whole dwelling thing. You know how she is."

Paige does know how you are. That's the problem. She's been learning how you are for four days now and somehow it feels like longer and somehow it also feels like she's barely started and she does not have anywhere safe to put that information.

"Right," she says.

Tyler is already getting distracted by someone across the fire. "Be back," he says, already moving.

Paige stands there alone with her beer and the fire and the completely reasonable emotion she is absolutely not having.

You extract yourself from Maya around nine-thirty, paige noted.

It wasn't bad. It wasn't even uncomfortable really .

Maya is still warm, still funny, still the person you spent eight months caring about, just in the past tense and sealed over cleanly. She's living in San Diego now. She seems happy. You seem happy. You hug at the end of it and it feels like closing a book you'd already finished.

You find Paige standing slightly apart from the main group, closer to the water, looking out at the dark.

"Hey," you say, stopping beside her. "Where'd Tyler go?"

"Somewhere." She nods vaguely in the direction of the crowd. Her voice is easy, her jaw is not.

You look at her profile. "You okay?"

"Fine." A beat. "Who was that?"

The question is casual. Completely casual. Nothing in it at all.

"Maya," you say. "We went to high school together."

Paige nods. Takes a sip of beer.

"We dated," you add, because you're not sure why you're adding it, only that it feels weird not to. "For a while. It ended fine."

Something moves across Paige's face. Fast, like a cloud shadow. Gone before you can name it.

"Cool," she says. Neutrally.

"Cool," you echo.

The fire crackles behind you. The waves come in. Someone down the beach laughs at something and the sound carries across the water and dissolves.

"She was looking at you like it didn't end that fine," Paige says. Quietly. Still looking at the water.

You turn to look at her. "What does that mean?"

"Nothing." She shakes her head slightly. "Forget it."

"Paige."

She looks at you then. And there it is, the thing she's been keeping careful, the thing she's been filing away and rerouting and keeping at a managed distance for four days, right there on the surface, just for a second. Unguarded. Unruly.

Your heart does something it has no business doing.

"Forget it," she says again, softer. "I'm just—" She looks away. Back at the water. "I don't know."

You don't say anything. You stand there in the dark next to her while the fire throws light across the sand and the music drifts from somewhere and the waves just keep coming in, steady and indifferent to both of you.

After a while your arm presses against hers, just barely, just the outside of your shoulder against the outside of hers.

She doesn't move away.

Neither do you.

Tyler finds you both like that twenty minutes later, side by side, quiet, watching the water, and announces he's hungry and has identified a taco truck a mile up the coast and is anyone coming because he's going regardless.

You both go.

The walk is loud with Tyler between you, which is fine, which is good, which gives both of you time to rebuild whatever walls the last twenty minutes took down.

By the time you're eating tacos on a low wall outside the truck, Tyler holding court about something that happened at work last year, Paige is laughing again and you're laughing and it's easy.

It's easy.

You're fine.

"Olay let's get moving im tired"

Walking back it's dark enough that the path is narrow and Tyler goes ahead because he knows the way and suddenly you're just behind him, just the two of you, close on the dark path.

Paige's hand brushes yours once.

Then again.

She doesn't take it. Doesn't close the distance. Just the back of her hand against the back of yours, twice, in the dark, where nobody can see and nothing has to be named.

You keep walking.

You don't say anything.

You don't have to.

°•○●○•°

Tyler leaves on Friday morning.

Not for long, just a night, a work thing in LA he couldn't get out of, some dinner with clients he'd been vague about all week.

He tells you both Thursday night, apologetic in that way he gets when he knows he's abandoning ship, and you tell him it's fine and Paige tells him it's fine and he looks between you both like he's doing math he can't quite finish.

"You two will be okay?" he asks.

"Tyler," you say. "We're adults."

"I know, I just—" He stops. Makes a face. "Never mind. I'll be back Saturday morning."

He leaves at seven AM.

The house gets very quiet.

You don't even see Paige until almost ten.

You've been on the deck with your coffee and your notes, doing a very convincing impression of someone who is completely unbothered by the fact that it's just the two of you in a beach house for the next twenty four hours, when she comes through the sliding door in an oversized hoodie and shorts with her hair still messy from sleep and her eyes at about half capacity.

She drops onto the couch across from you.

You hand her your coffee without thinking.

She takes it without thinking.

You go inside and make yourself another one.

When you come back out she's more awake, sitting with her knees pulled up, looking out at the water. The morning is overcast for the first time all week, the sky a soft grey that makes everything feel quieter than usual. Closer somehow.

"Tyler texted me," she says. "He made it."

"He texts me every time he arrives somewhere like I'm his mom."

"He does that to me too." She wraps both hands around the mug. "I think it's sweet."

"It is sweet. I still feel like his mom."

She smiles into the coffee.

Surprisingly, It rains by noon.

Sunny dry malibu is cover with a little water amd there's no thunder, no wind, just a steady soft rain that comes in off the ocean and settles over everything like it has nowhere better to be. The beach empties.

The light goes silver. The sound of it on the roof is the kind of sound that makes you want to stay inside and not do anything that requires effort.

You make lunch. Paige sits on the kitchen counter eating crackers and watching you like you're mildly interesting television, which you pretend not to notice while noticing completely.

"You can help," you say.

"You look like you don't need help."

"That's not the point."

She picks up another cracker. "What do you want me to do."

"Chop those tomatoes."

She hops off the counter and comes to stand next to you at the cutting board and you hand her the knife and she chops tomatoes with the focused precision of someone who has never really cooked but is not going to admit that. You watch her for a second.

"Not bad," you say.

"Don't condescend to me."

"I'm genuinely complimenting your tomato technique."

"You're humoring me."

"Do you even know how to spell condescending?"

"Probably not"

"Paige. The tomatoes look great."

She points the knife at you, but she's smiling, and you turn back to what you're doing and the kitchen is warm and smells like garlic and rain and it's the most domestic thing and you can't think about it too hard or something will crack.

After lunch you end up on the big sectional in the living room, which is the only logical response to a rainy afternoon in a beach house. Paige finds something to watch, a documentary about deep sea creatures that she claims is interesting and you claim sounds terrible and you're both wrong, it's actually excellent.

You're on opposite ends of the couch at first.

By the second episode you're not.

It happens gradually, the way those things do, you pulling a blanket over your legs, her shifting to see the screen better, the couch being large but not that large, and by the time the third episode starts you're close enough that you could feel the warmth coming off her if you paid attention, which you are not doing, which you are absolutely doing.

The rain keeps coming. Soft and steady.

On screen something luminescent drifts through black water.

"This is genuinely beautiful," you say quietly.

"Told you."

"You told me it was interesting. Not beautiful."

"Both."

You look at her. She's looking at the screen, face soft in the grey light, and there's something about Paige in unguarded moments when she's not performing anything, not being an athlete or a public person or Tyler's best friend, that gets you somewhere undefended every time.

She feels you looking.

Turns her head.

You're close. You're closer than you've let yourselves be, actually, because usually one of you shifts before it gets here, before it gets to the point where you could count eyelashes.

But the rain and the blanket and the three episodes of deep sea creatures have apparently worn down whatever border control you'd been running.

Neither of you says anything.

Her eyes drop. Just briefly. Just for a half second. Just enough.

Your heart is extremely loud.

"We can't—," she says. Low. Like a warning she's giving herself as much as you.

"I know," you say.

"I can't—" She stops. Something working across her face. "Tyler is—"

"I know."

"And you're—" Another stop. Like she can't finish the sentence because finishing it would require her to say something out loud that she's been keeping below the surface. "You're twenty."

"I'm aware of how old I am."

"I'm just" She exhales. Looks away for a second. Back. "I'm trying to be responsible about this."

"Okay," you say. Carefully. "What does responsible look like."

She doesn't answer right away. The rain fills the silence. Something glowing drifts across the TV screen neither of you are watching anymore.

"It looks like not doing something that makes everything complicated," she says finally. "With Tyler. And with" She gestures vaguely between you. "Whatever this is."

"Whatever this is," you repeat

"Yeah."

You look at her. She looks at you. The responsible thing and the actual thing sitting right next to each other in the grey afternoon light and not resolving into anything clean.

"Okay," you say again. Quietly.

She nods. Looks back at the screen.

You look back at the screen.

The blanket is still over both your legs. Her shoulder is still against yours. Neither of you moves any further apart than you already are, which is not very far.

Responsible.

°•○●○•°

It's almost five when the documentary ends and the rain is still going and Paige gets up to get water and you stretch out across the couch and stare at the ceiling and try to do something useful with the inside of your chest.

She comes back and stops when she sees you lying there and for a second she just looks at you the way she's been not looking at you all week and your stomach drops.

She sets her water down.

Sits back on the couch. Not where she was, further down, near your feet, which is safer, which is the right call.

"Can I ask you something?" she says.

"Yeah."

"Maya." She says it carefully. "Was that... was she the last person you were with?"

You look at the ceiling. "No. There was someone at Harvard first year." A pause. "Why."

"Just wondering."

"Paige."

"It's not.." She rubs the back of her neck. "I don't know why I asked."

"Yes you do."

The rain. The ceiling. The specific silence of someone trying to be responsible.

"Yeah," she says finally. "I do."

You sit up slowly. Turn to look at her. She's already looking at you, and she doesn't look away this time, and the distance between responsible and everything else is about twelve inches and neither of you is moving toward it and neither of you is moving away.

"Paige," you say softly.

"Don't," she says. Just as soft. "If you say my name like that I'm not going to—" She stops. Jaw tight. Eyes on yours. "I'm trying."

"I know."

"I really am trying."

"I know," you say. "Me too."

Her hand is on the couch between you. Just resting there. You look at it and she looks at you looking at it and the moment stretches out like taffy, thin and taut and not breaking yet.

You put your hand over hers.

Just that. Just your hand over hers, on the couch cushion, in the grey rainy light, not breaking anything, not starting anything, just there.

She turns her hand over slowly.

Laces her fingers through yours.

You both look at the rain-blurred window.

Neither of you speaks.

You stay like that until the light changes.

Tyler texts at seven.

«Dinner running late. Probably staying the night. Back tomorrow morning. Don't burn the house down.»

Paige reads it twice. Sets her phone face down on the kitchen counter. Doesn't say anything.

You read it over her shoulder because you'd heard the buzz and come in from the deck and you're close enough that you can, and when you look up from the screen you're already looking at each other and the thing that's been sitting between you all day, through the documentary and the hand-holding and the careful careful careful, shifts into something that doesn't have a responsible answer anymore.

"Okay," you say.

"Okay," she says.

Neither of you means the text.

You make dinner because doing something with your hands feels necessary.

Paige sits on the counter again and watches you again and it's the same as lunch except it isn't, except the rain has stopped and the evening light is coming through the kitchen windows all pink and gold and everything feels thinner somehow.

Like the day wore down the distance between what you're doing and what you want to do until there's barely any separation left.

She's been quiet since the text. Not uncomfortable quiet but processing quiet. You know the difference now.

You're plating pasta when she says, "I've been thinking about you since I got hre."

You go very still.

"Like — not just—" She stops. Starts again. "Since I pulled into the driveway and you were at the door. I haven't stopped."

You put the spoon down. Turn around.

She's still on the counter, legs hanging, hands gripping the edge, looking at you with the most unguarded expression you've ever seen on her face. No careful. No rerouting. Just Paige, looking at you, saying the true thing.

"That's a problem," you say softly. "Because same."

"Tyler—"

"Is in LA," you say. "And we're here. And I'm so tired of being responsible."

Something breaks open in her expression.

She gets off the counter.

She crosses the kitchen slowly, which is somehow worse than if she'd moved fast, because slow means deliberate, slow means chosen, and by the time she stops in front of you your heart is so loud you're surprised she can't hear it.

She reaches up and tucks a piece of hair behind your ear. Just that. Just her fingers brushing your cheek, gentle and careful, like she's been wanting to do it and is finally letting herself.

"Tell me to stop," she says quietly. "If you want me to stop."

"Paige."

"I mean it. Say the word and I—"

You close the distance.

It's soft at first, barely there, just your lips against hers, tentative, like asking a question. Her breath catches. Her hand that was at your cheek slides back into your hair and then she's kissing you back and it's not tentative anymore, it's warm and slow and so certain, like she's been sure about this for longer than either of you said out loud.

You pull back after a moment. Look at her.

Her eyes are still closed. Open slowly

"Hi," you say.

Something between a laugh and a breath leaves her. "Hi."

You kiss her again and this one isn't soft this one has four days of careful and rerouting and hands on the couch and "I'm trying" behind it and it lands like that, full and unresolved, her hands in your hair and yours gripping the front of her hoodie and the kitchen counter cold against your back where she's walked you into it without either of you noticing.

She pulls back just enough to breathe. Presses her forehead to yours.

"I've wanted to do that since the bonfire," she says against your mouth.

"I've wanted to do that since the sunscreen," you say back.

She laughs the best laugh, and kisses you again before it's finished.

Dinner eventually gets cold.

You eat it eventually, at the kitchen island, sitting close enough that your knees are touching, and it tastes fine cold, actually, and Paige keeps looking at you between bites like she's making sure you're real, which you find devastating in the best way.

"Stop," you say.

"Stop what."

"Looking at me like that."

"Like what." But she's smiling.

"Like you're surprised."

She puts her fork down. Turns to face you more fully. "I am a little surprised."

"Why."

She reaches over and tucks the same piece of hair back again, slower this time, deliberate. "Because you're..." She shakes her head. "You've been making me crazy all week and I've been trying so hard and I don't" She laughs quietly. "I don't usually lose."

"At what."

"At anything."

You look at her. "You didn't lose."

The look she gives you then, soft and complicated and something that's trying not to be too much too fast, lands somewhere in your chest and stays there.

later , the dishes done, the lights low, the kind of easy quiet you've been building all week settling over the house, it happens again in the hallway.

You're heading upstairs and she's right behind you and you stop on the landing and turn around and she's one step below you which puts you at the same height for once and you've barely processed that before her hands are on your waist and she's kissing you again, slower this time, like she's not rushing anywhere, like she has time, like she's planning on this.

Your back meets the wall of the landing and you don't mind at all.

She kisses you like she means it. Like she's been thinking about how to do it and is taking her time getting it right.

Her hands move from your waist to your jaw, tilting you up slightly, and you make a sound that surprises you and feel her smile against your mouth.

"Paige," you say against her lips.

"Mm."

"We're in the hallway."

"I know."

"Just noting it."

She pulls back enough to look at you. You're both breathing a little fast. Her hands are still on your jaw, thumbs tracing lightly, and she looks at you the way she's been not letting herself look at you all week, open and warm and completely ungoverned.

"Come here," she says quietly.

She takes your hand and leads you down the hall and you go, easy and certain, and the house settles around you both in the dark, quiet and keeping its secrets.

°•○●○•°

The morning is all gold light through thin curtains.

You're aware of it slowly ,the warmth, the sound of the ocean, the particular softness of actually having slept well for the first time all week. You're on your side. There's a hand resting loosely at your waist.

You don't move.

Paige is still asleep behind you, breathing slow and even, and you lie there in the gold morning and let yourself have it for a minute before the complicated parts have to start. Before Tyler comes back and the real world has opinions and everything has to be figured out.

Just this first.

Just the light and the waves and her hand at your waist and the specific feeling of something you wanted actually happening.

Her breathing shifts. She's waking up.

Her hand at your waist tightens slightly, instinctive, like she's checking.

"Hey," she says. Sleep rough and low.

"Hey," you say back.

A pause. The ocean.

"You okay?" she asks.

You turn over. She's looking at you, morningsoft and a little uncertain, like she's waiting to see what version of this you're bringing into the daylight.

You kiss her once. Short and sure.

"Yeah," you say. "I'm good."

The uncertainty leaves her face. Something easier replaces it, relief, warmth, something that's trying not to be too much too fast and not fully succeeding, and you think that's probably exactly what your face is doing too.

Her phone buzzes on the nightstand.

You both look at it.

«On my way back. ETA 10am. Someone make coffee.»

Tyler.

You look at each other.

"Okay," Paige says.

"Okay," you say.

Neither of you moves for another thirty seconds.

Then you both do.

°•○●○•°

Tyler comes back at ten-thirteen with a gas station coffee and a breakfast burrito he's already halfway through and the energy of someone who slept fine in a hotel and has no idea his entire house shifted on its axis while he was gone.

"Miss me?" he says, dropping onto the kitchen stool.

"Desperately," you say, from behind your own coffee, which you are holding with both hands because they need something to do.

Paige is on the deck.

She's been on the deck since nine-forty-five, which is when Tyler texted that he was twenty minutes out, which is when something in her face closed over like a shutter coming down. You'd watched it happen and hadn't known how to stop it and had just stood in the kitchen listening to her slide the glass door shut behind her.

Tyler looks around. "Where's Paige?"

"Outside."

He nods, already on his phone. "Cool. What's the plan today, I was thinking we could drive up the coast, there's this place that does—"

You stop listening, You're watching Paige through the glass.

She's standing at the railing with her back to you, looking at the water, and her shoulders are doing the thing they do when she's working something out. Tight. Held up. Like she's load-bearing something heavy and doesn't want anyone to see the effort.

She's fine at breakfast.

That's the thing about Paige, she's so good at fine. She comes back inside when Tyler calls her, she laughs at his stories, she eats her eggs and drinks her coffee and is completely, entirely, convincingly fine, and you sit across from her and watch her be fine and feel something cold settling in your chest.

She doesn't look at you wrong. Doesn't avoid your eyes completely, because that would be a tell.

She looks at you exactly as much as she should, exactly as naturally as she would have four days ago, and that precision, the care it takes to calibrate it that exactly, is somehow the worst part.

Under the table, once, her knee presses briefly against yours.

Gone before it's anything.

You drink your coffee.

The drive up the coast is Tyler's idea, as everytging is, and you go because not going would require an explanation and explanations are the one thing nobody in this car is equipped for right now.

Tyler drives. You're in the passenger seat. Paige is in the back with the window down and her sunglasses on and her elbow resting on the door, and you watch her in the side mirror more than you watch the road and she doesn't watch you back, which is information.

Tyler talks the whole way. You love your brother. You have never been more grateful for his inability to tolerate silence.

The place he had in mind is a seafood spot on a cliff overlooking the water, the kind of place that has a wait but Tyler somehow always gets around, and you're sat at a table on the outdoor terrace with the ocean spread out below and it's objectively beautiful and you feel nothing about it.

Paige sits across from you.

She takes her sunglasses off when you sit down and for one second, just one, she looks at you with the real thing, tired and conflicted and sorry in advance, before Tyler is pulling menus over and asking what everyone wants and the second closes.

°•○●○•°

The dinner is fine.

Two couples get seated at the table next to yours midway through, friends of Tyler's from college, the kind of easy addition that Tyler facilitates effortlessly, and suddenly your table of three is a table of seven and the conversation opens up and gets louder and easier to hide inside.

You hide inside it. Paige hides inside it. Tyler doesn't need to hide inside it because Tyler doesn't know he's hiding.

The wine is good. The food is good. The sun does its evening thing over the water and it's all so beautiful and easy on the surface, and underneath it you're sitting with the memory of gold morning light and her hand at your waist and the specific feeling of something real, and you're watching it get buried in real time and you can't do anything about it at this table, in this company, with your brother three feet away.

It's one of Tyler's friends. Jake, loud, already on his third glass who does it.

He's talking about someone's situation, some mutual friend's drama, something about a guy who dated his friend's sister, and he's laughing about it in that way people laugh about things they think are obviously ridiculous, and Tyler, easy, unbothered, not knowing what he's doing at all, says:

"Yeah, that's just a line you don't cross. Your friend's sister is off limits. It's like ,that's the one rule, right? You just don't."

He's laughing. Jake is laughing. The table is doing the thing tables do when everyone agrees on something comfortable.

You go very still.

You don't look at Paige.

You don't have to.

You can feel it from across the table, the way she goes quiet, the way her wine glass stops halfway to her mouth, the way she puts it back down. The way she laughs, a beat late, just enough to not be noticeable.

You look at your plate.

You eat your fish.

You don't look at her for the rest of dinner.

And a couple minutes later,"its been a good night guys, but we have to go"

The drive back is quiet.

Tyler is a little wine-warm and happy and talks about the couples you'd had dinner with and you answer when he asks you things and Paige answers when he asks her things and in the side mirror her face is turned to the window, profile unreadable, and the coastal road unspools ahead of you in the headlights.

At the house Tyler goes straight for the couch and you say you're tired and go upstairs and sit on the edge of your bed in the dark and wait.

You don't know what you're waiting for.

Fifteen minutes. Maybe twenty.

A knock at your door. Soft.

You already know.

"Come in," you say.

She closes the door behind her. Doesn't turn the light on. Stands there in the dark with her back against the door and her hands behind her and looks at you sitting on the edge of the bed and she looks, wrecked, actually, under the careful.

Like the fine she's been performing all day cost more than she had.

"Hey," you say quietly.

"Hey."

The ocean through the window. The sound of Tyler's TV distantly through the floor.

"You heard him," she says. Not a question.

"Yeah."

She exhales. Looks at the ceiling for a second. Back at you. "I'm sorry."

"Don't."

"Please—"

"Don't apologize to me, Paige. Not for that."

She closes her eyes briefly. "I don't know how to do this. I don't know how to..." She stops. Jaw working. "He's my best friend. He's been my best friend for seven years and I can't–" Another stop. "I can't be the person who goes behind his back. I can't be that."

"I'm not asking you to go behind his back."

"You're twenty," she says. Like it's a different argument. Like she's cycling through all of them.

"You keep saying that."

"Because it matters."

"It doesn't feel like it matters."

Something crosses her face. Raw and unguarded and painful. "No," she says quietly. "It doesn't. That's the problem."

You stand up. She doesn't move from the door.

"So what are you saying," you say.

She looks at you. "I think you know what I'm saying."

The space between you is small. Six feet maybe. Less.

"I think," she says carefully, "that last night was– I think it was the realest thing that's happened to me in a long time and I think that's exactly why I can't" Her voice catches slightly. Recovers. "I need to do this right. If there's a this. I need Tyler to know before there's a this and I don't know how to do that yet and until I do–"

"You need to stop," you say.

"I need to stop," she agrees. Like it costs her.

You stand there. Looking at each other. The dark room and the distant TV and the ocean outside just doing what it does regardless.

"Okay," you say finally.

"Okay," she says. Like it's the hardest word she's said all week.

She pushes off the door. Crosses the room slowly, like she's giving herself time to change her mind and overruling it with every step, and when she reaches you she stops and puts her hand on your face, just her palm against your cheek, gentle and certain, and looks at you up close for a long moment.

You let her.

She presses a kiss to your forehead.

Soft. Slow. Like a promise or an apology or both.

Then she drops her hand. Steps back.

"Goodnight," she says.

Her voice barely holds.

"Goodnight," you say.

Yours doesn't really either.

She goes. The door clicks shut behind her.

You sit back down on the edge of the bed in the dark.

The ocean comes in. Goes out. Comes in again.

You put your face in your hands.

Not for long. Just a minute. Just long enough to feel it fully before you have to put it somewhere manageable and figure out how to share a house with her for the rest of the summer like you didn't just watch something real walk back out the door on its own two feet.

Just a minute.

Down the hall, you don't hear her.

The library was completely empty at this hour. Just the faint hum of the heating system and the muted click of your pen as you finished another catalog entry. The desk lamp threw a golden halo over the open ledger, your cardigan slipping from one shoulder as you leaned forward, glasses sliding down your nose.

You loved the quiet here. The world shrank to the soft scratch of ink on paper, the faint scent of old bindings and dust. It was safe and familiar to you. The kind of silence that made time feel suspended. The library had been closed for nearly an hour, the doors locked, the front lot empty except for your car. Which meant when Nika spotted it on her way back from practice, she knew exactly where you’d be. And she knew how to get in, too — slipping through the back entrance near the old bronze statue, the one she’d shown you once during a late-night walk across campus.

You hadn’t heard her come in until the soft click of the back door swinging open echoed faintly in the vast space. The sudden shift in the still air was like a ripple across a still pond. Then her voice, low and teasing, cut through the quiet like a spark in the dark.

“Hey, bookworm.”

She appeared just beyond the stacks, framed by the glow of the dim hallway light, her damp hair pulled back messily, warm-ups clinging to her like a second skin. She walked toward you slowly and deliberately. She was confident. It was like she was claiming the sanctuary for herself and for you.

“Shouldn’t you be heading back to your dorm?” you asked, trying to act casual as you pushed your glasses up.

She walked over, setting her elbows on your desk and leaning in until her smirk was just inches from your face.

“Could be. But then I wouldn’t get to see you like this.” Her gaze dragged deliberately over your chest, your cardigan, the mess of papers around you.

You cleared your throat, glancing back at your ledger. “I have to finish cataloging.”

“Mhm.” The way she hummed it told you she didn’t care. “Or…” She tilted her head, that mischievous spark lighting in her eyes. “You keep working… and I’ll handle the rest.”

The implication hit instantly, and you froze, pen hovering above the paper. “Nika—”

But she was already moving, circling behind your chair, her warm-up pants swishing softly in the hush of the library. Her fingers trailed over your shoulder, slipping the cardigan the rest of the way down your arm. You shivered, and she caught it, smiling softly against the shell of your ear, her breath warm and scented faintly with the sharp tang of sweat and mint from practice.

“Keep working,” she murmured, her voice a low promise that sent heat curling through your veins. 

You tried. For maybe ten seconds. But then her hands slid lower, unbuttoning your blouse with unhurried precision, fingertips grazing over your skin like whispered secrets. The cool air of the library pressed against your exposed flesh, a sharp contrast to the fire blossoming wherever her fingers touched. By the time she tugged your skirt down, your breath had grown shallow, the taste of her lips still lingering on yours. 

She stayed fully clothed, the soft rustle of her hoodie brushing lightly against your bare skin as she knelt between your legs. The position felt deliciously daring — her warm, confident hands parting your thighs while the cool air of the library brushed over your heated skin, anchoring you in the electric tension humming between you.

“You look so pretty like this,” she said, voice low, almost reverent. “All naked for me while I’m still dressed.”

The first touch of her mouth made you gasp, the sound too loud in the silence. You glanced toward the darkened rows of shelves, half-expecting someone to appear, but no one did. The danger only made your pulse race harder.

She was unhurried, wickedly so, building you up until you were gripping the edge of the desk, knuckles white. Your pen rolled off the ledger, hitting the floor with a small clatter you barely registered.

“You’re not working anymore,” she teased. The sudden loss of warmth made a hollow ache settle deep in your chest.

“Shut up,” you breathed, fingers tangling gently in the damp strands at the nape of her neck, pulling her closer like a lifeline.

She smiled against your skin, sharp and satisfied, before diving back in. The wet heat of her mouth trailed fire along your jaw, down your throat, making your vision swim in a haze of sensation and need. Her hands ghosted over your ribs, fingertips tracing delicate patterns that sent shivers racing across your skin, while the soft scrape of her nails tugged lightly at your hips.

You were close—so close—when she eased up just enough to force your eyes open, your lashes fluttering like fragile wings against the lamplight.

“Look at me,” she whispered, and you obeyed. Her gaze held you captive, dark, smoldering, and fiercely alive, hoodie casting shadows that softened the sharp edges of her face.

The feeling broke over you like a wave: sudden, overwhelming, raw. Your knees buckled, and you slumped back in the chair, breath catching in a ragged gasp. 

Your cardigan pooled forgotten on the floor, a soft reminder of how undone you’d become.

Nika rose, still fully dressed, and bent down to press a slow, steady kiss to your temple, as if nothing about the messy papers, your flushed skin, or the racing of your heart was out of place.

“Library’s a mess now,” she said, eyes flicking to the scattered papers and your disheveled state.

“You’re a menace,” you muttered, voice thick with breathlessness.

Her smirk deepened, wicked and unapologetic. “And you love it.”

She was already halfway to the door, but glanced back with a final tease. “Finish cataloging, bookworm.”