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pairing – garrett graham x figure skater!reader
summary – one competition routine is all it takes for the boys to understand exactly why garrett graham is so gone.
warnings – pure fluff!
notes from me – based on this request!! this was so cute they're so wholesome <3
word count – 0.8k
navigation – masterlist |
Garrett has told them she’s good. He’s said it enough times, actually, that Dean had started making gagging noises every time Garrett brought up the competition like the man wasn’t the same person who once spent forty-five minutes explaining the emotional stakes of a regular season hockey game to a girl at Malone’s who had only asked what position he played.
But the thing is, Garrett saying she’s good and the boys actually seeing her are two entirely different events.
Because the girl they know is quiet in the way that makes Logan lower his voice without thinking. She stands half a step behind Garrett when they’re all in the hallway outside the rink, hands tucked into the sleeves of her hoodie, smiling at Tucker’s bad jokes like she’s still deciding whether she’s allowed to laugh properly.
She says hi, and then lets Garrett do most of the talking, cheeks going pink whenever Dean says something deliberately stupid just to see if he can get her to break.
That girl doesn’t look like the girl currently cutting across the ice like she owns the entire building and is being generous by letting everyone else breathe in it.
“Holy shit,” Logan says, leaning forward so fast his elbows nearly slip off his knees.
Garrett doesn’t even tell him to shut up. He can’t. He’s too busy watching her.
She’s all sharp edges and soft hands, chin lifted, mouth set around something that’s not quite a smile but knows exactly what a smile would do if she chose to use it.
The music snaps into something quicker and she moves with it, one shoulder turning, hips following, skirt flicking around her thighs as she drops into a low, fast curve that makes Tucker mutter, “Jesus,” under his breath like they’re in church and she’s just done something rude to the altar.
Dean has gone strangely still beside him. That, more than anything, feels historic.
“She’s…” Dean starts, then stops, unable to locate an insult or a joke sharp enough to survive the moment.
“Yeah,” Garrett says, and his voice comes out rougher than he means it to.
She throws one arm out on the beat, blade biting clean into the ice, and there’s attitude in it. Real attitude. Not the careful little version of herself she lets them see when she’s tucked under Garrett’s arm in the kitchen at the hockey house. This is something brighter. Meaner. A little wicked around the mouth.
She moves like the rink is an argument she plans to win beautifully, and Garrett feels something warm and stupid punch through his ribs so hard he forgets, for once, to be embarrassed by how gone he is.
Usually, Dean would smell that weakness from three seats away and make a meal of it. Dean says nothing.
None of them do, actually, not when she lands the jump with one quick, hard check of her shoulders, not when the crowd claps and she barely seems to hear it, already turning into the next sequence with her eyes focused somewhere past the boards.
Logan makes a helpless sound when she spins, fast enough that the loose pieces of hair at her temples lift with it. Tucker’s hand finds Garrett’s shoulder and squeezes once.
Garrett keeps his eyes on her until the final note hits and she stops dead in the middle of the ice, chest rising hard, one hand lifted, face flushed and fierce and alive.
For half a second, the arena holds its breath, then the boys are on their feet.
Dean’s first, both hands cupped around his mouth as he yells, “LET’S GO!” loud enough to make three parents in front of them flinch. Logan’s whooping like an idiot, Tucker clapping so hard Garrett can hear it over the music cutting out, and Garrett stands there with his hands together and his throat tight and the biggest, dumbest smile of his life pulling at his face.
She sees them. She sees all of them. Her fierce little competition face cracks clean down the middle, shy and bright and breathless, one hand coming up in a small wave that turns into a giggle when Dean nearly trips over a seat trying to cheer louder.
Garrett whistles, sharp and proud, and her eyes find him through all of it. For one second, it feels like the whole rink narrows to that. Her cheeks pink, his heart gone useless in his chest, the boys still losing their minds around him.
Dean drops back into his seat as she skates off, stunned into reverence for maybe the first time in his life. After a second, he looks at Garrett and says, very seriously, “Okay. I get it.”
Garrett doesn’t even gloat. He just keeps watching the tunnel she disappeared through, still smiling like an idiot. “Yeah,” he says. “Me too.”
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pairing – garrett graham x briar media!reader
summary – being the social media manager for briar hockey comes with early mornings, frozen fingers, questionable content requests, and the occasional puck to the arm.
warnings – sports injury, bruising, medical check, pain mentions, swearing
notes from me – as requested here!! potential new !reader ...? & i'm very proud of my photoshopping skills in that third pic lol
word count – 5.2k
navigation – masterlist |
The thing about being the social media manager for the Briar University men’s hockey team was that everybody assumed the job was cute until they saw her standing rinkside at seven-thirty in the morning with frozen fingers, a dying camera battery, and twenty-one college hockey players producing the exact same eight seconds of usable content every time they were asked to act normal on camera.
It wasn’t cute. It was content strategy with frostbite. It was remembering which freshman had promised to send her his hometown photos for the stupid little player intro carousel and which one had instead sent her a blurry screenshot from someone’s Snapchat with a red solo cup visible in the corner.
It was captioning Garrett Graham’s penalty kill clips with something sharp and professional while actively resisting the urge to add my boyfriend is better than yours because she was expected to have restraint.
It was Coach Jensen yelling, “Again,” every ninety seconds, skates carving white lines through the ice, pucks cracking off sticks and boards with that hard, violent sound that always made the whole rink feel more alive than any building had the right to feel before coffee had properly entered the bloodstream.
She did love it, though. She loved the stupid cold and the blue Briar hoodie under her padded black jacket and the little laminated media pass swinging against her chest and half the team calling her boss. She loved the smell of the rink, all ice and rubber and stale coffee and the faint metallic bite of the Zamboni that never quite left the air.
She loved the way the guys got loose once they forgot she was filming, the way Logan turned every drill into some kind of competition against gravity, the way Tucker kept glancing toward the camera with that sweet, easy grin like he’d been born knowing exactly how to be liked by strangers on the internet, the way Dean did one decent turn and immediately looked over as if waiting to see whether the National Archives had preserved it.
Garrett was the worst part of her job and also, objectively, the best angle in the entire rink.
He was at centre ice now in a black practice jersey, helmet pushed low over those stupid dark curls where they’d started escaping at the edges, mouthguard hanging half out while Coach explained the next sequence with a whiteboard marker that looked like it was being held together by spite.
Garrett listened with his stick braced loosely in both gloves, head tipped down slightly, eyes on Jensen like he was absorbing every single detail and filing it somewhere in his body before the rest of them had finished blinking.
Captain mode sat on him cleanly. Sharper than his usual grin, quieter than the smug thing he did when he knew she was watching him. It was in the stillness. The attention. The way the younger guys kept cutting their eyes toward him to check their own posture like Garrett had somehow become both person and weather system.
She lifted the camera and zoomed in because, frankly, the student body deserved journalism.
Beside her, Dean skated past the bench on one foot, because walking the line between athleticism and attention-seeking was a calling. “You getting my good side?”
She kept the lens on Garrett. “I’ve been informed by several reputable sources that you don’t have one.”
Dean made a wounded sound so dramatic it bounced off the glass. “That’s insane. Graham, control your girlfriend.”
Garrett didn’t even look over, but the corner of his mouth moved around the mouthguard. “She’s at work.”
“Thank you,” she called, still filming. “Somebody here respects women in media.”
Logan, coasting by with his stick tucked under one arm and absolutely no business being involved, said, “I respect women in media. I liked that video where you made Hollis look short.”
“That wasn’t me making him look short. That was Hollis being short.”
“Defamation,” Dean said.
“Statistics,” Tucker corrected mildly, and Garrett finally laughed, quick and bright, eyes flicking to her for half a second before Coach’s whistle split the air and pulled all of them back into motion.
The drill started fast. It was one of those breakout patterns that looked clean when Garrett did it and like a small controlled fire when half the freshmen tried to copy him. Two lines, puck retrieval, hard rim around the boards, winger picks it up, quick pass through the neutral zone.
She had filmed it enough times to know the rhythm: scrape, turn, stick on puck, the slap of rubber along the dasher, someone yelling, Coach’s whistle ready to murder any boy who got cute with the timing.
She moved along the bench for a better angle, one hand adjusting the strap of the camera, the other already cold despite the gloves with the fingertips cut off because a full glove made it impossible to work the buttons.
“Careful down there,” Tucker said from the end of the bench as he waited his turn, voice warm with that big brotherish concern he tried to disguise as casual. “Pucks are flying today.”
She glanced up from the camera screen. “Thanks, Dad.”
He put one glove dramatically over his heart. “I care about staff safety.”
“Then tell your teammates to stop shooting like they’ve never met a direction before.”
Tucker grinned and pushed off just as the next group went. Garrett took the puck first, smooth as anything, skating backward for half a beat before turning hard and sending it clean to Logan. It looked effortless in that deeply irritating way great athletes always made difficult things look like they’d simply been asked politely by physics and had agreed.
She tracked him through the lens, catching the angle of his shoulders, the quick communication between him and Logan, the exact second he glanced over again because he knew she was following him.
She was smiling when it happened.
It was such a stupid sound at first. A clipped, ugly little ricochet that made her look up half a second too late. One of the freshmen – Benson, maybe, or Bell, she was ninety percent sure he had a B name – had tried to rim the puck hard around the boards and somehow lifted it instead.
It skipped off the top lip of the dasher at a mean little angle, black blur jumping where black blur was very much not meant to jump.
There was no time to move properly. Her body did the useless thing bodies did when impact arrived faster than thought; shoulders tightening, arm lifting, breath disappearing.
The puck slammed into the outside of her upper arm with a flat, brutal thud that went through the padding of her jacket like the padding had been decorative. Pain burst hot and immediate under the fabric, so bright it turned the whole rink white at the edges for half a second.
“OW! Fuck!”
Everything stopped. The rink went still in one horrible, immediate cut, skates scraping down from speed, sticks lowering, Coach’s whistle half-raised and then forgotten. Her camera swung against her chest where she’d grabbed her arm with her other hand, fingers clamping uselessly over the place because touching it made it worse and not touching it somehow made it worse too.
Her breath came out thin through her teeth. She could feel the pulse of it already, deep and nasty, spreading down toward her elbow in waves that made her eyes sting before she had any interest in crying.
“Jesus Christ,” she hissed, bending slightly over the arm. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
Garrett was already moving. He crossed the ice so fast it almost looked violent, a clean, hard burst of speed that sent shaved ice kicking behind his skates. Benson – Bell, whatever, the boy could have been named Fence Post for all she cared right now – had frozen near the boards with his stick still out, face gone completely bloodless under his helmet.
Garrett hit the brakes in front of him and shoved him once in the chest with a gloved hand. Hard enough to make the freshman stumble back half a skate and understand, instantly and spiritually, that his captain was no longer operating in a developmentally supportive leadership capacity.
“What the fuck was that?” Garrett snapped.
The freshman’s mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. “I–”
“You got eyes, or are those just for decoration?”
“Graham,” Coach Jensen warned, but even Jensen sounded like he was deciding how committed he was to discipline when the captain’s girlfriend was standing on the bench clutching her arm and trying not to swear loudly enough for the athletic director to hear from his office.
Garrett didn’t wait for the answer. He turned away from the kid like the kid had temporarily lost human privileges and skated straight to the bench, one hand reaching for the boards as he came in.
His face changed before he even got to her. The captain expression didn’t vanish, but it cracked open around something sharper and warmer and much less interested in the team’s breakout structure.
His eyes moved over her arm, her face, the way she was holding herself too still, and then he was there, close enough that the cold coming off him mixed with the heat still climbing under her skin.
“Hi,” he said, voice lower now, quick but steady. “You okay?”
She stared at him because her arm was throbbing like someone had installed a second heart in her bicep and because his idea of a greeting after witnessing blunt force trauma was apparently hi. “Do I look okay?”
His mouth pressed together for half a second. Not amused, though it wanted to be. “No.”
“Then there’s your answer.”
“Can you move your fingers?”
“I can move my fingers. I can also use one of them to communicate with your freshman if you want.”
Behind him, someone made the mistake of laughing. It was probably Dean, because Dean had a survival instinct that worked only when God intervened.
Garrett shot a look over his shoulder so lethal the sound died at once. Then he turned back and lifted one hand, stopping just short of touching her jacket sleeve. “Lemme see.”
She took a breath through her nose, then another, because the first one didn’t do anything. The pain had settled into a thick, nauseating ache now, less lightning and more pressure, heavy under the jacket in a way that made her not particularly excited to look at it. “It’s fine.”
“Baby.”
“It’s my arm, Garrett, not my skull.”
“Great. Then you can let me look at your arm before I make it a team rule that freshmen aren’t allowed near pucks without adult supervision.”
She huffed because she was trying very hard not to laugh and also trying very hard not to cry, and both efforts seemed to be meeting in the middle as pure rage. “You’re not making that a rule.”
“I might.”
“You can’t bully a freshman because he accidentally hit me.”
Garrett’s eyes flicked toward the boy again. “Watch me.”
The freshman had skated closer in that terrible way people approached accident sites, all guilt and fear and the faint hope that apologising enough times might reverse physics. He stopped a few feet away, helmet still on, stick tucked under his arm like he no longer trusted himself to hold objects.
“I’m so sorry,” he blurted. “I swear, I wasn’t trying to– I didn’t mean to lift it. I was aiming for the boards and it just– I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
She looked at him over Garrett’s shoulder. He genuinely looked like he might throw up into his cage. It took some of the clean edge off her anger, which was rude, because she had been enjoying the simplicity of hating him for about twelve seconds. “You could’ve just said you were trying to kill me. Would’ve been less embarrassing for both of us.”
His face went even worse. “I wasn’t.”
“I know,” she said, still breathing carefully. “That was a joke. Bad time for you not to have range, bud.”
Dean muttered, “Jesus,” in a tone of deep admiration.
Garrett’s hand found her jacket zipper. “Okay, comedy hour’s done. Arm.”
She let him because arguing with Garrett when he had gone this still was usually a waste of everyone’s morning. He climbed over the boards instead of going around, which was unnecessary and dramatic and very him, skates hitting the rubber mat with a heavy clack.
Up close he smelled like cold air and sweat and the faint plastic bite of hockey gear, his helmet still on, cheeks flushed from practice, dark eyes narrowed at her sleeve. He was careful with the zipper, though. Too careful. His gloved fingers looked ridiculous trying to handle it, so she knocked his hand away and did it herself with the offended dignity of someone who had already lost enough to this rink today.
“I’ve got it,” she said.
“I know.”
“You were hovering.”
“I am hovering. Those are different things.”
She rolled her eyes, but the movement loosened something in her chest. She got the jacket open and shrugged one shoulder down, then regretted it immediately when fabric dragged over the sore place and the pain flared bright enough to make her inhale sharply.
Garrett saw it. His jaw tightened, a muscle kicking once beside his mouth, and his hand came up to hold the jacket away from her skin while she eased her arm out of the sleeve. The hoodie underneath had taken less of the impact, soft navy fabric clinging slightly where her hand had been pressed over it.
Garrett lifted the cuff of the sleeve, then paused. “Can I?”
She looked at him. At the way he’d gone from threatening homicide to asking before moving her sleeve past the sore place. Her throat did something stupid and warm that she immediately blamed on pain.
“Yeah,” she said.
He pushed the sleeve up gently, exposing the outside of her arm. The bruise was already coming up. The shape of it sat there under the skin, ugly and blooming, red-dark at the centre with a purple shadow starting around it like her body had taken one look at the puck and decided to create modern art.
Garrett stared at it for one second too long. His face shut down in a way she knew too well, all the warmth pulled behind his eyes and something cold taking its place.
She looked at the bruise. Then at the freshman. “Thanks a lot. Jesus Christ.”
“I’m sorry,” he said again, smaller.
“Okay,” she said, because he was starting to look like a kicked puppy and she didn’t have the energy to carry guilt on top of blunt trauma. “I believe you. Stop looking like that. You’re making me feel like I hit you.”
Garrett didn’t look away from her arm. “Medic.”
“I can walk myself to the medic.”
“No.”
“Garrett.”
He finally looked up, and the expression on his face was so flat it would have been funny if her arm didn’t feel like it was being inflated with hot water. “I’m taking you to the fucking medic.”
“I work here.”
“You work for social media.”
“Which is part of athletics.”
“Great. Then athletics can survive without Instagram stories for ten minutes.”
Logan, from the ice, said, “Honestly, the stories are the only reason people think we’re likable.”
“Not helping,” Tucker told him.
She exhaled, long and thin, staring at Garrett because if she let him carry her off like she’d been hit by a bus she would never survive the team group chat. “Babe, it’s a bruise. A very rude bruise, but still a bruise.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know my arm is still attached.”
His hand moved lightly around the back of her elbow, not gripping, just there. “And I’m thrilled. Let’s have the medic celebrate with us.”
She glanced past him to Coach Jensen, who had finally skated over with that tired adult expression people got when they supervised twenty-one boys whose prefrontal cortices were still in beta testing. “Coach, tell him I can go by myself.”
Jensen looked at her arm, then at Garrett, then at the freshman, then up at the ceiling as if asking the rink lights why this was his life. “Graham, take her to the medic. Everyone else, water break. Benson, you’re on puck collection for the rest of practice.”
“Benson,” she said, pointing at him weakly with her good hand. “I knew it was a B name.”
Benson looked like he might cry again.
Garrett slid his helmet off and shoved it onto the bench, curls springing damp and messy around his forehead. “C’mon.”
“You still have skates on.”
“I’m aware.”
“You can’t walk me there in skates, baby. That’s not romantic. That’s a workplace incident.”
He gave her a look, then sat down hard on the bench and started unlacing like the concept of wasted time had personally betrayed him. His movements were fast, jerky with leftover adrenaline, tape and laces and pads shifting around him.
She stood there with her jacket half off and her sleeve pushed up, arm held awkwardly away from her body, watching him strip down to socks and sneakers like he was about to perform emergency surgery in the hallway.
The boys were pretending not to watch. Badly.
Dean leaned his forearms on top of his stick, eyes bright. “This is beautiful. Really. Captaincy. Love. Workplace violence.”
Garrett didn’t look up. “Shut up.”
“I’m just saying, if she ever needs a new hype man for the TikTok captions, I feel like I have the range.”
She looked at Dean. “You don’t.”
“I have enormous range.”
“You once suggested we caption a win ‘puck yeah.’”
Dean frowned. “That was good.”
“That was a cry for help.”
Logan nodded solemnly. “It tested poorly with women.”
“It tested poorly with everyone,” she said.
Garrett finished with the second skate and stood, now in socks and sneakers, still in half his gear, looking broad and pissed and so intensely focused on her that the whole rink seemed to tilt around it.
He took her jacket from where it hung off her shoulder and folded it carefully over his arm, then grabbed her camera strap before it could slide wrong against the bruise. “I’ve got it.”
“I can carry my camera.”
“Yeah. I can also carry your camera.”
“You’re being annoying.”
“I’m being calm.”
“Are you?”
“No.” He put one hand at her lower back, steering without shoving, warm through the hoodie. “Walk.”
The medic’s room sat down the hall past the locker rooms, between an equipment storage closet that smelled like damp tape and whatever corner of hell old shoulder pads came from, and a small office where someone had taped a motivational quote crookedly to the door.
Garrett kept his hand at her back the whole way, even though she was walking fine, and every time she shifted her arm he glanced down like the bruise might change shape if he didn’t personally supervise it.
“I’m okay,” she said after the third glance, softer this time because the hallway was quieter and because anger had started draining out of her, leaving the shaky after-feeling behind.
The pain was still there, heavy and hot, but underneath it something else had started to bloom too. It made her want to crawl inside his chest a little, which was inconvenient because she still had a job and a bruise and at least one scheduled post to make before noon.
“I know,” he said.
“You don’t look like you know.”
“I know you’re okay. I’m still allowed to be pissed.”
“At Benson?”
“At Benson. At the puck. At whoever invented rubber. I’m flexible.”
She laughed then, small and surprised, and it jostled her arm enough that she immediately winced. Garrett stopped walking.
“Don’t stop every time I make a face,” she said.
“Don’t make faces.”
“Oh, great advice. Why didn’t I think of that?”
His mouth twitched despite himself, but the tension didn’t leave his shoulders. He looked down at her, eyes searching her face now instead of the injury. “It scared me.”
Her fingers found the front of his practice jersey. Holding the fabric for a second, the same way she sometimes did when he was half-dressed in his room and about to leave too early for morning skate.
“I know,” she said. Then, because the softness felt too exposed and her arm hurt and both of them were standing there with too much feeling in a hallway that smelled like old hockey gloves, she added, “Very embarrassing for you, honestly. I was incredibly brave.”
He stared at her for half a second, and then the laugh came out of him. Quiet, rough, still edged with all the adrenaline he hadn’t put down yet. “Yeah?”
“Heroic, actually.”
“My mistake.”
“You should tell the team.”
“I’ll make an announcement.”
“Good.”
The medic, a woman named Paula who had been dealing with Briar athletes long enough to develop the emotional range of a war general and the patience of a kindergarten teacher, looked up from her desk when Garrett opened the door without knocking.
Her eyes went to him first, then to his gear, then to the camera around his neck, then to the way his hand was still hovering near the small of her back.
“Oh, good,” Paula said dryly. “A Graham emergency. My favourite kind.”
“She got hit with a puck,” Garrett said.
“I can see that, Captain Panic.”
Garrett frowned. “I’m not panicking.”
Paula looked at him over the top of her glasses. “You’re wearing one skate sock and you have a camera on you.”
She looked down. Garrett did, too. One of his sneakers was tied properly. The other was shoved on over a white skate sock with the edge bunched weirdly above the heel. His jaw shifted, and for one glorious second he looked annoyed at his own feet.
She started laughing. “Oh my God.”
Garrett pointed at her gently, betrayed. “You’re injured. Don’t laugh at me.”
“You look insane.”
Paula gestured to the chair beside the exam table. “Sit down, sweetheart, before he starts foaming at the mouth.”
Garrett muttered something under his breath but helped her out of the hoodie anyway, slow around the sore arm, his fingers careful at the cuff.
Paula examined the bruise with competent, unfussy hands, pressing lightly around the edges while she clenched her teeth and tried not to kick Garrett in the shin when he made a low, unhappy noise from beside her.
“Graham,” Paula said without looking up. “Do that again and I’ll send you back to practice.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
Paula hummed, prodded once more, asked her to bend and straighten her elbow, rotate her wrist, squeeze her fingers. The movement pulled at the bruise and made the pain throb harder, but nothing felt wrong in the deep, frightening way.
“Deep contusion,” Paula said finally, reaching for an ice pack. “No obvious signs of fracture. You’ll bruise like hell. Ice it today, anti-inflammatory if you need it, come back if the pain gets worse, if you get numbness, tingling, trouble moving the arm, anything weird.”
Garrett took the ice pack before Paula had fully held it out.
Paula looked at him. “Sure. Do my job.”
“I’ve got it.”
“I can hold ice on my own arm,” she said.
Garrett placed it carefully against the bruise anyway, his hand beneath hers, cold biting through the thin towel wrapped around it. “Humour me.”
She looked at him, at the stubborn set of his mouth, at the little crease still sitting between his brows, at his ridiculous half-dressed practice gear and one messed-up sock and the camera strap cutting diagonally across his chest.
There was something deeply unfair about being hurt and wanting to make fun of him and wanting to kiss him all at once.
“You’re lucky you’re cute,” she said.
His eyes lifted to hers, and some of the captain loosened out of his face at last, replaced by the Garrett grin that had ruined several parts of her life and improved most of them. “Cute?”
“Very.”
His thumb moved once along the safe skin beneath her elbow, small and absent and steady. She could feel his adrenaline leaving him now, not all at once, but by degrees. In the way his hand stopped hovering and settled. In the way his breathing changed. In the way his eyes stayed on her face instead of the bruise, like he was finally letting himself believe her body wasn’t about to betray him with some delayed consequence he should have prevented.
From somewhere down the hall, the rink door banged open and the guys’ voices spilled out, loud and echoing. Dean was saying something about OSHA. Logan was laughing. Tucker, probably, was trying to make sure Benson hadn’t actually changed his major out of shame.
She sighed. “I should go back. I still need B-roll.”
Garrett’s face went flat again. “No.”
“Garrett.”
“You got hit by a puck and you want B-roll?”
She shot him a look. “I have a content calendar.”
“You have a bruise the size of Vermont.”
She bit the inside of her cheek because smiling made him think he was winning, and he was already insufferable enough without encouragement. “I need to finish practice footage.”
“I’ll get you footage.”
That did it. She stared at him, then at the camera still around his neck, then back at him. “You?”
“Yeah.”
“You think you can shoot usable social content?”
He lifted his eyebrows. “I know angles.”
“You know your angles.”
“Those are the important ones.”
She laughed, and he smiled properly this time, proud of himself for getting it out of her even though she immediately winced again. His free hand came up to steady the ice pack when it shifted.
“Baby,” he said, softer. “Let Logan film if you want. Or Dean. Or one of the media interns. You’re done for the morning.”
“I’m your social media manager.”
“You’re my girlfriend with a big ass bruise.”
“I’m both.”
His eyes held hers, the humour still there, but something steadier under it. “The girlfriend part wins today.”
The fight had gone out of her in the medic’s chair, drained by pain and cold and the warmth of his hand still careful beneath her elbow. She looked down at the ice pack, then at the purple-red edge of the bruise peeking around it, and let out a breath.
“One story,” she said.
Garrett’s mouth twitched. “What?”
“I’m posting one story. A workplace injury story. For transparency.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
She reached for the camera strap around his chest, tugging lightly until he leaned down because he thought she wanted the camera back. Instead she kissed the corner of his mouth, quick and warm and just enough to make his expression soften before he could stop it.
“One story,” she repeated against his skin.
His eyes narrowed. “You’re using affection as a negotiation tactic.”
“Yes.”
“That’s manipulative.”
“I learned from the best.”
Paula, from the desk, said, “I’m begging you both to leave.”
So Garrett took her back down the hall with the ice pack held to her arm and the camera still around his neck like some absurd badge of temporary employment.
The team was clustered near the bench when they returned, all of them looking over with varying degrees of guilt, concern, and barely contained entertainment. Benson stood in the middle of them holding a bucket of pucks like a penitent farmhand.
“How are you?” Tucker asked first, because Tucker had been raised correctly.
“Bruised,” she said before Garrett could make it sound like she’d narrowly survived combat. “Not dying. Everyone can unclench.”
Dean’s eyes dropped to Garrett’s camera. “Oh, this is incredible.”
“Don’t,” Garrett warned.
“No, no, I love it. Graham’s in his influencer era.”
Logan grinned. “Get ready with me: captain abandons practice to yell at freshman.”
Benson swallowed. “I really am sorry.”
She looked at him for a second, then sighed and held out her good hand for the puck bucket. He gave it to her automatically, confused. She took one puck from the top, turned it in her fingers, then held it up beside her bruised arm with the ice pack balanced awkwardly against her.
“Garrett,” she said. “Story.”
“No.”
“Take the picture.”
“You’re unbelievable.”
“Take the picture or I’m letting Dean do it, and he’ll use portrait mode.”
Dean’s hand shot up. “I would.”
Garrett looked between her, Dean, the puck, the bruise, and Benson’s devastated face. Then he muttered, “Fuck’s sake,” lifted the camera, and took the picture.
She checked it afterward with the professional severity of a woman who had been struck by a projectile and still refused to post ugly content. It was good.
Garrett might have been annoying and overprotective and entirely too pleased with himself half the time, but he had still managed to get the composition right. Ice pack, puck, edge of the bruise, Briar logo blurred faintly behind her shoulder. Ridiculous. Perfect.
She uploaded it to the story with one hand while Garrett watched over her shoulder like a suspicious parent. When the caption went live, half the bench erupted.
Dean read it aloud, delighted. “Hazard pay when?”
Logan leaned over his stick, laughing. “That’s fair.”
Tucker shook his head, smiling. “You’re never getting approved for rinkside access again.”
Coach Jensen blew the whistle once, sharp enough to make all of them jump. “Practice. Now. Graham, if you’re done running a hospital wing, join us.”
Garrett looked at her instead of moving. “You staying here?”
“I’m sitting on the bench with my ice like a brave little soldier.”
“Don’t film.”
“I might film.”
“Baby.”
She smiled up at him, all innocence and bruised arm and absolutely no intention of being easy about any of this. “Go do your job, Captain.”
He leaned down, kissed her once on the forehead because he’d decided to embarrass both of them in front of the entire team, then pulled back just enough to look at her properly. “You need anything, you tell me.”
“I need you to go skate before Coach kills you.”
“Anything else.”
She lifted the ice pack slightly. “Maybe ask Benson not to assassinate any more staff members.”
“I heard that,” Benson said weakly.
“Good,” Garrett said, and put his helmet back on.
He climbed over the boards and dropped onto the ice with that easy, athletic movement. Before he pushed off, he looked back once. She was still on the bench, jacket around her shoulders, ice pressed to her arm, camera in her lap, pain pulsing ugly but manageable beneath the cold.
She gave him a tiny thumbs up with her good hand.
Garrett shook his head like she was a problem, but he was smiling when he turned back to the drill.Something small and private, still caught at the corner of his mouth as he skated toward centre ice, captain again by the time he reached the line.
Dean coasted beside him and said something she couldn’t hear. Garrett shoved him lightly without looking. She lifted the camera with one hand and filmed it anyway.
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All my stories are R18. I write smut, and I may touch sensitive topics or topics that are not intended to be read by minors.
YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR OWN CONTENT CONSUMPTIONS.
Masterlist
Pairing: Bucky Barnes x F!Reader
Word Count: ~3.1k
Warning/Tags: Modern AU, Fluff, Smut, Light Angst, Jealous Bucky, Childhood friends trope, Friends to lovers, Mutual pining. If I'm missing any tag, I'll add it later.
Summary: A getaway to the Rogers' lake house leads to the final straw in your so-called friendship with Bucky.
Author's Note: This is my first entry to @juniebjonesin picnic! This was so beautiful to do, and it really helped to fight my writer block. I'm hoping I can do one more. Thank you so much for tagging me, sweetheart. I love you! Betaread by my lovely sweetheart @herejustforbuckybarnes!
Picnic Blanket Prompt:
🌊 LATE NIGHT LAKE SWIM daring love + hidden feelings → romantic tension / almost confessions
🌊 “It’s freezing. - “You jumped in first.” / “You look different out here.” / “If I say something stupid, blame the cold water.”
🤝 “WE'RE JUST FRIENDS” until it’s clearly not → blurred lines / tension / denial
🤝 “We’re not doing anything wrong.” / “Then why does it feel like we are?” / “Say it—we’re just friends.”
The lake trip was supposed to be fun. Not something you would use as an excuse to confess your feelings for Bucky, as everyone expected.
Natasha kept insisting that you finally told the truth. It had been almost four years since she learned you had feelings for him; at the moment, you all were just college-weird young people. And he was still just a fuck boy who never took any girl seriously. And you were just his ‘favorite girl,’ as he called you for years. You were just his silly best friend that he would never take for granted… at least as a friend.
The lake house looked like it had always looked—warm… and sticky vibes. The hot air from spring got you grumpy, and the fact that Natasha had spent all the trip talking about Sam and how great they were going to do there made you only feel pathetic. Bucky would probably bring someone new or someone for the week, and you would spend your days with Wanda and Steve.
The wooden lake house was Steve’s parents’, and basically, the friends group had taken advantage of it since you all got your driving license and were able to drive on your own—and more importantly—without parental supervision. But it was always the same since Sam and Nat got together; now the weeks there were more like a couple thing for them, and the rest of you were awkwardly around them.
Then, Bucky and Steve started bringing casual flings, and Wanda and you spent a girl’s weekend basically watching amateur porn being made in front of your eyes.
Natasha was finishing unloading the backseat of the truck while you were starting to unload the trunk when you felt his hand on your shoulder.
“What are you doing, worrying those pretty hands?” Bucky spoke behind you as he took your duffel bag from your hands. “Go inside; I’ll take care of this.”
He kissed your cheek and made you and Natasha walk into the house.
“So… this is finally the weekend?” Natasha hugged you by the shoulder.
“Yes, of course. I’ll tell him after the first quickie with whoever he brought, and he hasn’t promised anything weird to her.” You rolled your eyes.
Natasha scoffed a laugh. “He didn’t bring anyone this time.”
“Of course he didn’t bring anyone, Nat.”
Steve was stocking the fridge with alcohol, with Sam and Wanda helping around—but then, you didn’t see anyone strange around. Not a blonde girl giggling in the kitchen bar, not a redhead wandering around to see the house, not a brunnette sitting on the couch as if she were too superior to do any help.
“No special guests today?” Natasha asked, peeping at you.
“I wanted a free romantic tension weekend for me.” Bucky chimed in with all your bags on his arms.
“What a surprise.”
“But there’s a special guest today…” Pietro, Wanda’s twin, walked from the hallway that led to the rooms.
He had been abroad for years and barely visited the country since his school exchange program had taken all of him. You and Natasha screamed and ran to hug him. You two were just rambling over the other as Pietro hugged you by your waist.
“Why didn’t you tell us?!” You looked at Wanda.
“Kind of a surprise?”
You were still giggling on Pietro’s arms when Bucky nudged you on his way to the rooms—you shrugged it off as accidental. Steve followed him with the rest of your things and sat in the room you had always shared with Wanda, but Bucky noticed Wanda’s stuff wasn’t in the room.
“Where’s Wanda?”
“Oh… She’s staying with me… Pietro asked if he could stay with her for the night…” Steve scratched the back of his neck. He knew Bucky was going to get pissed.
“And couldn’t you tell him to fuck off? This is your fuckin’ house…”
“What was I supposed to say? Sorry, you can’t stay with her because Bucky will rip your balls off?”
“Basically…”
“Bucky… she had seen you for years to parade girls all over this same house; she had probably heard multiple girls moaning your name over here… and you are mad because one time a guy is asking to sleep next to her?”
“He hasn’t even been here for years!”
“Exactly, and they were close… even closer than you two… before he left. He was obviously going to ask to sleep next to her. This is not even something sexual…and even if it was… there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Bucky sat at the edge of the bed.
“Well, you’ve got one thing to do if you wanna keep him away.” Bucky looked up at Steve, “Fuckin’ confess.”
Later that night, you were sitting next to Pietro. You had missed him like crazy—he left just after you had realized your feelings towards Bucky, and even in the distance he kept trying to make you tell him how you felt. His hand caressed your back while you had your legs over his lap, and your head resting on your knees.
“So, nothing yet?” He asked, rubbing your back. You shook your head.
“He’s been all over the place with every girl he finds—I’m not gonna come straight up when a girl is still latched to his neck…”
“You know he was super mad earlier, right? He had been giving me the cold shoulder since he learned we’re sharing a room.”
You chuckled. “What if I do it and it turns out that I have read this whole thing completely wrong?”
Pietro rolled his eyes. “Look. Do I like him for you? No. Not at all. I can’t believe after all these years you’re still into him, but I know when he likes someone… and he really likes you; he’s just an idiot who hasn’t realized it, yet.”
“Or hasn’t accepted,” Natasha added, sitting in front of you.
“You too?” You tilted your head.
“The only two people who haven’t accepted that you two are in love are… you two…”
You looked over your shoulder just to notice Steve and Bucky bringing some coolers. The show was about to start, and it was the first time you could even wrap your mind around the idea of drinking.
You knew well if this ended badly, the whole group would collapse. It was enough having Steve and Natasha dating to add more to the equation.
You really tried to enjoy yourself, to make yourself treat him as you always did, but every time his hands grazed your skin, it made you feel somehow weaker. Every time he brought you that specific drink you had mentioned weeks earlier, and he remembered you loved, every small detail made you think this could go some way if you were more like the girls he had been screwing the last years.
The night ended with most of your friends passed out drunk as you just sat at the edge of the dock looking at the moon reflecting in the lake. Your head rested on your knees; the air cold from the forest made you squirm from time to time, and you had refused to go inside and put on a sweater after you heard Bucky talking on the phone with someone.
You were about to surrender and just go inside when you saw him walking outside. He was just hanging up the call when he saw you. You heard his footsteps getting closer in the mud and then his pace on the wooden floor; you only hugged your legs a little bit tighter.
“What’ya doing?” He stood next to you.
“Just contemplating the moon. It’s been a minute since we were here, and I realized I missed the sight,” you didn’t look at him.
“Do you remember the first times we came here?” He knelt and took one rock and threw it at the lake.
“We were like fifteen? Joseph and Sarah had to deal hard with all of us wanting to be all over the place.”
He chuckled. Steve’s parents had always been supportive of the friends group and had done more than any other parent to make you all close.
“I remember Joseph rushing from the house through here to save Pietro from drowning.”
Trying not to make a lot of noise, you snorted a laugh. “It was before he started to grow like a weed.”
“You seemed happy earlier to see him.” A hint of jealousy could be heard in his words.
“Of course I was… I missed him so much. He was my best friend even before I met the rest of the group.”
He hummed in response, and you really wanted to take one of the rocks and throw it at his head. How was it possible that he could sense all that but could not notice how much you liked him? He looked at you again, the way you hugged your arms as you tried to bring some warmth to your body.
“Hey,” he tried to bring your attention to him, “What about one midnight swim?”
“Bucky, we’re gonna freeze the fuck out of our bodies.”
“Yeah… That’s kinda the point.” He took off his jersey and, without thinking it through, dove. As soon as he came out of the water, you saw his damp hair falling over his forehead.
This had always been your favorite moment. When he called for a midnight swim with the group and everyone followed him, you used to love seeing him try to swim as he fought not to die from the cold water.
Without thinking about it much, you just dived in too. He caught you in the water and hugged you to his body. Your teeth were clicking from the cold, and his naked chest was paradise, grazing through the thin blouse you were wearing.
“It’s freezing, you’re freezing.” He mumbled in your ear, “We shouldn’t be here.”
“You jumped in first.” You looked up at him.
“Well, you didn’t have to follow me.” He scoffed, and between the cold water making you not think straight and the way he looked at you—something finally snapped.
You pulled him closer by the neck and kissed him slowly, closing your eyes—letting him decide what the next step he was going to take.
And, much to your surprise. He kissed you back.
His lips desperately devouring yours, his hands gripping your waist, roaming through your thighs to make you straddle him as he let the heat of the moment engulf him. Your hands stroked his hair while you tried to make the kiss last longer. And when he finally pulled away just to look at you, the only thing he could notice was the way the moonlight covered your face fully. Making you look like the most beautiful masterpiece he had ever seen.
“If I say something stupid, blame the cold water…” He mumbled before kissing you again.
“We can blame the cold water for everything.” You said between kisses, and he nodded eagerly.
In a matter of seconds, you both were already running carefully, wetting the floor of the house, to reach his bedroom. As soon as you reached his bedroom, he closed the door and held you against the door to start kissing you again.
“Bucky… We shouldn’t… We really shouldn’t be doing this…” Your breath came erratically; a soft moan left your lips between every word.
“We’re not doing anything wrong…” He said, before starting to kiss your neck, his lips finding the most sensitive spot your neck could have. Your head tilted back.
“Then why does it feel like we are?” You keened.
“‘Cause you keep letting your most rational side decide what’s correct and what’s not…”
He started to kiss down while he knelt in front of you. He looked up, and for the first time, all those embarrassingly wet dreams you had had through the years were coming to reality. Carefully, he pulled down your shorts and started to kiss your inner thighs. And, at that point, you weren’t even questioning what was going on. You just knew you loved the way he was taking his sweet time kissing every inch of skin he could reach.
Your mind was racing through all his touching, not completely focused on anything—this until his wet and warm tongue found your slit; he was lifting your leg to rest it on his shoulder while he dived on your core. His hands gripped your waist as you pulled him closer by the hair.
Before you could come to your senses, you were already pinned down on his mattress while he circled your clit and lined to your core.
“Are you sure you want it, sweetheart?” You weren’t thinking straight. You could only nod and pull him with your legs.
He finally bucked his hips and slammed his cock inside you, splitting you open. He noticed you were about to moan and placed his hand in your mouth, “We need to be quiet, baby… We don’t need them to know what we’re doing…”
You cried out in his palm and nodded.
“Fuck… you feel so tight… When was the last time…?” Your eyes widened, and he chuckled. “Too private? C’mon... I’m balls deep in you, and you can’t tell me that?”
“You’re enjoying yourself too much…” You were able to speak when he moved his hand from your mouth.
“Just enjoying what I got in front of me…”
He leaned over you, both his arms on your sides, still rolling his hips to get you to your highest; you were sure you had never felt like this before, and you were sure he knew that.
Clenching around his cock, you finally came, an aching feeling pooling on your lower stomach, fingers digging on his side, and then he pulled out, and warm ropes fell in your pelvis. His cock was still throbbing while he pumped himself to let all out.
When he finally fell over you, both of you started cracking a laugh.
“What did we just do?” You looked at him.
“I think… we just fucked…”
“No shit, Sherlock…” You said, cynically. “Blowing off some steam?”
You didn’t notice, but a hint of disappointment appeared in his eyes.
“Yeah… Blew some steam…”
He knew he should have said something, but then he couldn’t really understand what had just happened—and how he could call it.
You took a quick shower and went back to your room—there, Pietro faked to be asleep, but he noticed you had just arrived and all your clothes were damp… He was then curious to know if tomorrow Bucky would have some clothes drying on the porch rail.
And, unsurprisingly. There it was. Some of Bucky’s clothes drying and a clear… very clear hickey on your neck that you had done everything you could to hide with some makeup.
You tried to avoid Bucky—even when he was trying his best to catch your attention. And he had just been able to do it when everyone was already asleep—you were sitting on a rocking chair on the porch, a beer in your hands and a cigarette in the other.
“You look different out here…” He mumbled from the threshold of the house.
“Huh?”
“You look different… or at least for me…”
“Shut up, Bucky…”
“Shut me up…” He teased, and your cheeks heated.
By the third night out of five, Pietro had kept his mouth shut, even when he noticed you only arrived before dawn and slept there enough that anyone would notice you were sneaking out from Bucky’s bedroom.
This night was no different. You were already riding him as if your life depended on it.
“Fuck… Fuck… Bucky… We shouldn’t…” You moaned.
Your knees side by side, your hands steadying you on his chest—his arms were behind his head, as he looked at you bouncing on him with all the eagerness you have been holding for years.
“You look so good like this.” He husked, and you bit your lip.
You had heard him so many times talking like this to so many girls that listening to it for the first time directed to you felt like a teenage dream—you felt pathetic for the first time.
“Fuck… You have no idea how much I have waited for this…” He muffled a moan and leaned to pull you down into his chest, now pounding from below.
“What?” You tried to speak, but it came more like a cry out.
“You have no idea how much I love you…” He groaned on your ear. “I’ve been wanting this for so long…”
“But… we’re friends…” You mumbled, and he husked a laugh. “Why are you laughing?”
You felt his pace growing faster, your hands now hooked on his neck to help you stay put.
“Say it—” You furrowed, “Say we’re just friends after this...”
“Bucky…” You mewled, and he kissed your temple. “I can still taste your precious juices, and you keep calling us friends… I’ve been fucking you three nights in a row… I just told you I love you… and you keep calling us friends…”
“But what if they know?” You made him stop.
“Huh? Who? Them? Or Pietro?” He teased.
“Stop it with that… He’s nothing more than a friend for me…”
“Well, I’m supposed to be a friend too, Aren’t I?”
You rolled your eyes.
“I mean everyone… Aren’t we going to ruin the group if something happens?”
“Then let’s do it great…” He murmured in your ear and pulled out, making you whine. “I’m being serious…”
He leaned and made you sit on his lap.
“I really wanna do this… And I hate that I’m confessing now… Naked… after three nights of whatever that was… But I’ve been dying to tell you that I love you…” Bucky was stroking your hair while he spoke.
“I love you too, Bucky…”
“Then why is Pietro sleeping with you?”
You snorted a laugh… "Because he wanted you to snap… and look… he hasn’t lost his touch…”
“He wanted what…?” He tilted his head.
“He was sure you loved me and wanted to prove a point.”
“Asshole…”
“But it worked…”
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oh this was so sweet and spicy and perfect! i LOVEE a childhood friends to lovers so much it just hits a sweet spot inside of me (😏) and i eat it up everytime
and HELLO?? PIETRO MENTION IN THE BIG TWO SIX??? oh i love it someone dig him up and put him in more fics!
the banter between reader and bucky was sooo good to, he was just cocky enough but then was so sweet when it counted. theyre braver than me for going in that lake i would FREEZEEEE to death and i grew up going in the pacific ocean... and that "say it. were just friends." OOUUU it hit so good
pairing – garrett graham x kitty!reader
summary – the plan is simple: take garrett home, satisfy the curiosity and move on. the plan fails spectacularly.
warnings – 18+, smut, protected sex, fingering, oral stimulation, multiple orgasms, praise, scratching and biting, playful banter
notes from me – the first fic in this series!! so excited for you guys to read this one and let me know your thoughts! this fits in as the first time kitty & garrett sleep together! <3
word count – 7k
navigation – masterlist | MBF masterlist
The red wine has made the pavement look shinier than it is. That’s the only explanation she can come up with for the way everything seems slightly richer around the edges when they spill out of the restaurant into the December cold: taxi lights dragged gold over wet asphalt, steam breathing from a grate near the kerb, the dark windows above Mercer Street reflecting little broken pieces of the city back at itself.
Her friends are laughing about something that stopped being funny inside, all three of them crowded beneath the awning while the hostess tries to arrange cars nobody actually wants yet.
She pulls her coat tighter around herself, black fur swallowing the narrow straps and short hem of her dress until she looks significantly more prepared for the weather than she feels.
The cold catches instantly at her bare knees. Her heels click against the pavement when she steps aside for a couple pushing past, and she’s halfway through telling one of her friends that they are absolutely not going uptown yet when Sophie grabs her forearm hard enough to interrupt the sentence.
“Wait. Oh my God. Hey!”
She follows Sophie’s line of sight mostly because the girl is already waving both arms like she’s flagging down a rescue helicopter.
A group of guys is coming toward them through the foot traffic, broad shoulders and dark coats breaking apart the smaller bodies moving the opposite way. Dean Di Laurentis is the easiest to recognise. His coat is open despite the cold, his hair still perfectly arranged, one hand lifted in answer to Sophie’s wave.
Beside him are Tucker and Logan, both familiar enough from Briar parties and the occasional photograph Dean has posted from some ski trip or boat or stupidly expensive dinner. Beau is there too, laughing at something Logan says.
And then there’s Garrett Graham. Her eyes pass over him once, then come back. Then, humiliatingly, leave and return for a third time as if the first two inspections could not possibly have collected enough evidence.
Oh. The plot has thickened.
Garrett had been hot at the hockey house. Obviously. She hadn’t mistaken him for an accountant while he leaned against the wall in his own team sweatshirt and tried to call her Madison.
She had seen the curls, the shoulders, the grin. She had noticed enough to let him spend nearly an hour asking around for her name rather than simply walking away and forgetting he existed.
But that had been hockey-house hot. Campus hot. A little drunk beneath ugly lighting with a red cup in his hand and an entire building arranged to remind everyone he was important. This is something else.
The dark knit sweater sits snug across his chest and arms, fitted enough to show exactly how much body is hidden beneath it. A thin chain catches at the base of his throat whenever he moves. His jeans are loose, riding low over heavy tan Timberlands, and he walks with an easy, grounded weight that makes the women coming toward him shift aside before they consciously decide to.
He walks, she thinks faintly, like whatever is happening beneath those jeans requires consideration.
Which is a disgusting thought to have on a public street. She has it twice.
Garrett sees her just as Dean reaches them. There’s a flicker of recognition across his face, quick but unmistakable, before his mouth curves.
Dean sweeps Sophie into a hug and kisses the side of her head. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I live here, idiot.”
“No, you don’t. You live at school nine months of the year and terrorise Manhattan recreationally.”
Sophie rolls her eyes. “That’s still living here.”
He laughs and turns, attention landing on her. “There she is.”
Dean hugs her with the easy familiarity of someone she has known through Christmas parties, charity dinners and summers where both their families kept ending up in the same places without anyone admitting they had coordinated it. He smells expensive and cold from outside.
“Your mother told mine you were home,” he says as he releases her.
She scrunches up her nose. “That sentence made me want to walk into traffic.”
“Yeah, well, our mothers are obsessed with each other,” Dean grins, then gestures carelessly at the men behind him. “You know everyone, right?”
She looks past him. Garrett’s still watching her.
“Yeah,” she says, because her voice has apparently decided to become perfectly normal at the least convenient moment. “More or less.”
Logan leans in for a quick hug, Tucker offers her a warm, slightly apologetic smile as though he already knows whatever Dean is planning will become everybody’s problem, and Beau greets Sophie by name. Garrett waits until last.
Up close, the sweater is worse. His shoulders are worse. The little glimpse of chain at his collar is so much worse she briefly considers whether she has been unknowingly ovulating for the entire length of Mercer Street.
“Hockey boy,” she says.
His smile pulls wider. “Manwhore girl.”
Her friends go silent with the speed and precision of animals spotting movement in tall grass. She arches one brow. “That isn’t what I called myself.”
“No, but it’s the only name you gave me.”
“I gave you my actual name eventually.”
“After I conducted a campus-wide investigation.”
She rolls her eyes. “It was forty minutes.”
“Forty-seven.”
She stares at him. “You timed it?”
Garrett’s eyes move over her face, dark and amused, then dip for one brief second to the fur folded at her throat. “Maybe.”
“Oh, that’s embarrassing for you.”
“It worked.”
Before she can answer, Dean looks between them. His head turns once toward Garrett, once back toward her, his expression brightening with a level of interest that should legally require a permit. “You two know each other?”
“Barely,” she says.
“At a deep spiritual level,” Garrett says at the same time.
She gives him a flat look. “You forgot my name while speaking directly to me.”
“And then I learned from adversity.”
Tucker makes a quiet sound that might be a laugh. Logan looks delighted already. Dean, naturally, looks ready to cancel every other plan he has ever made. “Okay. Great. We’re all going out together.”
“We’re already going out,” Sophie points out.
“Perfect. So are we.”
“To where?” her other friend asks.
Dean gestures vaguely down the street, as if New York has been waiting for him to choose from it. “Next place.”
“That’s not a place,” Tucker says.
“It will be when we get there.”
There’s some discussion about a club downtown that Sophie knows, another place Logan heard about from a guy on the team, and whether the table Dean has access to is real or the result of him once again treating his surname as a universal keycard.
She hears almost none of it. Garrett has shoved his hands into his pants pockets, which pulls the knit tighter over his arms. He’s standing half-turned toward Dean, listening, his weight settled back on one heel.
Every now and then his eyes return to her, not lingering long enough to be called staring, but doing it often enough that she feels each glance like the brush of fingers along the exposed skin above her dress.
It’s been a little while since she has had sex.
Not an alarming length of time, nobody needs to establish a welfare committee. She’s been busy, and the last man she entertained spoke about venture capital for twenty-two uninterrupted minutes.
Still. It’s been long enough. Getting back on the horse is healthy. Sensible, even. Her eyes drift down Garrett’s body once more, taking in the heavy boots and the loose denim and the sheer size of him.
That’s a very large horse.
“Are you coming?” Garrett asks.
Her gaze snaps to his face. His mouth is twitching.
She narrows her eyes. “Where?”
“The club.”
The bastard knows she was looking. She steps closer as the rest of the group starts moving, letting the fur coat fall open just slightly at her throat. Garrett’s eyes drop before he catches them. Better.
“Try not to lose track of my name on the way,” she says.
His smile turns slow. “Think I’ve got it now.”
The club is beneath a hotel with no sign outside and a doorman who looks at Dean for approximately two seconds before unclipping the rope.
“See?” Dean says, glancing back at Tucker as they descend the narrow stairwell. “Real table.”
The music reaches them before the room does, bass climbing through the stairs and into the bones of her feet. Downstairs, everything is low red light and mirrored walls, bodies packed beneath a ceiling deliberately made to feel too close.
Someone takes their coats. Someone else appears with champagne Dean insists he didn’t order, which means he absolutely ordered it.
She turns away from the coat check, smoothing one hand down the side of her dress. Garrett stops speaking.
It’s subtle enough that nobody else catches it. Logan is arguing with Dean about the table. Beau has already disappeared toward the bar. Her friends are being drawn into a conversation with girls they know from Spence. But she sees Garrett’s mouth close.
The coat had hidden most of the dress. Without it, the black silk skims close over her body and ends high against her thighs, while lace climbs over her chest in thin, delicate shapes that reveal skin. The back dips low. She had chosen it because it made her legs look excellent and because her mother had once called it a little severe, which had been all the encouragement required.
Garrett looks from her heels to the lace at her chest, then drags his eyes back to her face with visible effort.
She pretends to check her bag. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.”
She tilts her head, smiling. “You look confused.”
“I’m adjusting.”
“To what?”
His gaze flicks down once more, quick and unrepentant now. “New information.”
Heat slides pleasantly beneath her skin. “Try to keep up.”
He huffs a breath. “I’m trying.”
Dean pushes a glass of champagne into Garrett’s hand, breaking the line between them. Garrett takes it without looking away from her.
The first half-hour passes around them rather than through them. Their group expands and contracts as people recognise Dean, then Logan, then Garrett. Girls approach the table with that particular bright confidence athletes attract, already knowing the answer they want before asking a question.
Garrett is polite. He smiles. He leans down to hear people over the music. He doesn’t touch anyone. She notices this despite having absolutely no reason to.
She also notices when he notices a man at the bar offering to buy her a drink. Garrett’s jaw shifts once before he lifts his own glass to his mouth.
Interesting.
She refuses the drink, because she already has one and because the man has a scarf tied around his neck indoors. Then she turns back toward the table and catches Garrett watching.
“What?” she asks when she reaches him.
“Nothing.”
“That looked like something.”
He takes a slow sip of whiskey. “Thought you might’ve found your next victim.”
She glances back at the scarf. “Please. I have standards.”
Garrett looks down at her. “Do you?”
Her mouth opens in theatrical offence. “You’re standing dangerously close for someone who’s saying things like that.”
The music shifts, something heavier moving through the speakers. Around them, the dance floor packs tighter, hands lifting through red light, the mirrored wall flashing pieces of skin and jewellery and open mouths.
Garrett leans closer, his voice warm near her ear. “You gonna threaten me all night?”
A shiver moves over the back of her neck, too quick and fine to hide. She turns her face toward his. They’re close enough now that she can see the faint shadow along his jaw, the small movement of his throat above that stupid chain.
“Depends,” she says. “Are you going to do anything worth threatening?”
His eyes drop to her mouth. Something settles over his face, darkening the amusement without removing it.
“You tell me,” he says.
She could stand there and keep sparring with him. She could let the entire night collect itself in little looks and unfinished sentences, then return home alone and think about his shoulders while pretending she had made a point.
Instead, she puts her glass on the table and holds out her hand. “Come dance.”
Garrett looks down at her fingers, then back up. “You ask everyone like that?”
“No.” She curls her fingers once. “I usually don’t have to ask.”
His hand slides into hers, large and warm enough to swallow it entirely. “Lucky me.”
She leads him into the crowd before her body can do anything humiliating about the contact. The dance floor is hotter near the centre, all perfume and sweat and the sweet chemical fog spilling from a machine above them.
Garrett stays close behind her as they move through, one hand briefly touching the small of her back whenever somebody presses too near. It should feel presumptuous. It feels useful. Worse, it feels natural, his palm broad and steady against the bare dip above her dress.
She finds a pocket of space and turns to face him. For the first minute, they’re almost respectable.
Garrett moves better than she expects. Easy in his body in the way athletes tend to be, shoulders loose, weight shifting naturally beneath the music. His eyes stay on her, mouth curving whenever she catches him watching.
She steps closer. He looks down at the diminishing space between them. “Hi.”
“Hi.”
“You always this friendly in New York?”
She smirks. “I’m being welcoming.”
“To the city?”
“To you.”
Garrett’s eyebrows lift. “That so?”
She turns before answering, putting her back to his chest. His hands catch her hips on instinct. The reaction moves through both of them at once. She feels it in the way his fingers tighten against the silk, then deliberately loosen as if he’s giving her space to change her mind. She doesn’t. She settles back, letting the music move through her knees and hips, the hard length of him aligned behind her.
Jesus Christ. He’s even bigger from this angle.
His chest brushes her shoulders when he bends, mouth near her ear. “This your idea of welcoming?”
She grins, though he cannot see it properly. “You complaining?”
“Trying to understand local customs.”
“Keep your hands where they are and you’ll learn.”
A laugh leaves him, low and warm against her neck. His thumbs move once over her hips, almost absent, and her stomach tightens. She starts slowly because she’s not completely cruel. Then the chorus drops, bodies surging around them, and she rolls her hips back into him.
Garrett’s breath stops. It’s only half a second, a small interruption against her hair, but she feels it. Feels the way his hands clamp more securely around her, the heavy press behind her turning unmistakable beneath those baggy jeans.
There you are.
She does it again.
His mouth touches her ear when he says, “You’re doing that on purpose.”
“Doing what?”
He laughs without much humour. “Right.”
She turns her head just enough that her cheek brushes his jaw. “You seemed very confident at your party.”
“I am confident.”
“Are you?”
His fingers spread over her waist, thumbs nearly meeting beneath the lace at her sides. “You want proof?”
The words settle low in her body. Heat pulses between her thighs, thick and immediate, and suddenly the red wine explanation seems stupid. The pavement hadn’t made him look better. The city hadn’t done anything. Garrett is simply built like a personal failing and currently hard against her ass.
She looks back at him over her shoulder. His eyes are darker now, the teasing dragged thin beneath something focused and hungry. He’s still letting her control it. Still waiting, even with his hands on her and his body saying something much less patient behind her.
That restraint does more to her than it should. She turns in his arms. Garrett makes room, but his hands remain at her hips. Their bodies stay close enough that the lace over her chest brushes his sweater with each breath.
She slides her hands up his chest, feeling the dense muscle beneath the knit, and nearly loses the next sentence to the fact that he’s even harder than he looks. “Come home with me.”
Garrett goes very still. The music keeps pounding around them, light moving over his face in red and black. His hands tighten once at her waist. “How much did you drink?”
The question surprises her enough that she blinks. “Excuse me?”
“You were drinking before, and champagne here.”
“I had two glasses of wine over dinner and approximately four sips of champagne because Dean ordered one that tastes like shit.” She tilts her head. “Are you rejecting me?”
Garrett’s mouth twitches, but he doesn’t let the joke move him off the point. “I’m asking.”
She studies him for a moment. The confidence is still there, but it’s no longer careless. He wants her. She can feel exactly how much. He’s simply not going to make wanting her the only relevant fact in the room.
Something unexpectedly warm shifts beneath her ribs. “I’m not drunk,” she says. “I’m making a completely sober bad decision.”
“That supposed to reassure me?”
“No. It’s supposed to get you into a car.”
His grin returns slowly. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yeah.” He bends until his mouth is near her ear again. “Let’s make your bad decision.”
They don’t tell everyone immediately because Dean would become unbearable. She retrieves her coat while Garrett finds his. By the time they reach the stairs, Tucker has noticed anyway. His eyes move from Garrett’s face to her hand wrapped around his sleeve, then lift with quiet understanding.
“You leaving?” Tucker asks.
Garrett nods once. “Yeah.”
Tucker glances at her, not judgemental, only checking something she cannot quite name. She gives him a small, easy smile.
“Have fun,” he says.
Logan hears that and turns. “Who’s having fun?”
“No one,” Garrett says.
Dean looks up from the table. His eyes sharpen instantly. “Wait.”
She pulls Garrett toward the stairs. “Goodnight, Dean.”
“Wait. Are you guys–”
The music swallows the rest as the door shuts behind them. Outside, the cold hits her hot skin so violently she laughs. Garrett looks down at her while the attendant brings their coats, his cheeks faintly flushed from the club, curls pushed messier than before.
“What?” he asks.
“Nothing.”
“You keep looking at me weird.”
She accepts her coat, then lets Garrett hold it while she slides her arms into the sleeves. His hands settle briefly at her shoulders, adjusting the fur around her before stepping back.
“I’m processing new information,” she says.
He recognises his own line and laughs. “About?”
Her eyes travel pointedly down the front of him.
Garrett’s face changes. “Jesus Christ.”
“What?”
“You’re not subtle.”
“I’m wearing lace to my waist in December. Did I seem committed to subtlety?”
The car ride uptown is fifteen minutes of concentrated poor judgement. She takes the middle seat despite there being no reason to, her thigh pressed along Garrett’s while Manhattan moves silver and black outside the windows. His hand rests near his knee at first.
Then she places her own over it. His fingers turn beneath hers, threading through. It’s a strangely intimate thing to do on the way to have sex with someone she barely knows.
That thought arrives, waits for her to feel alarmed, then leaves when Garrett’s thumb strokes once along the side of her finger.
Her building rises above the park in pale limestone and glass, every window lit warm against the dark. The doorman greets her by name, opens Garrett’s door and very carefully doesn’t look at their joined hands.
Garrett tips his head back as they cross the lobby, taking in the stone, the enormous arrangement of white flowers, the chandelier descending through three floors of open space. “This is where you live?”
“One of them. This where I live when I’m home.”
The private elevator doors open. She steps inside and presses the button for the penthouse. Garrett looks at the single option above the lobby, then at her.
She folds her arms. “Don’t.”
His laugh bounces softly off the mirrored walls. “One of your homes is the most– like, Dean answer you could’ve given.”
“Do not compare me to Dean while I’m trying to sleep with you.”
“That’s fair.” Garrett steps closer as the elevator begins to rise. “Really kills the mood.”
She looks up at him. “Is the mood dead?”
His gaze drops to her mouth. “Not even a little.”
He kisses her before the doors open. There’s no careful beginning to it. His hand comes around the back of her neck, warm beneath her hair, and his mouth finds hers with the confidence he’s been holding behind his teeth all night.
She catches the front of his sweater in both fists, dragging him closer until her back touches the mirrored wall and his body settles against hers. He kisses like he talks: a little smug, a little demanding, deeply pleased whenever she pushes back.
Her lips part beneath his. Garrett makes a low sound into her mouth when she bites his bottom lip, and the noise sends a quick, molten rush through her. One of his hands slips from her neck to her waist, pulling her flush against him.
The elevator chimes. They separate by approximately two inches, and the doors open directly into the penthouse.
Garrett looks past her at the dark sweep of the living room: floor-to-ceiling windows, the park below them, pale furniture arranged around a low marble table, art her mother bought because somebody in Paris said it mattered.
“Holy shit,” he says.
She grabs his hand and pulls him inside. “Don’t make it weird.”
“I’m not making it weird. Your elevator opened into your house.”
She nods seriously. “Our neighbours are very dangerous.”
His head whips toward her. “Your neighbours can access your living room?”
“No, but it sounded mysterious.”
He laughs as the doors close behind him. The apartment is silent. Her parents are in Palm Beach until after New Year’s, the staff gone for the night, every lamp controlled by a panel she cannot operate properly despite growing up here. She hits three buttons before the lights near the windows soften on.
Garrett shrugs out of his coat. She takes it and drops both of theirs over a chair that’s almost certainly not meant to hold coats. His eyes track the room once more, curious but not impressed in an overeager way. He doesn’t start asking what things cost. He does not look at her differently.
Instead he glances at the enormous abstract painting above the fireplace and says, “That supposed to be anything?”
“My mother says it’s about grief.”
“It looks like ketchup.”
She stares at him for one second, then laughs so suddenly she has to press her lips together.
“What?” Garrett asks.
“Nothing. I’ve been saying that for four years.”
“So I’m right.”
She shoots him a look. “You’re definitely not cultured enough to be right.”
He steps closer. “You gonna throw me out?”
“Maybe.”
“Before or after?”
Her breath catches slightly.
Garrett’s gaze drops to the lace over her chest. He reaches up, not quite touching, one finger tracing the air near the delicate edge at her collarbone. “This dress has been making my life difficult for two hours.”
“Only two?”
“Started when the coat came off.”
She slides both hands beneath the hem of his sweater, palms meeting warm skin at his waist. His stomach contracts beneath her touch.
“And the sweater?” she asks. “That was an accident?”
Garrett glances down at himself. “It’s a sweater.”
“It’s working very hard.”
His mouth curves. “You’ve been staring all night.”
“So have you.”
“Yeah.” He takes her face in both hands, thumbs resting near her jaw. “I have.”
Then he kisses her again. They nearly knock over the lamp beside the sofa. Garrett catches it one-handed without taking his mouth completely from hers, setting it upright with a muffled laugh when she pushes him back into the console behind him.
“That expensive?” he asks against her lips.
“Probably.”
“Great.”
“Stop backing into things,” she murmurs, her lips brushing his.
His hands slide up her dress, then stop. “Bedroom?”
She looks toward the hallway. “That’s very efficient.”
“I’m trying to protect your furniture.”
She smiles. “How responsible.” She takes his hand again and leads him down the hall.
Her room has barely changed since she left for college, except that her mother replaces things whenever she decides they no longer represent the adult daughter she imagines having.
The bed is enormous and neatly made, the windows looking south over the city, her old photographs arranged beside newer perfume bottles and jewellery trays. Garrett pauses in the doorway.
She turns. “What now?”
His eyes move over the room, then settle on a framed photograph of her at sixteen in riding clothes, one hand resting on the neck of a chestnut horse.
A grin spreads across his face. “You ride?”
She follows his gaze. “Don’t.”
“You actually ride horses.”
“I used to.”
She grabs his sweater and pulls it over his head. The laugh disappears. So does most of her ability to form language.
Holy fuck.
His body is broad in a way clothing had only suggested, shoulders packed with muscle, chest solid and warm beneath her hands. His stomach is leaner, cut deeply above the waistband of his jeans, a faint trail of dark hair disappearing beneath the loose denim. She stares.
Garrett drops the sweater near his feet. “You okay?”
“No.”
His eyebrows lift.
She reaches for the button of his jeans. “This has become a much more serious situation.”
He catches her wrist, smiling. “Thought you had standards.”
“I have eyes.”
“That’s romantic.”
“I’m not trying to romance you.”
“No?” His hand slides around her waist, fingers finding the zip at the back of her dress. “What are you trying to do?”
She leans closer until her mouth brushes his. “Take a guess.”
Garrett pulls the zip down. The dress loosens over her body, silk slipping from her shoulders beneath his hands. He watches it fall, and this time the expression on his face is not playful at all. His eyes move slowly over the black lace beneath, over her waist and hips and bare thighs, the look so open and concentrated that her skin warms everywhere it touches.
“Fuck,” he says quietly.
The single word does more than an entire prepared speech could have. She steps out of the dress and pushes him backward toward the bed. Garrett lets her. Mostly. His hands remain on her hips as he sits, pulling her between his knees.
Up close, his lashes look offensively dark. His mouth is already swollen from kissing her. She puts one hand beneath his chin and tilts his face up.
“You’re very pretty,” she says.
Garrett’s hands tighten. “Pretty?”
“Mhm.”
His brows furrow. “I’m six-two.”
“Congratulations.”
“I play hockey.”
“I’m sorry.”
He laughs and turns his head, kissing the inside of her wrist. The gesture is so casually soft that she goes still for half a second.
His eyes lift to hers. “Still good?”
The warmth beneath her ribs deepens by a degree. “I’m good.”
His mouth presses to her stomach just above the lace, then lower, one slow kiss near her hip. Her fingers slide into his curls before she’s decided to touch him there.
Garrett looks up. “You want me to slow down?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“I invited you into my parents’ home and took off your clothes.”
“Technically, you only took off my sweater.”
She reaches for his belt. “Do you want to keep arguing?”
“Little bit.”
She opens the buckle. “I can send you back to Dean.”
Garrett immediately catches her around the waist and flips her onto the bed.
A startled laugh breaks out of her as her back hits the duvet, his body coming over hers without crushing, one knee pressing between her thighs. “That was rude.”
“You threatened me.”
Her brow arches. “With Dean.”
“Exactly.”
His mouth finds her neck. She turns her head, giving him more room before she can pretend otherwise. The first drag of his lips beneath her jaw sends heat rushing down her spine. Garrett kisses lower, slower than she expects, one hand spreading over her waist while the other braces beside her head.
For someone with manwhore energy, he’s irritatingly attentive. He watches every small reaction. The way her stomach tightens when his fingers skim beneath the lace. The hitch in her breathing when his mouth closes over her breast through the fabric. The sharp little pull of her hand in his hair when he finally moves the lace aside and takes her nipple into his mouth.
“Garrett,” she breathes.
His eyes lift. The smugness there is unbearable.
“Don’t look so pleased with yourself.”
He drags his tongue slowly, making her back arch before she can stop it. “Hard not to.”
She tugs his hair. Garrett groans against her skin, and the sound goes directly between her legs.
“There,” she says, breathless but triumphant. “Better.”
“You like hurting people?”
“Only athletes.”
“Specific.”
“You’re very annoying,” she gasps.
His hand slides down her stomach. “You’re very wet.”
Her next answer disappears. Garrett pauses at the edge of her underwear, eyes on her face. She nods before he asks, and his fingers move beneath the lace.
The first touch is slow. Almost cautious. Then he feels exactly how ready she is and his forehead drops briefly against her ribs. “Jesus.”
She smiles at the ceiling. “Problem?”
“No.” His fingers slide through her again, gathering the slick heat there before pressing with more purpose. “Just adjusting to new information.”
Her laugh catches when one finger eases inside her.
“Still funny?” he asks.
“Still hate you.”
“Sure.”
He takes his time, which she both appreciates and resents. One finger, then two, curling until the pressure catches somewhere that sends her hand flying to his shoulder. Garrett watches her face as though this is the only subject he’s ever studied seriously, his thumb moving in slow circles that make her thighs tense around his wrist.
It’s been a while. Her body is making that information humiliatingly clear.
Garrett bends and kisses her, swallowing the sound that escapes when he finds the angle again. She grips the back of his neck, dragging him closer, kissing him harder because every careful little stroke of his hand is pulling her apart too quickly.
“You always this impatient?” he murmurs against her mouth.
“You always talk this much?”
“Usually more.”
She bites his lip. His fingers press deeper in retaliation.
Her hips lift. “Fuck.”
“There she is.”
“Don’t start.”
“At the party you looked at me like I was wasting your time.”
“You were,” she mumbles.
His thumb moves faster. “Am I wasting it now?”
The answer breaks into a moan before it becomes a word. Garrett’s mouth curves against her throat, but whatever smug thing he might have said stays there. His other hand slips into hers against the mattress, fingers locking, and he keeps touching her until the tension low in her stomach twists too tight to hold.
It hits quickly enough to embarrass her. Her thighs close around his hand, breath breaking as the room goes white and soft at the edges. Garrett kisses beneath her ear, his fingers slowing but not stopping, working her through the sharpest part until she pushes weakly at his shoulder.
“Okay,” she gasps.
He lifts his head. “Okay good or okay stop?”
“Stop.”
His hand stills immediately. The obedience of it lands strangely. Comfortably. She lies beneath him breathing hard, skin hot against the cool sheets, and Garrett waits without crowding her, pressing a brief kiss to her jaw.
“You good?”
She looks up at him. His hair is wrecked from her hands, mouth damp, shoulders filling the space above her. “Very irritatingly good,” she says.
His grin flashes. “Yeah?”
“Take your jeans off before I reconsider.”
Garrett stands beside the bed, and she props herself onto her elbows to watch. He opens the button. Pushes the jeans and boxers down together. Her eyes widen.
Oh.
Oh, he had not been exaggerating through the denim.
Garrett catches her expression and looks down at himself, then back at her. “What?”
“You’re kidding.”
A laugh escapes him. “That bad?”
She considers the size of him with the grave concentration of someone reviewing building plans. “I have things to do tomorrow.”
He drops his head, laughing into one hand. “Holy shit.”
“This isn’t funny!”
“It’s a little funny.”
She points at him. “You should disclose that before leaving the house.”
“Put it on my medical alert bracelet?”
“Something tasteful.”
Garrett climbs back over her, still smiling. “We can stop.”
She wraps one leg around his waist. “Don’t be stupid.”
His expression settles. “Condom?”
She points toward the bedside drawer. “There.”
He reaches for it, finds the box and glances at her. “You keep these in your childhood bedroom?”
“I’m wealthy, Garrett, not irresponsible.”
“Very inspiring.”
Her eyes narrow at him. “You have one in your wallet, don’t you?”
He pauses.
She gasps. “Of course you do.”
“I went out with Logan and Dean. It felt responsible.”
“Manwhore,” she mutters.
“You started it.”
He tears the packet open, then looks at her again when he is ready, the humour easing from his face. “Tell me if you want me to slow down.”
“I will.”
“Or stop.”
“I know.”
Garrett settles between her thighs, one hand beneath her knee. The first press of him makes both of them go quiet.
She’s warm and loose from his fingers, but he’s still a lot, the stretch sharpening enough that her nails catch at his shoulder. Garrett stops immediately. “Too much?”
“No.” Her eyes close briefly. “Just wait.”
His hand smooths over her thigh. “Okay.”
He stays there, perfectly still despite the tension running through his body, mouth pressing slow kisses to her cheek, her jaw, the corner of her lips. Her body eases around him by degrees.
She opens her eyes. “You can move.”
“You sure?”
“Garrett.”
“Right.”
He pushes in slowly. The breath leaves her in a long, shaking pull. Garrett’s forehead drops to hers, his own breathing rougher now, control showing in the hard line of his shoulders and the careful grip of his hand at her thigh.
“Fuck,” he whispers when he is finally all the way inside her.
She cannot make fun of him because her entire nervous system is busy reorganising itself around the fact that he feels even bigger than he looked, which seems unfair.
“You okay?” he asks.
Her eyes narrow faintly. “I’m good. You’re just… whoa.”
His laugh comes out strangled. “Whoa?”
“Move before I insult you properly.”
The first stroke is slow, drawing nearly all the way out before he pushes back in. Her head tips into the pillow. His mouth catches hers, kissing her through the second, then the third, each movement loosening into something deeper and steadier as her body adjusts.
He feels good. Good in a way that catches her by surprise. The weight of him over her. The broad palm holding her thigh. The warmth of his mouth and the small, involuntary sounds he makes whenever she drags her nails over his shoulders.
She had expected a performance from him. Something polished and self-satisfied, Garrett Graham proving why half the campus knows his name.
Instead he gets messy. His curls fall into his eyes. His breathing breaks whenever she tightens around him. His jaw goes slack when she pulls him closer with both legs and he drives deeper, the practiced control slipping just enough to show her what she’s doing to him. That’s better than confidence.
She scratches lightly down his back. Garrett’s hips snap forward, harder than before. The bed shifts beneath them.
“Oh,” she says, delighted despite the breathlessness. “You like that.”
His eyes open. “Careful.”
She does it again.
“Fuck.” He drops his face into her neck, laughing once without humour. “You’re a problem.”
“You followed me home.”
“You dragged me.”
Her laugh turns into a sharp moan when he changes the angle, lifting her thigh higher over his arm. Garrett’s mouth curves against her throat.
“Not funny now?”
“You’re still annoying.”
“But?”
She digs her nails into him. “Don’t fish for compliments.”
He kisses her hard, rhythm roughening as the humour burns back into heat. The headboard begins tapping softly against the wall. His chain swings between them, cool metal brushing her chest before warming against her skin.
Her hands move everywhere they can reach: his back, his hair, the hard line of his arm beside her head. Garrett watches her whenever he can, eyes dark and intent, catching each shift in her body until he recognises the pressure beginning to build again.
His hand slips between them. The first circle of his thumb makes her hips jerk beneath him.
“Yeah?” he murmurs.
“You sound smug.”
“I sound focused.”
“You sound–” The next word disappears when he does it again, pressure firm and exact while he keeps moving inside her.
Garrett’s mouth finds her ear. “What do I sound like?”
She turns her head and bites his jaw.
His groan shudders through both of them. “Jesus Christ.”
“There,” she breathes. “Now you sound better.”
He laughs, ruined and low, and thrusts harder. The room narrows around them. The dark windows. The city spread in lights beyond the glass. The expensive quiet of her parents’ apartment being steadily dismantled by the soft knock of the bed and Garrett breathing her name against her throat.
Her orgasm climbs slower this time, building beneath every stroke until her entire body feels pulled tight around it. Garrett senses the change. His arm slides beneath her back, holding her closer, his mouth moving along her jaw in kisses that become less coordinated with every breath.
“Come on,” he murmurs. “I’ve got you.”
The words should be too intimate from him. They’re not. Her legs tighten around his waist. The pressure breaks bright and hot, dragging a cry out of her before she can swallow it. Garrett kisses her through it, hand steady between them, body moving until she starts trembling beneath him.
“Fuck,” he breathes. “That’s it.”
She clings to him through the aftershocks, nails biting into his shoulder. Garrett’s rhythm loses its careful shape. His face presses into her neck, breath coming apart against her skin.
“Where?” he asks, voice rough.
“Inside.” She catches his jaw, making him look at her. “Condom, remember?”
Something flashes through his eyes. “Yeah.”
A few more uneven thrusts and his whole body locks over hers, mouth falling open around a low, broken sound. She watches the last of his control go, watches his brows pull together and his forehead drop to hers as he comes.
For several seconds, neither of them moves. Garrett’s weight settles carefully onto one elbow. His chest rises hard against hers, chain lying warm between them. She can feel the rapid beat of his heart where their bodies meet.
He lifts his head eventually. His hair is a disaster. There’s a red mark beginning near his shoulder from her nails. His mouth looks thoroughly kissed and slightly stunned. She smiles before she can stop herself.
Garrett narrows his eyes. “What?”
She traces the scratch with one fingertip. “You look a little less confident.”
He glances down at her, still beneath him, legs tangled with his. “Do I?”
“A little.”
“Interesting.” He rolls his hips once, barely. Her breath catches. Garrett’s grin returns.
“You’re deeply irritating.”
He laughs and kisses the heel of her palm before carefully pulling away.
She watches him deal with the condom, expecting the strange shift that sometimes follows. The sudden awareness of a near-stranger in the room. Clothes on the floor. The body beside hers no longer obscured by wanting.
It doesn’t arrive. Garrett comes back with water from the bathroom, naked and completely comfortable, passing her the glass before climbing into bed again.
“You found the glasses?” she asks.
“There were twelve beside the sink.”
“My mother thinks hydration should feel formal.”
He settles against the headboard. “Your bathroom’s bigger than my bedroom.”
“Don’t tell Dean. He’ll become competitive.”
“Dean’s bathroom’s probably bigger than my house.”
She drinks, then hands him the glass. Garrett takes a long swallow from the same side without thinking about it. That shouldn’t feel intimate either.
She shifts beneath the sheet, studying the scratches along his shoulder. “Did I hurt you?”
Garrett looks down. “No.”
“You hesitated.”
“It stings.”
Her brows lift. “So I hurt you.”
“You say that like you’re proud.”
She tilts her head. “I’m… collecting information.”
“About?”
She drags one nail lightly over his chest. Garrett’s stomach tightens. “New information,” she says.
His gaze drops to her hand. “You planning a follow-up study?”
She looks at him. This was supposed to get him out of her system. That had been the point somewhere between the restaurant and the club, before the sweater came off and his hand stopped the second she asked and he kissed her like her reactions mattered more than his reputation.
Instead, Garrett’s sitting naked in her childhood bed, drinking from her water glass, hair destroyed by her fingers, looking far too pleased by the possibility that this might happen again.
The plot hasn’t merely thickened. The plot has developed shoulders, put on a chain and followed her home.
She takes the glass from his hand and sets it on the bedside table. “Maybe.”
Garrett catches her waist when she moves toward him, guiding her into his lap beneath the sheets.
“Good,” he says.
She settles over his thighs, trying not to react to the first unmistakable sign that they might not be finished for the night. “Don’t get cocky.”
His hands move slowly up her back. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
He’s lying, obviously. She kisses him anyway.
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pairing – garrett graham x reader
summary – a suspicious number of shoulder checks leads garrett to finally ask for dinner.
warnings – fluff, sports injury mention, athletic training setting, flirting, suggestive jokes
notes from me – based on this ask!! such a cute idea, thank u babe!!
word count – 0.7k
navigation – masterlist |
Garrett Graham’s shoulder is, by all professional measures available to a work-study student in the Briar athletic training office, absolutely fine. Not perfect, maybe, but fine enough that she’s starting to take his repeated appearances personally.
The first time, he’d needed ice after taking a hit into the boards. Fair. The second time, he’d wanted someone to check the mobility because it felt weird, which had been suspicious mostly because he’d demonstrated full range of motion while explaining it, arm moving smoothly through the air while she stared at him over the top of her clipboard. The third time, he’d come in for tape before practice, even though there were three rolls in the locker room and at least two actual trainers capable of using them.
Now he’s sitting on the edge of the treatment table again, shirt off, hair still damp from the shower, one hand braced behind him like he’s posing for some very niche campus safety brochure on shoulder instability.
The room smells like antiseptic wipes, athletic tape, and that cold rink smell that seems to cling to him no matter where he goes. She stands between his knees with a roll of tape in one hand, her thumb pressing lightly along the front of his shoulder as she checks the angle, and Garrett, who’s been hit by men twice his size without blinking, goes very still.
She glances up. “That hurt?”
His eyes come to her face, mouth already threatening a grin. “No. I’m being brave.”
“You’re being dramatic.”
“Those can overlap.”
She huffs a laugh and tears off a strip of tape with her teeth because the scissors have vanished again, probably into whatever black hole also consumes pens and dignity in this office. Garrett watches her do it with an expression that’s trying for casual and missing by several miles.
“You know,” she says, smoothing the tape down over his skin, “at some point, people are going to start thinking you’re getting injured on purpose.”
Garrett’s brows lift. “People?”
“Me. I’m people.”
“Pretty serious accusation.”
She laughs softly before she can stop herself, and Garrett’s grin softens into something stupidly pleased, like getting that sound out of her has been the actual rehab goal all along.
It makes her look back down too fast, fingers pressing the edge of the tape into place with more care than strictly necessary. His skin is warm under her hands, solid and distracting, and she can feel him watching the concentration settle over her face.
“There,” she says, stepping back half an inch. “You’re good.”
Garrett looks at his shoulder, then back at her. “That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“So I’m cleared?”
“For practice? Yes.”
“For dinner?”
Her hands pause around the tape roll. Garrett’s grin wavers just slightly, which is the first interesting thing he’s done all afternoon.
“With me,” he adds, like she might think he’s asking her to dinner with the entire men’s hockey roster and a bag of ice packs.
She looks at him for a second too long. The office hums around them, fluorescent lights buzzing overhead, someone laughing down the hall, a skate blade clattering somewhere in the equipment room. Garrett sits there half-taped and too handsome for anyone’s academic focus, trying to look like this doesn’t matter when the tips of his ears have gone faintly pink.
Her mouth curves before she can make it behave. “Is your shoulder going to survive that?”
His grin comes back, bright and relieved. “Might need supervision.”
“Mm.” She reaches out and presses one last firm piece of tape down, mostly because his face does something lovely when she steps close again. “One date, Graham.”
“One date,” he says, nodding like he’s negotiating a contract he already intends to renew. “Very medical. For continuity of care.”
She rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling now, warm all the way through her chest. “Pick me up at seven.”
Garrett slides off the table, careful not to brush her and absolutely aware of how close he comes anyway. “Yes, ma’am.”
“And stop faking injuries.”
He pauses at the door, looking back over his shoulder with that stupid golden-boy grin doing terrible work in the middle of his face. “After dinner?”
She throws the empty tape core at him.
He catches it, because of course he does, laughing as he backs into the hall. “Worth a shot.”
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pairing – garrett graham x reader
summary – a suspicious number of shoulder checks leads garrett to finally ask for dinner.
warnings – fluff, sports injury mention, athletic training setting, flirting, suggestive jokes
notes from me – based on this ask!! such a cute idea, thank u babe!!
word count – 0.7k
navigation – masterlist |
Garrett Graham’s shoulder is, by all professional measures available to a work-study student in the Briar athletic training office, absolutely fine. Not perfect, maybe, but fine enough that she’s starting to take his repeated appearances personally.
The first time, he’d needed ice after taking a hit into the boards. Fair. The second time, he’d wanted someone to check the mobility because it felt weird, which had been suspicious mostly because he’d demonstrated full range of motion while explaining it, arm moving smoothly through the air while she stared at him over the top of her clipboard. The third time, he’d come in for tape before practice, even though there were three rolls in the locker room and at least two actual trainers capable of using them.
Now he’s sitting on the edge of the treatment table again, shirt off, hair still damp from the shower, one hand braced behind him like he’s posing for some very niche campus safety brochure on shoulder instability.
The room smells like antiseptic wipes, athletic tape, and that cold rink smell that seems to cling to him no matter where he goes. She stands between his knees with a roll of tape in one hand, her thumb pressing lightly along the front of his shoulder as she checks the angle, and Garrett, who’s been hit by men twice his size without blinking, goes very still.
She glances up. “That hurt?”
His eyes come to her face, mouth already threatening a grin. “No. I’m being brave.”
“You’re being dramatic.”
“Those can overlap.”
She huffs a laugh and tears off a strip of tape with her teeth because the scissors have vanished again, probably into whatever black hole also consumes pens and dignity in this office. Garrett watches her do it with an expression that’s trying for casual and missing by several miles.
“You know,” she says, smoothing the tape down over his skin, “at some point, people are going to start thinking you’re getting injured on purpose.”
Garrett’s brows lift. “People?”
“Me. I’m people.”
“Pretty serious accusation.”
She laughs softly before she can stop herself, and Garrett’s grin softens into something stupidly pleased, like getting that sound out of her has been the actual rehab goal all along.
It makes her look back down too fast, fingers pressing the edge of the tape into place with more care than strictly necessary. His skin is warm under her hands, solid and distracting, and she can feel him watching the concentration settle over her face.
“There,” she says, stepping back half an inch. “You’re good.”
Garrett looks at his shoulder, then back at her. “That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“So I’m cleared?”
“For practice? Yes.”
“For dinner?”
Her hands pause around the tape roll. Garrett’s grin wavers just slightly, which is the first interesting thing he’s done all afternoon.
“With me,” he adds, like she might think he’s asking her to dinner with the entire men’s hockey roster and a bag of ice packs.
She looks at him for a second too long. The office hums around them, fluorescent lights buzzing overhead, someone laughing down the hall, a skate blade clattering somewhere in the equipment room. Garrett sits there half-taped and too handsome for anyone’s academic focus, trying to look like this doesn’t matter when the tips of his ears have gone faintly pink.
Her mouth curves before she can make it behave. “Is your shoulder going to survive that?”
His grin comes back, bright and relieved. “Might need supervision.”
“Mm.” She reaches out and presses one last firm piece of tape down, mostly because his face does something lovely when she steps close again. “One date, Graham.”
“One date,” he says, nodding like he’s negotiating a contract he already intends to renew. “Very medical. For continuity of care.”
She rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling now, warm all the way through her chest. “Pick me up at seven.”
Garrett slides off the table, careful not to brush her and absolutely aware of how close he comes anyway. “Yes, ma’am.”
“And stop faking injuries.”
He pauses at the door, looking back over his shoulder with that stupid golden-boy grin doing terrible work in the middle of his face. “After dinner?”
She throws the empty tape core at him.
He catches it, because of course he does, laughing as he backs into the hall. “Worth a shot.”
to be notified when i post new fics, follow @kooksandpearls-library and turn on notifications! i no longer use a taglist for garrett fics.
pairing – garrett graham x reader
summary – four times garrett’s chain causes problems, and one very smug hockey captain pretends he isn’t loving every second of it.
warnings – suggestive content, making out/grinding, mild sexual references, implied oral sex, drinking, party setting, garrett being smug and whipped.
notes from me – as part of my 1k celebrations, here's the top requested fic!! enjoy 🫶🏼
word count – 5k
navigation – masterlist | taglist
The first time Garrett realises his chain is a problem, they're in his room with the door locked, the bass from downstairs moving through the floorboards in lazy, uneven pulses and the old house doing what the old house always does around a party, which is pretend it’s not seen worse.
There are voices below them, Logan’s laugh cutting through once in a bright, drunken bark, Dean yelling something that sounds like an accusation and Tucker answering with the sort of dry, patient tone that means someone is absolutely about to be called an idiot.
But up here, everything has gone smaller. Warmer. The room narrowed down to Garrett’s weight between her thighs, the soft give of his mattress under her back, the skirt shoved high enough on her hips that there's no point pretending it’s even a skirt anymore, and his mouth dragging over hers like he has all night and no better use for it.
He kisses like an athlete too, which is deeply annoying information to have about him because it makes too much sense. Confident, paced, unfairly good at changing pressure right when she starts thinking she’s adjusted to him.
One hand is braced beside her head, the other curled around her thigh, thumb pressing absent little circles into skin like he doesn't know it’s making her thoughts get weird and slippery around the edges. He’s still wearing his t-shirt, which feels rude considering she’s in a bra and skirt and whatever dignity survived the trip up the stairs is now lying somewhere dead near his laundry basket.
His chain has slipped out from under his collar while he kisses her, warm gold catching against the side of her throat every time he grinds down into her and makes her breath come out embarrassingly thin.
“Garrett,” she gets out, though it doesn't have much purpose beyond giving her mouth something to do when his is suddenly leaving it.
He hums like he’s heard her and decided to take it under advisement at a later date. His mouth drifts to her jaw, then lower, slow and pleased and entirely too smug about the way her body moves before she can stop it.
He kisses down her throat, over the spot where her pulse is doing something humiliating, then lower still, along the top edge of her bra, and she should probably let him. She should probably enjoy the fact that Garrett Graham, Briar hockey captain, walking campus hazard, has decided her chest deserves sustained attention.
But the second his mouth leaves hers properly, some spoiled little part of her lights up in objection.
“No,” she whines, which is not her proudest moment, and is made worse by the fact that Garrett pauses against her skin like he’s trying not to laugh. She reaches down and gets her fingers in his hair, gentle but insistent, tugging him back up until his face appears over hers again, curls mussed, mouth shiny, eyes bright with the kind of amusement that makes her want to either kiss him harder or shove him off the bed. “Come back.”
His grin spreads slowly. “Bossy.”
“You stopped kissing me.”
“I was kissing you somewhere else.”
She pouts. “Wrong somewhere.”
He gives one of those little laughs that starts in his chest before it reaches his mouth, warm and low and stupidly pleased, and then he comes back happily, because that’s the worst part of Garrett.
He has all this cocky-boy resistance in theory, all this mouth and attitude and captain-of-every-room energy, and then she asks for him directly and his body gives him away before his ego can file an appeal. He kisses her again, deep enough that the complaint evaporates under her tongue, and for a few seconds she forgets about the chain entirely.
Then he pulls back to sit up on his knees, one thigh planted on either side of her hips, and reaches behind his neck for his shirt.
“Oh,” she says before she can stop herself.
Garrett pauses with the hem already half up his stomach, eyebrows lifting. “Oh?”
“Shut up.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were about to.”
His teeth catch at his bottom lip. “I was about to ask if you needed a minute to process.”
She narrows her eyes at him, which would probably have more force if she were not lying under him with her skirt bunched around her waist and her hands already drifting up his exposed stomach. “You’re so annoying.”
“Yeah, but you’re still looking.”
And she is. Tragically. Openly. With no legal defence. The shirt comes off the rest of the way and lands somewhere near the chair, and Garrett is there above her in the soft lamplight, shoulders broad from hockey, stomach tight under her palms, chain resting against his chest like it’s been placed there for the express purpose of ruining her life.
It's not even that fancy. That’s the insulting part. Just a gold chain. Simple. Warm from his skin. Sitting right at the base of his throat.
Her hands slide up his stomach, over the hard shift of muscle when he breathes, and she catches her bottom lip between her teeth without meaning to.
Garrett’s grin softens into something more dangerous because he knows. Because Garrett is many things, but oblivious is not one of them, especially not when a girl is looking at his chest like she’s discovered a new academic field.
“Baby,” he says, amused.
She doesn't answer. She hooks two fingers under the chain and pulls. Garrett comes down with it, one hand shooting to the mattress beside her head, the other catching her waist as he laughs into the space above her mouth. “Jesus. Okay.”
She smiles, breath already uneven again. “Come here.”
“I was here.”
“Closer.”
His mouth hovers over hers, his chain trapped between her fingers, the metal a little warm, a little slick where it’s been resting against his skin. “You always this demanding?”
She tugs again, smaller this time, mostly because she likes the way his eyes drop to her mouth when she does it. “Only when you’re slow.”
Garrett stares at her for one beat, and then the smile goes all bright and helpless at the edges, like she’s pleased him against his will.
“Yeah,” he murmurs, bending until the chain brushes her collarbone and his mouth is almost on hers again. “That’s gonna be a problem.”
The second time is quieter, though quiet in the hockey house is a relative concept and mostly means no one is actively breaking furniture within their line of sight. They're downstairs on the couch after dinner, the living room dim except for the television throwing blue-white light over everyone’s faces and the standing lamp Tucker keeps insisting gives the room ambience, which Dean keeps calling divorced dad lighting.
A movie’s on, something Logan picked with the confidence of a man who would be asleep within twenty minutes, and sure enough he’s already slumped in the armchair with his head tipped back and one socked foot on the coffee table, snoring faintly through the loudest action sequence anyone has ever failed to respect.
Garrett’s stretched out behind her on the couch, one arm tucked under her head like a pillow, the other lying heavy over her waist. She’s settled half on top of him, half against him, legs tangled beneath the old throw blanket that smells faintly like fabric softener and Garrett’s laundry detergent and whatever popcorn crime Dean committed earlier.
The whole room has that late-night, lived-in warmth to it. Empty bowls on the coffee table, Tucker leaning on the other end of the couch with his phone in one hand and his attention somehow still half on the movie, Dean sprawled on the floor with his back against Allie’s legs while she runs her fingers lazily through his hair like she’s rewarding a large, badly behaved dog.
Garrett’s chain has worked its way out again. She doesn't mean to start fiddling with it. Her hand is just there, resting against his chest, and the chain is right under her fingertips, cool at first and then quickly warming up.
Her thumb catches the tiny curve of one link. Then another. Then she’s sliding it back and forth lightly against his skin, not really thinking, only listening to the movie and the steady sound of his breathing under her cheek and the occasional thud of Dean kicking the coffee table because he refuses to understand where his legs end.
Garrett lets it happen for a while. Long enough that she forgets she’s doing it. Long enough for the metal to move in a tiny, repetitive drag under her fingers, a private little rhythm tucked beneath explosions and the muffled rain starting against the windows.
His chest rises under her palm. His hand at her waist flexes once, absent, and she shifts closer without lifting her head. Then his fingers close around her wrist. Warm and sure, stopping the motion.
She glances up. “What?”
Garrett looks down at her with the deeply patient expression of a man being tortured in a way he’s not allowed to enjoy too obviously. “You’ve been doing that for ten minutes.”
“Doing what?”
His eyes flick to the chain. Then back to her. “That.”
“Oh.” She looks down at her hand, caught in his like evidence. “Was I annoying you?”
“No.”
“You stopped me.”
“Because,” he says, lowering his voice as Dean makes a disgusted noise at the movie and Allie tells him to stop talking before she smothers him with a cushion, “you keep touching my neck, and I’m trying to be a decent citizen in a communal living space.”
Her mouth twitches. “Your neck?”
“My chain is on my neck.”
She bites back a smile. “That’s very scientific of you.”
“I go to college.”
“For hockey.”
He sucks at his teeth, a grin spreading across his face. “For hockey and the pursuit of knowledge.”
She laughs into his chest, and he immediately looks pleased with himself in that quiet Garrett way, like making her laugh while half the room is asleep counts as a personal win.
His hand slides from her wrist to her fingers, lifting them to his mouth. He kisses her knuckles once, soft and warm, then again, slower, like he can get away with it because nobody’s looking directly at them. The contact sends a stupid little wave through her, low and gentle, a sudden looseness in her ribs and the sense that her body has settled another inch into his.
“Stop playing with it,” he murmurs against her hand.
“I didn’t know it was an activity with rules.”
“It is now.”
“Sounds controlling.”
“Sounds like you’re too hot for your own good and I’m a responsible man.”
She lifts her head just enough to look at him properly. “You’re so full of shit.”
Garrett smiles like that’s his favourite thing she’s said all day. “A little, yeah.”
Then he threads his fingers through hers and brings their joined hands down to rest against his stomach, trapping her there with him. Garrett’s hand stays wrapped around hers. Firm. Warm. His thumb moves once over the side of her finger, slow enough that it feels accidental and deliberate at the same time.
The third time, she should know something’s wrong with the whole arrangement because Garrett offers it too easily. It's the morning of her exam, a big one, the kind that has lived in the back of her head for three weeks like an unpaid bill and ruined several perfectly good evenings by existing near them.
She’s already eaten half a banana, stared at her notes until the words lost meaning, changed shirts twice, and accused Garrett of breathing too loudly while he sat on her bed watching her spiral with the sort of affectionate calm that made her want to throw a highlighter at him.
“You studied,” he says, for maybe the fourth time, lying on his side with one elbow propped under him and his curls still damp from the shower. “Like, a disgusting amount. I know because you made me quiz you last night and I learned things against my will.”
She stands in front of the mirror, smoothing her top down and then immediately undoing the smoothing because now it looks too deliberate. “That doesn’t mean I know it.”
“That’s actually exactly what studying means.”
“No, studying means I knew it at midnight in your bed while you were half asleep and kept pronouncing things wrong on purpose.”
“I was keeping morale up.”
She turns to glare at him, and he grins at her from the bed, annoyingly gorgeous and unhelpfully relaxed, his chain sitting against his bare collarbone because he hasn’t put a shirt on yet. Which is also rude. Honestly, the whole morning has been a campaign of emotional terrorism.
“I’m serious,” she says, and the words come out thinner than she wants.
His face changes then. The grin doesn't disappear entirely, because Garrett without some amount of grin would be genuinely concerning, but it settles. He sits up properly, feet hitting the floor, and reaches for her when she comes close enough. His hands land at her hips, warm through the fabric, thumbs pressing once like he’s reminding her she has a body and it's standing here, not drowning somewhere in the imagined future of a badly answered essay question.
“I know you are,” he says. “I also know you’re gonna kill it.”
“Don’t say that.”
“What, kill it?”
“Yes.”
“Fine. You’re gonna… respectfully and academically dominate.”
“Garrett.”
He laughs under his breath and tugs her closer until she’s standing between his knees. Then, with the sudden seriousness of someone remembering an ancient ritual and not a bit he came up with seven seconds ago, he reaches behind his neck and unclasps the chain.
She looks down at it. “What are you doing?”
“Good luck.”
Her eyes lift to his. “What?”
He holds it up between them, gold catching the morning light from her window. “It’s lucky.”
She stares at him. “Your chain is lucky?”
“Extremely.”
“You’ve never said that.”
He looks almost offended. “I don’t tell everyone my deeply personal athletic superstitions.”
“You told Dean you had to wear the same socks for playoffs.”
“That was different. He touched them.”
“That feels like a public health issue more than a superstition.”
Garrett ignores this, and gestures for her to turn around. She does, suspicious but too nervous to fight him properly. He stands behind her, and for a second the mirror catches both of them: her in exam clothes and stress, him shirtless and too calm, chain hanging from his fingers.
He lifts it around her neck, his knuckles grazing the sides of her throat as he brings the clasp together. The metal lands cool against her skin, heavier than she expects, and something in her chest gives one stupid little pull.
“There,” he says, hands settling briefly on her shoulders. “Guaranteed.”
She touches the chain with two fingers. “Guaranteed?”
“Yeah.”
“If I fail, I’m blaming your jewellery.”
“If you fail, I’ll fake my death and start over somewhere chainless.”
She laughs then, finally, and it comes out shaky but real. Garrett’s eyes meet hers in the mirror, his mouth tipped in a way that’s half smug and half proud of having pulled the sound out of her.
He bends and kisses the side of her head, quick, easy, like he doesn't know the chain suddenly feels like some ridiculous little anchor against her collarbone.
“Go,” he says. “Ace it. Then come back and be unbearable about it.”
She does ace it.
She walks out of the exam hall two hours later with the weird, floating, slightly manic clarity of someone who knows the questions landed exactly where she needed them to, who wrote until her hand cramped, who remembered the thing from the bottom of page seven that she had absolutely expected to die with no audience.
She calls Garrett from the sidewalk and says, “I think I nailed it,” and he shouts so loudly through the phone that a girl walking past looks over in alarm.
“Tell the chain I said thank you,” she says later that night, when she’s in his room again, sitting cross-legged on his bed with takeout containers open between them and his hoodie swallowed over her exam clothes because the adrenaline crash has finally arrived and brought a mild existential fog with it.
Garrett looks up from stealing one of her fries. “What?”
“The chain.” She taps it where it still sits at her throat. “Your ancient family luck charm.”
There's a pause. It's tiny. Almost nothing. But Garrett Graham has many gifts, and hiding guilt from his girlfriend while his mouth is full of stolen fries is not one of them.
Her eyes narrow. “Garrett.”
He chews slowly.
“Garrett Graham.”
He swallows. “Okay, before you get mad–”
“Oh my God.” She sits up straighter. “It’s not lucky?”
“It’s, uh, lucky adjacent.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I’ve worn it to some good games.”
“You told me it was extremely lucky.”
“I was trying to get you out of your head.”
“You lied!”
“I motivated.” He points at her with a fry. “And you crushed your exam, so actually, where’s my thank you?”
She stares at him for one second. Then another. The chain’s warm now from her skin, and the fact that he made it up should be annoying. It is annoying.
It's also so Garrett that something in her gives up and goes soft around the edges despite herself, because he saw her standing in front of the mirror two seconds from vibrating through the floorboards and decided the solution was to hand her something of his and make it sound official enough for her nervous system to believe him.
“You’re unbelievable,” she says.
His grin comes back immediately, bright with relief and bad ideas. “But effective.”
“You’re never getting this back.”
“Baby, I look really good in that chain.”
“I look better.”
He studies her for a second, eyes dropping to where the gold sits against the oversized neckline of his hoodie, and his mouth does something slower.
“Yeah,” he says, voice rougher. “You do.”
Her fingers move to the chain. His eyes track the motion. The takeout goes forgotten between them, steam thinning in the cartons, the lamp laying warm light over his bed and the stupid little lucky-not-lucky object at her throat.
She crawls toward him, slow enough to make his brows lift.
“What?” he asks, though his hands are already moving to her waist when she pushes the cartons aside with the care of someone who doesn't want to get sauce on his sheets but absolutely does want to ruin his evening in other ways.
“You want a thank you?”
Garrett’s mouth opens, then closes. He tilts his head, trying for casual and missing by a heroic distance. “I mean, I’m not gonna say no to gratitude.”
“Good,” she says, and leans in to kiss him once, soft enough that he follows when she pulls away.
His hands tighten on her hips. “Good?”
“Mhm.”
Then she slides off the bed onto her knees between his legs, and Garrett goes very, very still. For once in his life, he doesn't have a comeback ready.
She looks up at him, the chain hanging forward from her neck, gold swinging slightly in the space between them, and his eyes drop to it like he’s experiencing several personal revelations at once.
“Still think it’s lucky?” she asks.
Garrett exhales through his nose, a smile breaking helplessly at one corner of his mouth as his hand comes up to brush her hair back, careful and warm and already a little wrecked.
“Baby,” he says, voice low with absolute reverence and zero shame, “I’m about to start fucking worshipping it.”
The fourth time is after a home game, which means the hockey house is operating at a volume level that could probably be reported to local authorities if local authorities hadn't long ago made peace with the fact that Briar hockey players were simply going to make too much noise.
The living room is packed in that loose, post-win sprawl of bodies and beer and boys shouting over one another from distances that don’t require shouting at all. Someone has put the game highlights on the television and every single person in the room is pretending they're not watching themselves while absolutely watching themselves.
Logan is arguing with a guy from the second line about whether his assist should have been cleaner, Tucker is sitting on the arm of the couch with a beer in hand and the calm expression of a man who played very well and doesn't need to scream about it, and Dean is stretched in the middle of the room like a Renaissance painting sponsored by bad decisions, loudly explaining to Allie that his defensive effort has layers.
Garrett’s on the couch below her, sitting with his legs spread, one arm hooked along the back cushions, hair still damp from the post-game shower and curling messily. He looks good in the obnoxious, lived-in way he always does after a win. Tired under the eyes, mouth lazy with satisfaction, hoodie pushed up at the forearms, chain glinting at his throat every time he turns his head to answer someone.
There's a faint bruise starting near one cheekbone and stiffness in the way he holds his shoulders that he’s pretending doesn't exist because men who willingly block shots with their bodies have a complicated relationship with the concept of pain.
She’s standing behind the couch with her arms looped around his shoulders, her cheek resting against the side of his head, close enough that when he laughs she feels it before she hears it. The room smells like beer and aftershave and pizza grease and wet pavement dragged in from outside.
Her chin is tucked near his temple, and his hand comes up every so often to touch her wrist where it crosses his chest, as if checking she’s still there even though she’s been draped over him for fifteen minutes like an affectionate scarf.
“You’re tense,” she murmurs near his ear.
Garrett tilts his head slightly toward her. “I got checked into the boards by a guy built like a refrigerator.”
“I saw.”
“You also yelled ‘get up’ at me.”
“You did get up.”
He huffs. “Supportive.”
“I’m very motivational.”
He smiles, eyes still on Logan across the room. “Yeah, Coach, you’re a real asset.”
She presses her thumb into the muscle at the top of his shoulder before he can get too smug, and his mouth shuts in the middle of whatever he was about to say. There’s a small drop in his posture, a breath leaving through his nose, his head tipping forward half an inch because the pressure hits somewhere useful.
“Oh,” she says softly, pleased. “There he is.”
“Don’t sound so happy about my suffering.”
“I’m happy about being right.”
He hums quietly. “You usually are.”
She starts working at his shoulders properly, thumbs pressing slow circles into the hard knots there, fingers sliding under the edge of his hoodie collar. Garrett tries to keep participating in the conversation around him, because Garrett Graham could be dying and still find time to chirp a teammate, but she feels him lose focus by degrees.
His answers get shorter. His hand drops from his beer to rest loosely on his thigh. When she presses into the muscle beside his neck, he makes a low sound under his breath that is almost nothing and somehow still deeply satisfying.
Dean notices, of course. Dean would notice a private moment through drywall.
“Oh, that’s cute,” he says from the floor, voice carrying with surgical precision. “Captain’s getting a little spa treatment.”
Garrett doesn't open his eyes. “You jealous, Di Laurentis?”
“Of a shoulder rub? No. Of your girlfriend looking at you like you just returned from war? Little bit.”
Allie leans around him. “He did get slammed pretty hard.”
Dean points at her. “See? This is why I date women. Compassion.”
Tucker takes a sip of beer. “You date Allie because she tolerates you.”
“That too.”
She ignores them, and keeps working her thumbs into Garrett’s shoulders. The only problem is the chain. It keeps getting in the way, slipping under her fingers every time she moves toward the base of his neck, catching lightly against her knuckle, dragging sideways over his skin. She shifts it once. Twice. The third time, Garrett reaches up without looking, catches her wrist, and then lifts his other hand to the clasp.
“Here,” he says.
She pauses. “What?”
He takes the chain off in one smooth motion, turning his head enough to glance up at her with that soft, amused look that always feels worse when other people are around because it's not performative. It's just his face, open for one second before he remembers to make a joke. “Here, baby. Wear it before you strangle me with it.”
The room hears baby. Naturally. The room reacts with the dignity of wolves spotting an injured deer. Logan’s head snaps over. “Oh, wow.”
Dean sits up so fast Allie has to move her knees. “Did he just give her the chain?”
Tucker’s mouth twitches. “Big night.”
Garrett points vaguely at all of them without turning around. “Everybody shut up.”
No one shuts up. That would go against the entire founding philosophy of the house.
She bends down anyway, smiling despite herself, hair falling forward over one shoulder. Garrett lifts the chain around her neck from where he sits, reaching back and up, his fingers careful as they brush the sides of her throat. It's an awkward angle, and he fumbles once with the clasp.
Dean gasps. “He’s putting jewellery on her. In public. Garrett Graham has fallen.”
“I will throw this beer at you,” Garrett says.
“No, you won’t. Your girl’s wearing your chain and touching your shoulders. You’re domesticated now.”
Logan lifts his cup. “RIP to a slut.”
Garrett finally opens his eyes and looks over. “I’m still alive, asshole.”
She laughs into Garrett’s hair before she can stop herself, and his hands settle briefly at her collarbone once the clasp is done, thumbs brushing over the chain where it sits against her skin.
The touch is quick. Almost hidden. But his eyes stay there for a second too long, and the whole loud room blurs slightly at the edges in that private way it sometimes does around him, even when Dean is three feet away preparing to be the worst person alive.
The chain is warm from Garrett’s skin when it lands against her throat. Something about that should not matter as much as it does.
Garrett’s head tips back until he can look up at her. “Good?”
She nods, fingers touching the chain. “Good.”
“Can I have my massage now, or are we hosting a ceremony?”
“Ceremony,” Dean says immediately. “I have a speech.”
“No one wants that,” Tucker says.
“I do,” Logan contributes, raising a hand.
Garrett groans and drops his head forward again, but she can see the grin at the corner of his mouth, tucked away where the boys cannot fully get to it.
She goes back to his shoulders, the chain now resting against her instead of him, rising and falling gently with her breathing as she works the tension out from under his hoodie.
The boys keep going, because of course they do.
“Whipped,” Dean says.
“Tragically,” Logan adds.
“Clinically,” Tucker says, which makes Allie laugh so hard she almost spills her drink.
Garrett lifts one hand just enough to flip them off without opening his eyes. “Keep talking. I’m cutting all of you from the power play.”
“You can’t cut me from the power play,” Dean says. “I am the power play.”
She leans closer, thumbs pressing into Garrett’s neck, and murmurs, “They’re not wrong, you know.”
His eyes open slightly. “Careful.”
“What?” she says, voice innocent near his ear. “You gave me your chain in front of everyone.”
“You were choking me with it.”
“I was massaging your shoulders.”
“Poorly.”
She pinches him lightly.
He laughs, catching her wrist and bringing her hand down just long enough to kiss the inside of it, quick and warm and entirely too natural for a room full of men actively trying to ruin his reputation. Then he lets her go and sinks back against the couch, shoulders finally loosening under her hands.
Across the room, Logan makes a wounded noise. “Oh my God. He kissed her hand. We lost him.”
Dean presses his beer to his heart. “He was so young.”
Tucker, dry as dust, says, “He died doing what he loved. Pretending he wasn’t in love.”
Garrett’s jaw ticks once, but the smile wins. She feels it more than sees it, the small shift under her cheek when she bends down again and rests against him for a second, her arms around his shoulders, his chain warm at her throat, the whole loud, stupid house moving around them.
“Love is a strong word,” Garrett says, which is exactly the sort of thing Garrett says when everyone is looking and the truth has wandered too close to the middle of the room.
She smiles against his cheek. “Mm.”
His hand comes up and covers her forearm, fingers curling there, thumb sweeping once over her skin in a slow little pass that says more than his mouth is willing to risk with Dean waiting to pounce.
Around them, the boys keep chirping, the television keeps replaying Garrett’s goal from the second period, someone in the kitchen shouts about beer pong, and the chain rests against her collarbone like a tiny, ridiculous victory.
Garrett turns his head just enough that his mouth brushes near her temple, hidden from most of the room by the angle of her body.
“You look good in it,” he says quietly.
Her hands pause on his shoulders for half a second.
Then Dean yells, “I can see you whispering sweet nothings, Graham,” and Garrett closes his eyes like he’s begging a very unhelpful God for patience, and she laughs so hard into his hair that the chain jumps lightly at her throat.
pairing – garrett graham x reader
notes from me – i know i usually only write rafe/drew but i'm on my second rewatch of off campus and i couldn't help myself!!
warnings – alcohol, drunken silliness, soft/protective garrett, party chaos, mild innuendo
word count – 4.1k
navigation – masterlist
The thing about Garrett Graham being on a one-drink limit was that it made him unbearably observant.
Usually, at parties like this, Garrett was loud in the easy way he always was when the room already liked him. Leaning against the kitchen island with a red cup in one hand, shoulder knocked against Logan’s while Tucker said something dry enough to make both of them laugh through their noses, still getting pulled into conversations every two minutes by guys who remembered Briar had a game tomorrow and thought “bury those assholes” counted as both analysis and encouragement.
He was still doing that, still smiling when somebody slapped his shoulder on the way past. Still nodding along when a freshman he vaguely knew started talking at him about the power play with the intense glassy-eyed sincerity of a man who had consumed too much cheap vodka and exactly one hockey podcast. Still charming people mostly by accident, because Garrett had never once walked into a room and thought maybe he should make himself smaller for everybody else’s sake.
But sober Garrett had range. Unfortunately for her, sober Garrett noticed things.
He noticed when Logan’s cup went from beer to something stronger. Not his problem. He noticed Dean talking with both hands while Allie stood tucked under his arm, laughing like she knew whatever came out of his mouth next was going to be either stupid or actionable. Also not his problem.
He noticed Tucker quietly moving somebody’s drink away from the edge of the counter before it got knocked onto the floor, because Tucker had always possessed the exhausting dignity of a man born already tired of everyone’s shit.
And he noticed the exact second his girlfriend put one hand on the kitchen bench again. That was his problem.
He’d already stopped this exact mission twice in the last ten minutes, which felt excessive for a girl who kept insisting she was literally fine while blinking a little too slowly and smiling at him like the lights had all gone soft around the edges.
The first time, he’d caught her by the waist and set her back on the floor with a calm, captainly, “Nope,” said close to her ear. The second time, he’d stepped between her and the counter like a very attractive barricade while she pouted at him like he'd personally cancelled fun.
Now she was trying again, because, apparently, the second a vodka cranberry and an Ariana Grande song got into the same room, her ability to retain recent history collapsed entirely.
Her skirt was too short for climbing. It was probably too short for several forms of normal standing, if Garrett was being honest, but that was between him, God, and the part of his brain currently doing threat assessment on behalf of her underwear.
Her heels were tall enough that Allie had called them hot but fucking dangerous when they arrived, and now one of them scraped against the cabinet front as she lifted her knee with absolutely no concern for balance, modesty, or Garrett’s long-term cardiovascular health.
Dean, from the other side of the kitchen, had been waiting for this. Garrett could feel it in the air. The man had made three separate comments about keeping her away from elevated surfaces and then looked personally enriched every time Garrett told him to shut the fuck up.
Garrett moved before the room really had time to understand what was happening. One second he was beside Logan, cup loose in his hand. The next he was behind her, cup abandoned somewhere near the sink, palm landing firm and warm against the back of her thigh as he tugged the hem of her skirt down with the grim focus of a man handling something highly flammable.
“Yeah, nope,” he said, low against her shoulder, his voice amused even as his hand stayed where it was. “Not doin’ that.”
She turned around like she'd been caught doing something cute instead of deeply stupid, her face bright with that pleased, unfocused warmth she got when the room had started moving a little faster than she could keep up with and Garrett was suddenly close enough to touch.
Her hands went straight to his chest, fingers sliding up the front of his shirt with drunken affection and absolutely no subtlety, and she beamed at him like she hadn't seen him in months. “Baby!”
Garrett looked down at her hands, then back at her face, his mouth twitching. “Hi.”
“Where were you?”
“Right there.” He nodded vaguely over his shoulder, where Logan had turned to watch them with the exact expression of a man who would rather die than become useful. “Saw you, like, ten seconds ago.”
“Oh.” She seemed to consider this very seriously, brows knitting for one whole beat before her face opened again, delighted by the rediscovery. “Hi.”
“Yeah, we did that part.”
She smiled anyway, her hands still sitting flat against his chest like she had every right to keep them there. Which she did. That was becoming a problem, actually. The newness of it. The fact that they were together enough now for people to know, for her to touch him without pretending it was accidental, for him to stand in a crowded kitchen the night before a game with one beer in his system and her skirt in his hand like this was a normal responsibility a man could acquire through dating.
She swayed into him. A small tilt of her weight, the kind someone else might have missed if they were drunker or less embarrassingly tuned to her. Garrett’s hand tightened at her waist before she seemed to notice she’d moved at all.
“Okay,” he said, dragging the word out in warning. “Bar stool. Right now.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re beautiful.”
Her eyes narrowed at him, suspicious and visibly pleased. “That’s not what I said.”
“No, but it worked better.” He turned her neatly by the hips before she could decide the counter still had unfinished business with her. “Sit.”
She made a noise of offence, but she let him guide her onto the stool, mostly because it was already there and because Garrett’s hands were warm and annoyingly sure and doing that thing where they seemed to make decisions for her body a full second before her brain managed to file an objection.
The room tilted pleasantly when she sat. The bass pushed through the kitchen floor and up into the bones of her legs. Someone had spilled beer near the fridge and the tile caught lightly under the heel she kept tapping against the stool rung. Across the room, Allie was tucked into Dean’s side, laughing at something Tucker said while Dean looked over her head with the bright, vicious joy of someone watching Garrett suffer a romantic inconvenience in real time.
Garrett went to the sink and filled a plastic cup with water. He came back holding it out like evidence.
She reached for it.
He lifted it just out of range.
She blinked at him.
His face went blank in that innocent way that always meant he was about to become deeply irritating. “What?”
“Gimme.”
“I am.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I’m trying.”
She pouted. “You’re being mean.”
“I’m providing medical care.”
“You’re making me work for water, Garrett.”
His laugh came out before he could stop it, quick and real, his head ducking for half a second as if he was genuinely annoyed with himself for enjoying her this much. He lowered the cup again. She reached. He moved it left. Her fingers closed around absolutely nothing.
“Garrett.”
“Reflexes are a little rough tonight, huh?”
“I will break up with you.”
“No, you won’t.” He brought the cup close again, then jerked it back when she lunged, and she burst into giggles so hard her knee knocked against his thigh.
“Baby, this is bleak. This is like watching a kitten lose a fight with a shoelace.”
“I hate you.”
He finally let her take it, but only after wrapping his hand around hers to steady the cup because she came in too fast and almost sent half of it down her front. “Slow. Drink it like you’ve used a mouth before.”
She glared at him over the rim while she drank, which would have worked better if he hadn’t still been holding the cup with her. The water was cold enough to make her teeth ache, cutting through the sugary film of whatever Allie had mixed earlier and landing hard in the warm, spinning centre of her stomach.
Garrett watched her with his head tipped slightly, all amused mouth and attentive eyes, and she hated, immediately and deeply, how much she liked it. Not the fussing, she would deny enjoying the fussing until the end of time. But the way he did it. Like he could tease her without making her feel stupid. Like the joke was never that she was embarrassing him. Like he had simply accepted that she was drunk, pretty, badly behaved, and his to keep upright for the next hour.
His hand settled on her thigh while she drank, thumb resting just under the edge of her skirt, not doing anything much except being there. The contact was casual enough to look like nothing from the outside. From inside her body, it had weight. A small, steady point in a room full of noise.
Someone yelled his name from the living room. “Graham!”
Garrett turned his head. “What?”
A couple of hockey guys were waving him over, one of them yelling something about the line changes tomorrow and another immediately shouting over him that they were not talking strategy at a party because some of us actually know how to live.
Garrett’s attention shifted for barely two seconds. Barely. His hand left her knee. His shoulders angled away. And then the opening presented itself. It wasn't her fault. It really wasn’t. Because Ariana came on.
The song that reached into the middle of her chest and hit whatever drunk, glittery emergency button existed in girls at parties. The one that made Allie gasp from across the room and point at her because Allie understood. Allie knew. This was not about Garrett and his very boring anti-countertop agenda anymore. This was bigger than him. This was practically civic duty.
She set the water down very carefully, which felt mature enough to balance the scales of whatever happened next, and slid off the stool.
Dean noticed first. Dean noticed anything with potential for either nudity or injury, especially if both were being offered at once.
His whole face lit up. “Wooo!” he shouted, lifting his cup. “Get up there!”
Allie smacked him in the stomach, laughing even as she did it. “Don't encourage her.”
“What? I’m supporting women.”
“You’re supporting Garrett committing murder.”
Dean’s grin widened.
Garrett turned.
The timing was, unfortunately, beautiful. Her knee was already on the counter. One hand braced against the surface. Her skirt was doing its absolute best in conditions no garment that short should ever have been expected to survive.
She looked back over her shoulder at the exact moment Garrett’s expression shifted from distracted amusement to flat, immediate disbelief.
His cup was gone again. Nobody knew where he kept putting them. One second his hands were empty; the next they were on her waist.
“Alright,” he said, hauling her backward before the second knee could get involved. “We’re done here.”
She made a sound that was half laugh, half protest, her feet finding the floor with such minimal commitment to the task that he had to catch more of her weight.
“We’re done.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“You were halfway to a public incident.”
She furrowed her brow, glaring up at him. “I was dancing.”
“You were climbing furniture.”
“For art.”
“For urgent care.” He bent a little to look into her face, and fuck, he was so annoying like this. So sure of himself. So warm around the edges of his authority that it made arguing with him feel less like resistance and more like foreplay’s better-behaved cousin. “Up we go.”
Her eyes widened. “Where?”
“Anywhere that isn’t this kitchen.”
“Garrett, no–”
But she was already laughing, because he had that look. The one that said he had made a decision and her role in the next thirty seconds was mostly decorative. His arm slid around the backs of her thighs, the other braced firm at her waist, and before she could do anything more strategic than clutch at his shirt, the whole kitchen flipped.
Light, ceiling, cabinets, Logan’s deeply entertained face, Dean’s open-mouthed delight. All of it went upside down in one warm, dizzy rush as Garrett threw her over his shoulder like she weighed nothing and he had reached the end of negotiations.
She shrieked.
Everyone cheered.
“Garrett!”
“Yup.” He adjusted his hold like this was a normal thing to be doing in somebody’s kitchen, one hand firm across the backs of her thighs, the other keeping her skirt decent. “That’s my name.”
She smacked his back, badly, mostly because she was laughing too hard to aim. “Put me down!”
“No.”
“I’m serious!”
“You’re drunk and upside down. You’re not serious.”
Dean was losing his mind across the room, bent halfway over Allie’s shoulder while she tried and failed to look disapproving. Logan lifted his cup with solemn respect. Tucker, because he had chosen betrayal, called, “Honestly, I think this is the safest option available.”
“I hate all of you,” she announced to the kitchen, though it came out wobbly with laughter because Garrett had started walking and every step made her bounce lightly against his shoulder.
Garrett paused in the doorway and turned just enough for the room to see her dangling there, hair falling toward the floor, cheeks hot, both hands planted uselessly against his back while her skirt remained under the firm jurisdiction of his palm.
“Say goodnight, everyone,” he said.
She lifted her head with great effort, spotted Allie first, then Dean, then Logan, then the blurry, bright collection of cups and boys and bad decisions behind them, and waved with both hands like she was leaving a pageant. “Goodnight, everyone!”
The kitchen erupted again. Dean actually clapped. Allie blew her a kiss. Logan yelled, “Hydrate!” with the confidence of a man who had not had water since Thursday.
Garrett carried her through the house, past the crush of bodies in the hallway, past two people making out badly against the wall by the stairs, past somebody’s abandoned jacket and an open front door letting in a thin slice of cold night air.
The music followed them out in pieces, bass first, then voices, then the muffled whole of the party dropping behind them as Garrett stepped onto the porch and the night came up around her bare legs.
The air sharpened everything at the edges. Damp grass. Car exhaust. The metallic bite of early spring. Garrett’s cologne caught in the cotton of his shirt where her cheek had ended up pressed against his back.
For a few seconds she kept wriggling on principle, because it seemed important for the record that she hadn't gone quietly. Then the path dipped slightly and the world swung with it, and she decided stillness had a lot going for it.
Halfway down the walk, she stopped struggling altogether and just hung there, arms loose, one heel slipping lower on her foot.
“Babe,” she said.
“Yeah?”
“You have a nice butt.”
Garrett did not miss a step. “Thanks, baby.”
“Like, really nice.”
“I know.”
She gasped, offended despite having introduced the subject herself. “You’re so cocky.”
“You’re upside down staring at my ass and giving live commentary. I feel like the confidence is evidence-based.”
She giggled again, softer this time, the sound spilling out into the cold. Garrett’s hand shifted against the backs of her thighs, careful with her balance, careful with the hem of her skirt, careful in a way that shouldn't have been noticeable when she was upside down and full of vodka and openly objectifying him, but was.
He could have made a thing of it. Could have rolled his eyes harder. Could have acted like taking care of his drunk girlfriend was some massive inconvenience being inflicted on him by the universe and Ariana Grande.
But Garrett just carried her like it was easy. Like she was funny. Like she was his problem, and he was, privately and embarrassingly, kind of pleased about it.
At his car, he set her down slowly, both hands at her waist until her heels found pavement and stayed there. The world rushed upright too fast, porch light blurring behind his shoulder, and she grabbed his forearms while her stomach took a second to remember where it lived.
Garrett watched her face, his smile fading into something more focused. “Good?”
She nodded, then immediately leaned forward until her forehead touched his chest because nodding had been a little ambitious. “Mhm.”
“That was wildly convincing.”
“I’m graceful.”
“You tried to climb a kitchen counter because Ariana Grande told you to.”
“She did.”
“She didn't personally tell you shit.”
She pointed one finger up at him. “You don’t know our relationship.”
His mouth curved again, and he brushed her hair back from her face, knuckles grazing her cheek in a touch so light it made her eyes want to close. “Your relationship with gravity is a little unstable right now.”
She looked up at him. The kitchen light was still on him somehow, caught in the angles of his face, in the dark sweep of his lashes, in the small amused pull at the corner of his mouth. He was close enough that she could see the faint scrape near his jaw from shaving, the tiredness tucked under his eyes from practice, the way his attention kept moving over her in pieces. Eyes. Mouth. Balance. Mood.
He was still teasing her, still Garrett, still unfairly pleased with himself, but under it sat the thing he did without announcing it. The checking. The steadiness. The hand already there before the fall happened.
She slid her hands up his chest again because it was the easiest place to put them, fingers curling loosely in his shirt. “Are you mad?”
Garrett looked genuinely insulted by the question. “At you?”
“Mm.”
“For trying to flash half the hockey team and die on a countertop?” He pretended to consider it. “Nah.”
Her mouth turned down. “That sounded judgy.”
“That was the edited version.”
“You’re mean.”
“I’m driving you home, giving you water, and preventing you from becoming a cautionary tale. I’m a hero.” His hands settled at her hips again, thumbs warm through the thin fabric at her waist. “A hot one, apparently. Nice butt. Heard that somewhere.”
She groaned and dropped her forehead back against his chest, and his laugh moved under her ear, low and pleased.
For a few seconds they just stood there beside his car while the party carried on without them, muffled and distant now, her body still buzzing with music and alcohol and the delayed embarrassment of nearly becoming a story Dean would tell until graduation. Garrett’s hand moved once down her back, then up again.
When she tipped her face up, he was already looking.
“What?” she asked, suspicious.
“Nothing.”
“You’re doing a face.”
“That's because I have a face.”
“A smug one.”
“Yeah, that’s genetic.” He opened the passenger door and guided her toward it, one hand hovering near her head so she didn’t knock it against the frame. “In.”
She sat with less dignity than she would have preferred, knees bumping together, one heel catching awkwardly on the floor mat. Garrett crouched before she could fully process the problem, fingers closing gently around her ankle as he straightened the shoe and set her foot flat. The intimacy of it caught weirdly in her stomach.
“There,” he said. “Both shoes accounted for. Huge night for us.”
She stared down at him. “You’re really pretty from this angle.”
He looked up, one brow lifting. “From the floor?”
“Mhm.”
“Good to know.” He reached across her for the seatbelt, and she took the opportunity to press a messy kiss to his cheek, catching more jaw than anything else. Garrett paused with the belt pulled across her lap, mouth twitching like he was trying very hard not to smile too obviously. “You missed.”
“I didn’t.”
“That was my jaw.”
“I know what I did.”
“Terrifying sentence.” He clicked the belt into place and tugged once to check it, then braced one hand on the roof of the car and looked down at her. “You gonna puke in my car?”
She considered lying, then made a face. “No.”
“Very long pause.”
“I was thinking.”
“That’s what scared me.”
She laughed, head falling back against the seat, and Garrett’s smile went helpless for half a second. There and then mostly gone, swallowed back under the usual cocky tilt of his mouth before she could do anything devastating with it, like point it out.
But she saw it. The fondness. The stupid, pleased little crease near his eye, like this – her drunk and difficult and half-asleep in his passenger seat, mascara probably doing something unfortunate, skirt riding high enough on her thighs that he reached in and tugged it down again with a muttered, “Jesus, baby,” – was somehow not a nuisance to him.
Somehow, it was worth smiling about.
He shut the door and walked around the front of the car, and through the windshield she watched him shake his head to himself, still grinning.
When he got in, the party disappeared almost completely. Door closed. Engine on. The car filled with the low blue glow of the dashboard and the clean, familiar smell of Garrett’s hoodie thrown in the backseat.
He handed her a half-full water bottle from the backseat. “Drink.”
She took it with both hands. “You’re bossy.”
“You like it.”
She hummed into the rim, then looked over at him with her cheek pressed against the seat. “Maybe.”
Garrett pulled away from the curb with one hand on the wheel, the other reaching over without looking to settle warm over her bare knee.
“Next party,” he said, “we’re putting you in pants.”
She made a horrified noise. “Absolutely not.”
“Fine. Longer skirt.”
“No.”
“Flats?”
She turned her head very slowly, giving him the full weight of her disappointment. “Garrett.”
He glanced over, and the grin came back. “Yeah, okay. That was too far.”
“Thank you.”
“But no counters.”
She sighed like he had asked her to give up art. “You’re ruining my brand.”
“Your brand almost gave Tucker a full view of your underwear.”
“Was he impressed?”
Garrett’s hand tightened on her knee. Enough that she felt the shift before she saw the look he kept aimed at the road. “Careful.”
Garrett Graham, competitive down to the bone. Still warm, still amused, but with that little edge in his voice that made her grin against the side of the water bottle because he was so easy sometimes. Pretty and cocky and gone for her in ways he kept trying to disguise as confidence.
She reached over and covered his hand with hers, fingers slipping between his. “I’m kidding.”
“I know.”
“You’re my favourite.”
His mouth softened before he could stop it. “Yeah?”
“Mhm.” Her eyes were getting heavy now, the night stretching into something blurred and honey-warm around the edges. “Even when you’re mean and anti-Ariana.”
“I’m pro-Ariana. I’m anti-head injury.”
She hummed again, sinking lower in the seat, her thumb moving lazily over his knuckles. The car rolled through the quiet streets around Briar, past porch lights and parked cars and the occasional burst of noise from other parties spilling out over lawns.
Garrett drove slower than usual, glancing over every so often like she might attempt to climb something inside the car if left unsupervised.
Maybe she loved that. Just a little.
Maybe that was the problem with him. The dangerous part wasn’t the grin, or the body, or the fact that half the girls at every party seemed to know where he was without looking directly at him.
It was this. His hand steady under hers. His hoodie in the backseat. His voice still teasing because he knew she would hate being fussed over too seriously, even while he kept watch like it mattered.
She turned her face toward him, smiling sleepily. “Garrett?”
“Yeah, baby?”
“Next time she plays that song, I’m getting on the bench.”
He laughed under his breath, eyes on the road, thumb brushing once over the side of her hand.
pairing – garrett graham x nursing student!reader
notes from me – just a little tiny extra following i've got you. enjoy babes xx
word count – 0.7k
navigation – masterlist |
Garrett falls asleep quicker than she’s ever seen him fall asleep before. One minute he’s mumbling something into her stomach about not needing ice, his arms locked around her hips like she’s responsible for keeping him from doing something stupid with stairs, and the next his breathing goes thick and even, warm through the front of her shirt.
She stays there for a while with both hands in his hair, listening to the house below them settle into the ugly, hungover version of quiet. A door shuts. Someone laughs too loudly and gets immediately shushed. The bass cuts out at last, leaving behind the thin ringing silence of a party that’s died badly.
Her throat feels dry, so she eases out of Garrett’s hold slowly, freezing when his fingers flex once at her waist, but he only frowns in his sleep and turns his face into the pillow. His taped hand is tucked against his chest. His mouth is softer now, all the fight gone out of it. It makes something in her ribs pull tight enough that she has to look away.
Downstairs, the kitchen light is still on.
Dean’s at the counter when she gets there, one hip braced against the cabinet, a bag of frozen peas pressed to his right hand and a beer sitting unopened beside him. He looks up when she comes in, hair mussed, mouth split at one corner, shirt wrinkled like he’s been dragged through three separate bad decisions and voted most likely to enjoy it.
“Jesus,” she says quietly. “You look terrible.”
Dean looks down at himself, then back at her. “That’s rude. I’ve looked charming through worse.”
“You have blood on your shirt.”
“Not mine.”
“Comforting.”
He grins, but it’s smaller than usual. She crosses to the sink and fills a glass, the tap running too loud in the quiet room. For a second neither of them says anything. The kitchen smells like spilled beer, stale chips, and the metallic edge of blood someone missed when wiping down the counter.
She takes one sip, then another.
“Thank you,” she says, because if she doesn’t say it quickly, she might not say it at all.
Dean’s eyes flick to her. “For what?”
“In the kitchen. Earlier.” Her fingers tighten around the glass. “You heard him. And you didn’t make it… bigger.”
Dean looks at her for a beat, then shrugs with the kind of casualness that has clearly been assembled from spare parts. “Yeah. Well. Didn’t seem like my thing to hand over.”
Her chest does something small and painful. “Still.”
He nods once, eyes dropping to the peas against his knuckles. “He’s a dick.”
“Yeah.”
“Like, not in a fun way. In a should-be-launched-into-traffic way.”
A laugh slips out of her before she can stop it, thin and tired and real enough that Dean’s mouth twitches. She sets the glass down and reaches for his hand. “Let me look?”
Dean pulls it back immediately. “Nah. It’s fine.”
“You’re icing it with vegetables.”
“They were available.”
“Dean.”
“What? You already patched up one idiot tonight. Don’t overachieve.”
She gives him a look.
He holds it for maybe three seconds before sighing and offering his hand with theatrical suffering. “God. Fine. But if you tell Garrett I accepted medical care, I’ll deny it.”
“Your masculinity is safe with me.”
“Thank you.”
His knuckles are red and swollen, but nothing split badly enough to need more than cleaning and ice. She turns his hand gently under the light, and Dean lets her, watching her face with an expression that’s almost too careful for him.
“You know,” he says after a minute, “you’re G’s girl.”
Her fingers still.
Dean lifts his brows. “I mean, you’re not officially. Apparently. Because he’s emotionally constipated and you’re both doing whatever little avoidance situation this is.”
She stares at him.
“But,” he says, shrugging again, softer this time, “you’re his girl. So. We got you.”
The kitchen goes blurry at the edges for half a second. She looks down at his hand again, thumb brushing lightly around the bruised skin. “That’s a very big-brother thing to say.”
Dean makes a face. “Ew. Don’t say that. I’m hot.”
“You’re injured.”
“Still hot.”
She laughs, and this one sits easier in her body.
Dean takes the peas back and presses them to his hand. “Go back upstairs before Garrett wakes up and thinks you’ve been kidnapped.”
She picks up her glass, warmth sitting low and strange under her ribs. “Night, Dean.”
“Night, future nurse.” He pauses as she reaches the doorway. “And hey.”
She turns.
His grin is faint but real. “Next time, let me hit him first. Graham’s got a draft to protect.”
She rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling when she goes. “Got it.”
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pairing – garrett graham x nursing student!reader
summary – a bad loss, a worse party, and garrett finding out exactly what kind of man used to make someone he cares about feel small.
warnings – angst, emotional abuse references, slut-shaming, public humiliation, violence, physical fight, blood, strong language
notes from me – i promised garrett would find out about her ex! based on this ask, thank u babe!
word count – 6.5k
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The party is technically still a party, in the way a body is technically still alive when it’s lying very still and making everyone else uncomfortable. There’s music coming from the living room speakers, and the kitchen is full, and someone has already knocked over half a case of beer near the back door, but the usual post-game buzz hasn’t properly taken.
The loss has followed the boys home like bad weather, clinging to the sharp set of Garrett’s jaw and the bruise darkening near Logan’s cheekbone and the way Dean keeps drinking. Even Tucker, who can usually make a room feel less like it wants to bite itself, has been standing at the counter for ten minutes making tiny sandwiches with the grim focus of a man assembling evidence.
“Don’t call them tiny sandwiches,” Tucker says, responding to something Logan had said that she'd missed. “They’re dippables.”
There's a beat of silence so beautiful and complete that she almost respects the universe for giving it to them.
Then Dean says, “I’m sorry, what the fuck did you just call them?”
Garrett laughs behind her, low and warm against the back of her shoulder, and the sound loosens something in her chest that had been sitting there since she spotted Nathan by the beer pong table twenty minutes ago.
Garrett’s sitting on the kitchen counter behind her, one knee hooked loosely at either side of her hips while she stands between his legs with her back tipped into him like it happened by accident and not because his hand found her waist three seconds after she walked in and kept her there.
He has a beer in one hand and the other at the back of her neck, thumb moving in slow, absent circles over the tender place where her shoulder meets her spine, like he’s decided her body is something he can keep track of without looking at it.
“They’re sandwiches, Tuck,” Logan says, leaning one hip against the island and reaching for one.
Tucker smacks his hand away. “They’re meant to be dipped. That’s the point.”
“In what?” she asks, because she loves Tucker and because she is weak.
Tucker brightens at her like he’s finally found a reasonable member of the group. “There’s au jus.”
Dean’s face twists. “There’s what?”
“Au jus,” Tucker repeats.
Garrett’s thumb pauses at the back of her neck. “Bro, did you make a French dip sandwich and then cut it into little slutty rectangles?”
She chokes on a laugh, and Tucker points at her with immediate betrayal. “Not you too. Don’t stoop to their level.”
“I’m sorry,” she says, not sounding sorry at all. “Little slutty rectangles was actually a strong contribution.”
“Unbelievable,” Tucker mutters, turning back to his plate with the wounded dignity of someone surrounded by people too stupid to appreciate innovation. “Fine. None for any of you.”
Logan already has one halfway to his mouth. “Too late.”
It should be enough. This, Garrett’s knee warm against her thigh, Tucker in front of them with a plate of sandwiches he has emotionally overinvested in, Dean loose-limbed and loud, Logan eating in a way that suggests he has never once feared choking.
It should be enough to keep her here, properly here, in the kitchen with the counter digging lightly into Garrett’s palm beside her hip and the whole house smelling like beer and aftershave and cheap chips and winter cold.
But every so often, her body remembers Nathan’s in the house. A quiet tightening under her skin whenever his voice comes close enough to recognise. The back of her throat going dry for half a second. Her stomach making one slow, unpleasant turn when she catches sight of him leaning in too close to some girl near the living room archway, smiling with that exact mouth he used to make her feel stupid for needing anything.
She’s over him. She knows that. She has done the therapy-adjacent late-night self-reflection, the crying in the shower, the deleting screenshots, the learning how to take a compliment without waiting for it to become a trap. She's rebuilt too many little pieces of herself to mistake disgust for longing.
Still. Seeing him makes her feel like she needs to wash her hands.
Garrett’s thumb presses a little more firmly into the back of her neck, and she realises, with a small, guilty jolt, that she’s gone still.
“Still sore from yesterday?” he murmurs, his mouth brushing the bare curve of her shoulder because her top has slipped slightly and because Garrett’s incapable of seeing available skin without acting like it exists for him personally.
She nods, letting the answer be easy because that’s what he’s asking about and because she would rather talk about a pulled shoulder than the way Nathan’s laugh keeps snagging at the edge of the room. “A little.”
Garrett’s hand shifts, fingers sliding beneath her hair to rub slow circles into the muscle. It hurts enough to make her inhale and feels good enough to make her want to lean back harder. “There?”
“Mhm.”
Dean watches the movement with narrowed eyes. “Are we witnessing foreplay or physiotherapy?”
“Could be both,” Garrett says.
“Clinical dual-purpose,” she adds, and Logan snorts hard enough to cough.
Tucker, because he’s the only person in the room with any decency, points a sandwich knife at all of them. “Can one kitchen interaction in this house not become sexual?”
“No,” Dean says immediately.
“No,” Logan agrees.
Garrett leans down and kisses the top of her shoulder, his grin pressing briefly into her skin. “Probably not.”
She laughs, and for one second it works. The room warms properly around her. Garrett’s body is solid behind her, his hand large and careful on her neck, and Nathan’s a thing somewhere else. A bad smell through a window. A person she used to know badly. Nothing more. Then he walks into the kitchen.
Nathan comes in with one of his friends behind him, shoulder first through the crowd, laughing at something already, like the house belongs to him because he’s decided to move through it. He looks the same in a way that feels almost rude.
Same neat hair. Same watch he used to tap when she was late, even if late meant she'd stayed back on placement because someone coded and she couldn’t exactly tell a dying man to hurry up. Same pale blue button-down that probably took more effort than it wanted to admit. His eyes flick over the kitchen and land on her. Garrett’s hand stops moving.
It’s so quick she nearly misses it. Nathan’s gaze dips to where she’s standing between Garrett’s knees, to Garrett’s hand on her neck, to the easy, intimate line of her body leaning back into his. His mouth twitches.
She hates that she knows that twitch. He turns toward his friend as they pass the island, heading for the sink where half the drinks are buried in ice, and coughs something under his breath. Enough that it could be denied, just enough that the words are meant to land like spit without the inconvenience of accountability.
Dean hears something. She knows because the lazy angle of his body changes at once, his spine straightening, one hand dropping from the counter. “What’d you say, man?”
The kitchen thins in a way no one else seems to notice at first. Tucker looks up from the sandwiches. Logan’s chewing slows. Garrett’s fingers spread over the back of her neck.
Nathan looks back at Dean like he’s surprised to be addressed, which is rich, considering Nathan’s whole personality is built on saying things softly enough to make other people look crazy for reacting. “Nah, man. Nothing.”
Dean’s face goes very calm. It’s a bad calm. A Dean calm that belongs right before some guy at Malone’s realises he’s miscalculated the pretty one. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Nathan says, lifting both hands, one beer bottle hanging loose from his fingers. “Just grabbing a drink.”
Dean nods once. “Get the fuck outta my kitchen.”
Nathan’s friend mutters something, but Nathan only gives a thin little smile, the one that always used to make her stomach drop because it meant he would punish her later for something he had started. “All good,” he says, and backs out with the beer.
For a second, nobody speaks. The music from the living room fills the space badly. Someone yells at the TV even though the TV is only playing a muted sports recap. Garrett’s hand has moved from her neck to her waist, his arm coming around her middle like he’s pulled her back without thinking.
“What was that about?” Logan asks, eyes still on the doorway.
Dean looks at her for half a second, not long enough to make it obvious to everyone, but long enough that she knows. Long enough that something sour and hot slides down the back of her throat.
He heard. Maybe not all of it, but enough. Dean, who jokes like breathing is optional, looks at her like he’s measuring whether to tell Garrett and deciding, maybe, that detonating him in the kitchen is not the right play.
“Nothing,” Dean says, taking a drink and looking away first. “All good.”
It isn’t, but she lets him have the lie. Garrett’s chin lowers slightly, his mouth close to her ear. “You okay?”
She makes herself nod before her body can make a whole production out of it. “Yeah. Shoulder’s just being annoying.”
Garrett doesn’t believe her. She can feel that in the way his hand settles more securely over her stomach, palm warm through her top. But he lets it go for now, kissing her shoulder again, once, slower this time. “Same as yesterday?”
“Yeah.”
Logan blinks, grateful for the normal subject or maybe just willing to accept the one she hands them. “What’d you do?”
“Oh, uh.” She clears her throat and reaches for one of Tucker’s sandwiches mostly so her hand has a task. “Patient came in unconscious yesterday. We were shifting him from the gurney to the bed when he started waking up, and he moved weird, and I kind of caught the weight wrong.” She lifts one shoulder, immediately regrets it, and makes a face. “Tweaked it a little. It’s fine. Just stiff.”
“Jesus,” Tucker says, concern creasing his forehead. “You okay?”
“Yeah, genuinely. Nothing compared to you guys throwing yourselves into walls.”
“Hey,” Logan says. “We get scholarships for that.”
Garrett’s thumb resumes the slow work at her shoulder, but his body hasn’t relaxed behind her. His beer sits forgotten beside him on the counter now, sweating into a little ring. “You should’ve told me.”
“I did tell you.”
“After I noticed.”
“That still counts.”
“It counts less.”
She tips her head back against his chest to look up at him, forcing the corner of her mouth to lift because the alternative feels like letting Nathan keep something. “Are you going to be difficult about a stiff shoulder?”
Garrett looks down at her, jaw still tight, eyes too attentive. “I’m good at difficult.”
Dean makes a disgusted sound. “God, you two are nauseating.”
“You’re just jealous nobody wants to stand between your knees while you threaten medical neglect,” Logan says.
Dean crosses his arms. “Plenty of people want to stand between my knees.”
“Name two.”
“Your mom, for one.”
Logan throws a piece of bread at him. Tucker yells about waste. Garrett laughs against her hair, and she lets herself be folded back into the noise because the kitchen moves on around her, because Nathan is gone, because for a while that's enough.
The night loosens by degrees without ever becoming good. People keep drinking. The music gets louder as if volume can correct a bad final score. The boys split apart eventually, pulled into different conversations and arguments and games she doesn’t track.
Garrett disappears toward the back porch with Logan and two guys from the team, his hand sliding off her waist only after he bends to murmur, “Come find me if your shoulder gets worse,” which makes Dean make such a vile kissing sound that Garrett shoves him on the way past.
She ends up in the living room with two girls from anatomy and one from her clinical group, talking about a professor who pronounces duodenum differently every lecture like he’s trying to keep them on their toes.
It helps. It really does. The room is warm and crowded, and someone has shoved a drink into her hand that she keeps forgetting to drink, and for ten full minutes she is almost normal.
Then Garrett’s voice cuts through the house. “The fuck did you just say to me?”
The conversation around her falters. Her head turns before she’s fully processed why her stomach has dropped. Garrett’s near the archway between the living room and hall, shoulders squared, one hand fisted at his side, the other pushing Nathan back by the chest hard enough that Nathan stumbles into someone behind him. Logan’s two steps away, already moving. Dean, by the couch, goes still in a way that makes the whole room feel suddenly smaller.
Nathan laughs. He’s drunk enough now that the edges of him are sloppy, his face flushed, hair falling out of its careful shape. “I’m just saying, bro. She’s fucking insane. You haven’t gotten to the part where she has a nervous breakdown every time–”
Garrett shoves him again. Harder. “Say that shit again.”
A low sound moves through the room, like everyone’s inhaled at once and forgotten the exhale.
“Garrett,” she says, but it disappears under the music and the blood rushing in her ears.
Nathan’s eyes flick past Garrett and land on her. It’s awful, how bright he gets when he sees her watching. Like this is what he wanted. Like all the soft, careful little comments, all the rumours, all the muttered half-words in kitchens and hallways and under his breath, had been leading toward the moment he could drag her into the middle of a room and make her feel sixteen inches tall again.
“There she is,” Nathan says, spreading his arms slightly. “Slut of the hour. Been wanting to talk to you.”
Her fingers go cold around her cup. Garrett turns his head just enough to see her face, and whatever is left of his restraint thins to a thread.
Nathan either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. His smile pulls wider. “Hey, Graham, does she do that thing when she sucks yo–”
Garrett hits him before the sentence finishes.
The sound is horrible. Clean and thick and immediate, Garrett’s fist catching Nathan square in the jaw with enough force to snap his head sideways and send his beer flying out of his hand.
For one suspended second, everyone freezes. Then Nathan’s friend lunges, Dean moves like someone released him from a leash, and the whole living room comes apart.
Dean catches Nathan’s friend by the shirt and drives him backward into the wall with a crash that knocks a picture frame crooked. Someone screams. Someone else yells, “Oh shit!” like they’re at a sporting event instead of watching a felony assemble itself in real time.
Nathan swings wildly and catches Garrett’s shoulder, but Garrett barely seems to feel it. He shoves him back over the coffee table, follows him down, and the next punch lands against Nathan’s cheek. Then another. And another.
For half a second, some ugly, honest part of her likes it. It flares through her so fast she feels sick with it, hot and vindictive and horribly human. Nathan on the floor, finally not smiling. Nathan with his mouth split instead of using it. Nathan taking one clean consequence after months of turning her name into something dirty in other people’s mouths.
Then Garrett’s knuckles hit him again, and the thought snaps in half.
“Garrett!” She pushes forward, but the room is bodies and arms and spilled beer. “Garrett, stop!”
He doesn’t hear her. Or he hears and can’t get to it. His face isn’t the face from the kitchen, not the boy with his thumb at her shoulder and his beer forgotten beside him. His jaw is locked, eyes bright and empty with rage, every line of him driven toward the next punch like the world has narrowed to Nathan’s face and the words he almost got to finish.
This could be bad. The thought arrives clinical and brutal. His draft. The team. The school. Coach. Phil. The Bruins. Everything people are already waiting to hold against him because men like Garrett are allowed to be violent on the ice only when someone else is keeping score.
“Logan,” she says, grabbing his sleeve as he passes. Her voice cracks around the urgency of it. “Get him off!”
Logan looks at her once, then at Garrett, and whatever he sees makes his face go grim. “G!” He moves in fast, Tucker right behind him, both of them grabbing Garrett under the arms and around the shoulders. “Walk it off, man. Come on.”
Garrett bucks against them so hard Tucker swears, Garrett's elbow catching him in the ribs. “Did you hear him?” Garrett snaps, voice wrecked and furious. “You didn’t– did you fucking hear what he said?”
“I heard,” Logan says, jaw tight, hauling him back with everything he has. “I heard, okay? But you gotta walk it off.”
“He’s a piece of shit!”
“I know.”
“You didn’t hear what he said before–”
“I know,” Logan says again, sharper now, because Garrett’s still trying to surge forward and Nathan is coughing blood onto the carpet and Dean’s being dragged off Nathan’s friend by two defensemen who look like they’re not having a great time either. “Garrett. Look at me. You’re done. You hear me? You’re done.”
Garrett’s eyes cut to her.
The whole room seems to tilt around that look. He’s breathing hard, chest heaving, curls falling into his eyes, blood on his knuckles that might not be his. The rage is still there, hot and awful, but underneath it something else flickers when he finds her standing in the middle of the room with her cup still in her hand and her shoulder drawn too high and her mouth slightly open like she’s forgotten what shape to make.
For a second, he looks almost scared. Then Nathan groans from the floor, and Garrett surges again.
“Upstairs,” Tucker says, voice tight. “Get him upstairs.”
Dean, still red-faced and furious, points at Nathan from across the room while Beau keeps a hand on his chest. “Get that fucker out of my house.”
“Dean,” Logan snaps.
“No, get him the fuck out.”
Garrett’s shoved toward the stairs more than guided, Logan at his shoulder, Tucker at his back, both of them talking low and fast. Garrett keeps looking back. Not at Nathan now, at her. Like he can’t decide whether leaving her downstairs is another thing to be angry about.
She can’t move immediately. For three, maybe four seconds, she stands there while the room reorganises itself around the damage. Nathan’s friend is yelling. Dean’s yelling louder. Someone is crouching beside Nathan, asking if he can open his mouth, which makes her student nurse brain twitch with absurd, unwanted competence.
The girls from anatomy are around her suddenly, one hand touching her elbow, another voice saying, “Hey, are you okay?” in that careful way people speak when they realise they’ve walked into someone else’s history without a map.
She looks at Nathan on the floor. There’s blood at the corner of his mouth. His eye is already swelling. He looks smaller than he used to. Or maybe he was always this size and she had just been made to feel so much smaller beside him that she forgot how to judge distance properly.
He turns his head slightly, makes eye contact with her and spits red onto the carpet. “Crazy bitch,” he mutters.
The girl beside her inhales sharply. Something in her goes very still, a clean little line drawn through the middle of her body.
She sets her cup down on the nearest shelf because her hand’s shaking now and she doesn’t want anyone to mistake that for weakness. Then she steps around the coffee table, careful of the broken glass, careful of the beer soaking into the rug, and looks down at him. Nathan’s eyes lift to hers, dazed and hateful.
“You need to leave,” she says. Her voice is quieter than she expects. It works anyway.
Nathan laughs, or tries to. It comes out wet. “Yeah? Gonna get your boyfriend to hit me again?”
“No,” she says. “I’m going to go check on him. You can bleed on someone else’s fucking floor.”
For once, Nathan has nothing ready. His mouth opens, then shuts, and the silence that follows is so much better than anything she could have made him say. She turns before he can recover.
The stairs feel longer than usual. Her legs are steady until she reaches the landing, and then they’re not, a little, the adrenaline making her knees feel too loose under her. She hears Garrett before she sees him, voice rough behind his bedroom door.
“I’m fine.”
Logan’s answer is immediate. “You’re not fine.”
“I said I’m fine.”
“And I said you just tried to turn her ex into ground beef in our living room, so maybe I'm not over the moon about leaving you alone right now.”
She pushes the door open.
Garrett’s standing near the bed with Tucker in front of him and Logan by the door like he’s prepared to physically block an exit. Garrett’s right hand is bleeding across the knuckles. His shoulder is tense under his shirt. His face is flushed, jaw still working like he's chewing through the last of the fight.
All three boys look at her when she steps in. Garrett’s expression changes first. “Baby,” he says, and the word comes out rough enough that it almost undoes her.
Logan looks between them, then exhales. “We’ll be outside.”
Garrett’s head snaps toward him. “No, you don’t have to–”
“Yes, we do,” Tucker says gently. “Bathroom’s across the hall if you need first aid stuff.”
“I know where the bathroom is,” she says automatically.
Tucker gives her a tiny, exhausted smile. “Right. Yeah. Sorry.”
Then they’re gone, the door clicking shut behind them and leaving the room suddenly too quiet around her and Garrett.
For a second, neither of them moves. The music downstairs is muffled now, mostly bass and shouting. Garrett stands by the bed with blood drying over his knuckles, chest still rising too fast, looking at her like he expects her to take one good look and leave.
She hates that. She hates that the anger is already curdling into fear in his face. “Sit down,” she says.
His mouth twists. “Are you okay?”
“Sit down, Garrett.”
He does, because her voice has gone into the place it goes when she has no interest in negotiating with hockey players, concussed or otherwise. He sits on the edge of the bed, elbows braced on his knees, hand held awkwardly in front of him like he has only just remembered it exists.
She crosses to him and takes it carefully. His fingers twitch once, like he almost pulls away. She doesn’t let him.
“You’re bleeding,” she says, because it's easier to start with what her hands know how to fix.
“It’s not mine.”
“Some of it is.”
Garrett looks down at their hands, then away. “Did he touch you?”
“No.”
“Did he say anything else to you?”
She sighs softly. “Garrett.”
His eyes snap back. “Did he?”
She looks at him for a second, at the fury trying to relight itself because it's easier than whatever else is waiting in the room. “Not anything that matters.”
“All of it fucking matters.”
The answer lands hard enough that she has to look down at his hand. The skin over two knuckles is split, red and swelling.
She runs her thumb lightly around the edge of it, not over the broken skin, and Garrett sucks in a breath through his teeth. “That hurt?”
“No.”
“Liar.”
His mouth almost moves. Almost. It doesn’t make it to a smile.
She goes to the bathroom and comes back with the little first aid box she’s now reorganised three times. Garrett stays where she left him, which feels like a miracle or a warning. When she sits beside him on the bed, close enough that her knee touches his thigh, his eyes stay on her face.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
She pauses with an antiseptic wipe halfway open.
Garrett swallows, throat working hard. “I’m sorry. I know I shouldn’t have– fuck, I know. I know it was bad. I know what that looked like.”
She sets the wipe down unopened for a second. “What do you think it looked like?”
His laugh is short and ugly. “Like exactly what everyone thinks I am when I get pissed off.”
The room shifts around the words. Phil’s shadow under Garrett’s skin, waiting for any evidence it can use.
She turns toward him fully. “No.”
“You didn’t see my face.”
“I did.”
“No, you didn’t.” His voice cracks with frustration. “You saw after. You didn’t see what I– I couldn’t stop. I heard him say that shit about you, and I couldn’t stop. I– I blacked out. I wanted to fucking kill him.”
She doesn’t flinch. That feels important, so she makes sure of it. She sits there with his bleeding hand in hers and the open first aid box on the bed and makes herself stay steady, because Garrett is watching for fear like his life depends on finding it before it finds him.
“You stopped,” she says.
His eyes flash. “Because Logan dragged me off.”
“And because you let him.”
Garrett looks away, jaw clenching.
She picks up the wipe again and tears the packet open. “This is going to sting.”
“I don’t care.”
“I know. I’m saying it anyway.”
She cleans his knuckles carefully. Garrett hisses once and then has the audacity to pretend he didn’t, staring at the wall like the wall has asked him to perform masculinity.
She would make fun of him on any other night. On this one, she only holds his hand more securely and works the dried blood from the torn skin until she can see what belongs to him and what doesn’t.
“He was shitty,” she says, after the silence has stretched too thin.
Garrett’s breathing changes.
She keeps her eyes on his hand. “Not just, like, bad breakup shitty. He was… he made everything feel really small.” Her thumb steadies the back of Garrett’s hand when his fingers start to curl. “Me, mostly. The things I liked. The way I talked. What I wore. Who I spoke to. If I cried, I was manipulative. If I didn’t cry, I was cold. If I needed reassurance, I was needy. If I pulled away, I was punishing him. It was always something. And then after we broke up, he started saying things because he knew I hated making scenes enough that I wouldn’t correct him.”
Garrett’s face has gone dangerously still.
She glances up. “Do not go back downstairs.”
“I’m not.”
“You look like you’re planning an escape route.”
His eyes flick to hers, and she can see the exact moment the anger gives way to something worse, something softer and more helpless.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asks.
It could sound accusing from anyone else. From him it just sounds hurt.
She folds the wipe into a small square because her hands need something to do. “Because I didn’t want to bring him into this.”
Garrett’s brow creases. “Into what?”
She looks at him then, and the room gets too warm and too quiet all at once. His hand is still in hers. His knees are still angled toward her. There’s blood on the wipe, music through the floor, and a fight downstairs with her name at the centre of it.
Whatever this is has been refusing a name for weeks, living in Garrett’s bed and his kitchen and the passenger seat of his car, wearing his hoodies and eating his pizza and saying I’m not your girlfriend with his thumb tucked into her waistband.
“This,” she says.
Garrett’s face shifts, small and aching.
She looks back at his hand because it is safer. “I didn’t want to feel like I was handing him proof. Like he still mattered enough to affect something good. And I didn’t want you to look at me differently.”
“Baby,” Garrett says, rough.
“I know that’s stupid.”
“It’s not.”
“I’m over him.”
“I know.”
“No, I am.” She says it too quickly, then has to stop and take a breath because her chest has gone tight in a way she resents. “I am. I don’t want him. I don’t miss him. I don’t even care what he thinks of me anymore, not really. But seeing him still makes my skin feel weird. Like I’m waiting to be corrected.”
Garrett closes his eyes.
She tapes gauze over his knuckles with more care than is probably necessary. “And then you hit him, and part of me was like… good.” Her mouth twists with the honesty. “Which is not a very healing, future-healthcare-professional reaction.”
Garrett gives a broken little huff. “I don’t think healthcare professionals have to be saints.”
“No?”
“No.” His hand turns carefully under hers, catching her fingers. “Especially not when some asshole calls them that in my living room.”
She studies his face. “You can’t do that again.”
“I know.”
“I mean it.”
“I know.”
“No, Garrett.” Her voice firms, not loud, but enough that his eyes stay on hers. “He’s not worth your team. He’s not worth hockey. He’s not worth giving anyone a reason to say you’re out of control.”
Something painful crosses his face.
She softens immediately, her thumb moving once over the edge of the tape. “And he’s not worth making you feel like this.”
Garrett looks down at their hands. “I scared you.”
“No.”
His jaw tightens. “Don’t lie to make me feel better.”
“I’m not.” She shifts closer, her knee pressing more firmly into his thigh. “You didn’t scare me. The situation scared me. What could happen to you scared me. The way you looked at me after scared me because you looked like you thought I was going to run.”
Garrett doesn’t answer.
She reaches up with her free hand and turns his face gently toward hers. He lets her, but barely, his eyes dark and wet in a way that makes her chest hurt. “You didn’t make me afraid of you.”
His breath leaves him unevenly.
“I was afraid for you,” she says. “That’s different.”
Garrett’s eyes close for half a second under her hand. When they open again, the fight has drained out of him enough to leave the tired underneath. He leans forward slowly, like he's giving her time to move away even now, and rests his forehead against her shoulder.
She brings her hand to the back of his head immediately. His curls are warm under her fingers, damp at the roots from the party heat and whatever adrenaline is still burning out of him. His good hand comes around her waist. Proof, maybe. Or asking for it.
“I’m sorry,” he says again, muffled against her shirt.
“I know.”
“I just heard him and I–”
“I know.”
“He doesn’t get to talk about you like that.”
Her throat tightens. She turns her face into his hair for a second and lets herself breathe him in, the beer and soap and sweat and Garrett underneath it all, so familiar now it makes something in her ache. “No,” she says quietly. “He doesn’t.”
Garrett’s arm tightens around her, then loosens at once like he’s checking himself. She hates that too, so she shifts closer until he can’t mistake it, one hand sliding down to his shoulder, her cheek resting against his temple.
“You can hold me,” she murmurs.
He goes still.
“I’ll tell you if it’s too much.”
A breath shudders out of him. Then he pulls her in properly, both arms around her now, careful of his taped hand but tight enough that she can feel the last of the tremor in him. It’s not the confident, lazy hold from the kitchen.
It’s not the smug arm around her waist in front of some guy he’s trying to intimidate. It’s messy and tired and a little desperate, his face tucked against her neck like he can’t look at her while needing her this much.
She lets him. More than that, she holds him back. Downstairs, someone shouts. Dean, probably. Then Logan’s voice cuts through, sharp and managerial, which means the cleanup has reached the stage where property damage is being assessed by people who have no business assessing anything.
Garrett lifts his head slightly. “Is he still here?”
“No. Dean was having him removed from the premises with… enthusiasm.”
Garrett’s mouth twitches against her shoulder. “Good.”
“Dean also fought his friend.”
“Yeah, I saw.”
“Really committed to the bit.”
“Dean likes a group project.”
She laughs before she can stop it. It comes out small and shaky, but it’s real, and Garrett pulls back just enough to look at her like the sound has physically touched something in him.
There’s blood near his collar, a bruise starting along his jaw that she hadn’t noticed before, and his eyes are still too bright. He looks wrecked. He looks guilty. He looks like the boy from the kitchen and the man from the fight and something younger underneath both, waiting to see whether the room will stay safe.
She brushes her thumb lightly over the unbruised side of his jaw. “You’re an idiot.”
His mouth moves. “Yeah.”
“A huge idiot.”
“I know.”
“With terrible emotional regulation.”
That finally gets the edge of a smile, weak but there. “Coming from the girl who diagnoses herself with being hungry instead of sad.”
“That’s a valid nursing assessment.”
“It’s not.”
“It absolutely is. Half of this house is one snack away from psychiatric stability.”
Garrett huffs, and the sound loosens the room by an inch. His hand lifts to her waist, thumb rubbing once through the fabric in the same absent pattern from earlier, like his body remembers tenderness even when his head is still catching up.
“I should’ve asked you,” he says after a moment. “About him. Before.”
She shakes her head. “You didn’t know there was anything to ask.”
“I knew you got weird when his name came up.”
“I get weird when people say wound vac too.”
“That’s different.”
“It’s a gross phrase.”
His eyes stay on her, too serious for the joke to fully land. “I’m sorry you had to deal with him alone.”
She swallows. “I’m not alone now.”
Garrett’s face changes so fast she nearly looks away. The words sit between them, too plain, too close to something they have both been circling with sex and rides to placement and coffee in his kitchen and sleeping pressed together like denial is a blanket they can share.
He touches her chin, careful with his taped fingers. “No,” he says quietly. “You’re not.”
Her chest aches. She wants to make a joke. She wants to say something about him being concussed by his own fist or reckless in a way that should be charted. Instead she leans in and kisses him.
It’s soft because his lip is split a little and his jaw is sore and the whole night has been too sharp already. Garrett makes a sound against her mouth, one hand sliding to the back of her neck like he wants to keep her there and is still remembering to ask.
She lets the answer be in the way she moves closer, in the way her hand settles over his chest, in the way she kisses him again when he starts to pull back.
When they separate, his forehead stays against hers.
“I’m still mad,” he whispers.
“I know.”
“I want to go downstairs and kick him again.”
“He’s gone.”
“I can find him.”
She gives him a look.
Garrett exhales, eyes closing. “Kidding.”
“No, you’re not.”
“No,” he admits. “But I won’t.”
“Good.”
His thumb moves once beneath her jaw. “You staying?”
She pulls back enough to look at him. “After that? I kind of have to. Someone should monitor you for post-fight stupidity.”
“That a real condition?”
“In this house? Endemic.”
He smiles properly then, real enough that something unclenches behind her ribs. She reaches for his hand again and checks the tape, pressing the edge down where it has started to lift.
Garrett watches her do it. “You’re really okay?”
She pauses, because the easy answer is there. Fine. Good fine. The one they both know how to use when the room is too full.
Then she thinks of Nathan on the floor, small and bleeding and still trying to make her feel dirty from beneath Garrett’s bloodied knuckles.
She thinks of the kitchen, Tucker’s dippables, Dean’s sudden calm, Logan dragging Garrett back because he understood the stakes before Garrett could. She thinks of Garrett’s face after, terrified of himself in a way he has never made her feel of him.
“I’m… a little grossed out,” she says. “And tired. And I probably want to shower even though he didn’t touch me, which is annoying.”
Garrett’s eyes soften painfully.
“But I’m okay,” she says, because this part is true too. “I think I’m okay.”
He nods slowly. “Okay.”
“And you’re going to sit here for a minute before you go anywhere near stairs.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And you’re going to ice your hand.”
His brows pull together. “I just beat the shit out of a guy for you and now you’re giving me homework?”
“You beat the shit out of a guy for yourself too, Graham. Don’t get noble.”
His mouth opens, then closes. “Fair.”
“Thank you.”
He looks at her for a beat, then his mouth tilts faintly. “You’re kind of scary when you’re right.”
“I’m almost always right. You’re just new here.”
Garrett laughs, and it hurts him. She knows because his face twitches and his hand comes up toward his ribs like he can somehow protect every sore part at once.
She clicks her tongue before she can help it. “See? Post-fight stupidity.”
“I’m fine.”
She stares at him.
He sighs. “Manageable.”
“Better.”
Garrett reaches for her before she can get up fully for ice, catching her gently around the waist and pulling her back between his knees, echoing the kitchen without the noise, without the party version of themselves, without Nathan’s eyes from across the room.
His forehead drops to her stomach for a second, arms around her hips. She stills, then brings both hands to his hair. “I’ve got you,” she murmurs, because it’s the only thing that fits.
Garrett’s grip tightens once. Then, so quiet she almost misses it under the bass downstairs, he says, “I’ve got you too.”
to be notified when i post new fics, follow @kooksandpearls-library and turn on notifications! i no longer use a taglist for garrett fics.
pairing – garrett graham x nursing student!reader
summary – between wound reviews, vaccination clinics, asthma education, and stolen lunch breaks, garrett makes sure his girlfriend gets fed and reminded how good she is.
warnings – medical placement, primary care setting, vaccination clinic mention, wound care mention, asthma review, food/eating.
notes from me – MY SWEET DOMESTIC BABIES HOW I LOVE THEM!! based on these requests combined! thank you babes!
word count – 3.1k
navigation – masterlist |
Monday
By twelve-thirty, the medical centre has already taught her three important things: the blood pressure machine in room four lies, children can sense fear more accurately than most diagnostic equipment, and nobody working in primary care gets to eat lunch at the time written on the roster.
She comes out through the side entrance at twelve forty-seven with her scrub top pulling strangely beneath her cardigan, one pocket weighted down by three pens, a folded observation sheet and a tiny glittery sticker she’d found stuck to her elbow after the morning vaccination clinic.
The air outside is cold enough to make the inside of her nose sting. Garrett’s already sitting on the little bench beside the staff car park, one ankle resting over his opposite knee, a paper takeaway bag tucked between his shoes and his phone loose in one hand.
He looks up before the door has finished closing behind her. The change happens quickly, his attention lifting away from the screen and landing fully on her like he hasn’t spent the last twenty minutes surrounded by traffic, bare winter trees and a medical centre sign advertising flu shots. “Hey, baby.”
She makes it halfway across the patch of grass before the smell reaches her. Warm bread, roasted chicken, something garlicky. Her stomach pulls painfully beneath her ribs, reminding her that breakfast had been half a piece of toast eaten while standing over the kitchen sink because she’d misplaced her other shoe. “What did you bring?”
Garrett’s grin starts. “Hi to you too.”
“Hi.” She stops between his knees, and he catches her automatically by the hips, pressing his mouth to the centre of her stomach through her cardigan before tipping his head back to look at her. “What did you bring?”
“Lunch.”
“That’s not specific.”
He tilts his head to the side. “That’s because you’ll start negotiating before I show you.”
“I don’t negotiate.”
“You told me yesterday you only wanted something small.” His hands remain at her waist while he looks up at her, dark curls disturbed by the wind and one faint crease still pressed beside his cheek from whatever lecture he’d spent resting his face against his fist. “You’ve been here since seven.”
“Eight.”
“You left the house at seven.”
“That’s different.”
“It’s worse.”
She tries to look stern, but Garrett pulls her closer until her knees touch the bench and kisses the little strip of skin beneath her scrub top where it has ridden up. It’s difficult to maintain authority while Briar’s hockey captain is kissing her stomach beside a sign asking patients not to smoke within five metres of the building.
“Sit down,” he says. “I brought chicken wraps, those potatoes you like and actual fruit because Tucker said grapes don’t count as a side dish.”
“Tucker’s becoming controlling,” she grins.
“Tucker packed the grapes.”
“Oh.” She sits beside him at once. “Tucker’s an angel.”
Garrett hands her the container with a look of deep personal betrayal. “I drove it here.”
“You’re useful too.”
“Thank you.”
She’s halfway through her first bite when the side door opens again. Janelle, the practice nurse supervising her placement, steps outside with a mug in one hand and a lanyard tangled around the other. She’s in her forties, quick-moving and kind in the specific way of nurses who can reassure an anxious parent while opening six packets with their teeth.
“There you are,” Janelle says, then notices Garrett and smiles like she has been expecting to eventually find the source of the lunches arriving in increasingly respectable containers. “You must be Garrett.”
Garrett stands immediately, because beneath the hockey-house manners and constant obscenity there’s something in him that responds to older women with professional authority like a student unexpectedly called on in class. “Yeah. Hi.”
“I’ve heard about the food.”
She closes her eyes briefly. “Oh my God.”
Janelle laughs, then looks back at her. “You did really well this morning, by the way. Especially with the twins. Vaccinating one four-year-old is hard enough without the other one providing live commentary.”
Heat moves quickly from beneath her collar to her face. The fork in her hand pauses over the potatoes. “Oh. Um. Thank you.”
“You kept both of them calm, and you explained everything to Mom without drowning her in information. That’s good.” Janelle takes a sip from her mug, already turning back toward the door. “Enjoy your lunch. Don’t let us steal you before one.”
The door closes behind her. For a few seconds, Garrett says nothing. That’s worse than if he had immediately started being annoying. She looks down and spears one potato with more concentration than it deserves, aware of his face angled toward her, his knee pressing warmly against hers.
“What?” she asks.
“Nothing.”
“You’re staring.”
“My girlfriend vaccinated twins this morning.”
She rolls her eyes. “I assisted with vaccinations.”
“Four-year-old twins.”
“Under supervision.”
“And one of them was heckling you?”
“She kept telling her brother the needle was going to be enormous.” Her mouth twitches despite herself. “Then she screamed before anyone touched her and scared him so badly he started crying.”
Garrett’s grin breaks wide and bright. “And you handled it.”
She shoots him a look. “I gave her a sticker.”
“Medical genius.”
“She liked stickers,” she mutters.
He nudges his shoulder into hers. “You were good.”
The praise catches in the same difficult place Janelle’s had, somewhere high beneath her breastbone, warm enough to feel almost uncomfortable. She looks down at the container. “I didn’t do much.”
Garrett doesn’t argue immediately. He reaches over instead, takes the fork from her hand and uses it to gather a piece of chicken she had pushed toward the edge. “You’ve gotta stop doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“Turning every nice thing someone says about you into something else.” He holds the fork near her mouth. “That nurse was there. She probably knows if you did well.”
“She does.”
“And she said you did.”
She looks at the chicken, then at him. Garrett’s expression is easy, but there’s something steady underneath it, no teasing escape built into the moment. She opens her mouth and lets him feed her mostly because refusing would make this into a larger emotional event beside the staff car park.
After she swallows, she says, “I did do pretty well.”
Garrett leans in and kisses her temple.
Wednesday
By Wednesday, Garrett has been recognised by reception. He discovers this when the woman behind the front desk sees him through the glass doors carrying two containers and presses the release button without making him use the intercom.
He gives her a small wave as he crosses the foyer, and she points toward the side exit with the expression of someone directing a regular delivery.
His girlfriend emerges four minutes later with her stethoscope still around her neck and a smear of something pale across one sleeve. Garrett eyes it as she drops onto the bench beside him. “What’s that?”
She follows his gaze. “Dressing adhesive, probably.”
“Probably?”
“Nothing infectious.”
His nose scrunches. “That’s not as reassuring as you think.”
She lets her head tip onto his shoulder while he opens the first container. Today it’s soup in a sealed thermos, two toasted sandwiches wrapped in foil and a yoghurt Garrett has selected because the label contains the word protein in lettering large enough to appeal to him.
“I only have twenty minutes,” she murmurs.
“You said thirty.”
“Mrs. Patterson’s wound review ran over.”
Garrett unwraps the sandwich and places it into her hand before she can decide she isn’t hungry enough. “Bad?”
“No. It’s actually healing really nicely.” Her voice changes on the last part, tiredness thinning out beneath interest. “She had a skin tear on her shin that got infected, but the redness has come down and there’s way less exudate. I got to clean it and redress it today.”
He’s learned enough nursing vocabulary through forced exposure not to make a face at exudate. “That good?”
“Very.”
“So you fixed her leg.”
She snorts softly. “I didn’t fix her leg.”
“You helped.”
“I helped,” she nods.
The side door swings open before he can improve the claim. Dr. Shah steps out with his phone in one hand and a set of car keys in the other, a slim man with silver beginning at his temples and the permanently hurried posture of someone who’s been running fifteen minutes behind since medical school.
He sees her and slows. “Good work with Mrs. Patterson.”
Her shoulders pull in by less than an inch. Garrett feels it because they’re pressed together from hip to knee, because he’s become embarrassingly fluent in the small movements she thinks nobody notices.
“Thank you,” she says, a little too quickly.
“You were gentle, but you didn’t hesitate. Patients notice when you’re nervous, particularly with painful dressings.” Dr. Shah nods once, like the matter is settled. “She asked whether you’ll be here for her next appointment.”
Her fingers tighten around the foil. “She did?”
“She likes you.” His phone begins ringing. He glances at it and sighs with his whole body. “Enjoy lunch.”
Garrett waits until Dr. Shah has crossed the car park before turning his head.
She’s staring down at her sandwich. The tip of one ear has gone pink. “Don’t,” she warns.
Garrett takes a drink from his coffee and tries, unsuccessfully, to flatten his mouth. “Mrs. Patterson requested my girlfriend specifically.”
“She asked if I’d be there,” she grumbles.
“Requested.”
“She probably just doesn’t want to explain the whole wound history again.”
“Or she likes you.”
“She barely knows me.”
“She knows you don’t rip bandages off her leg like you’re waxing a car.”
“That’s not how anyone removes dressings,” she replies.
“You said one of the nurses at the hospital did.”
She holds up a finger. “One nurse, one time.”
He looks down at her, taking in the tired little shadows under her eyes, the escaping strands of hair around her face, the stethoscope bumping lightly against her chest each time she moves. “You know you’re good at this, right?”
Her chewing slows. Garrett lets the question stay where it lands. He doesn’t push it toward a joke or ask her to say something she cannot yet make fit comfortably in her mouth.
Eventually, she swallows and wipes her thumb over the corner of the foil. “I’m getting better.”
“Yeah,” he says. “You are.”
Her gaze lifts to his, cautious at first, then warmer when she realises he means the answer exactly as she gave it. She’s getting better. At dressings. At talking to patients. At hearing something kind without immediately dismantling it for parts.
Garrett bends and kisses her once, slow and ordinary, tasting faintly of coffee when she kisses him back. Her phone alarm goes off between them.
She groans into his mouth. “I hate employment.”
“You don’t work here.”
“I hate unpaid employment more.”
He gathers the containers while she stands, then catches the back of her scrub top before she can escape and pulls her in for one more kiss. “Text me when you’re done.”
“I finish at five.”
“Text me anyway.”
“You’ll be at practice.”
“My girlfriend always says phones work in locker rooms.”
She narrows her eyes. “I’ve never said that.”
“Pretty sure you did,” Garrett shrugs.
“That sounds nothing like me.”
Garrett kisses her forehead and lets her go. “My girlfriend’s also very argumentative.”
The side door closes on the sight of her giving him the finger.
Friday
On Friday, the bench is wet from morning rain, so Garrett brings a towel. This is apparently the final stage of whatever has happened to him. He arrives with lunch in one hand, a folded beach towel in the other and Dean’s voice still ringing in his ears from the kitchen that morning.
“Do you hear yourself?” Dean had asked while Garrett packed pasta into a container. “My girlfriend likes the pesto. My girlfriend hates raw tomato. My girlfriend says I need more fibre. You’ve become a doll with one phrase.”
“She does hate raw tomato.”
“We know,” Logan had said from the table. “We all know everything about your girlfriend. Against our will.”
Tucker, slicing strawberries at the counter, had quietly pushed a second container toward Garrett. “She’ll need more than pasta if she’s there until six.”
Garrett had looked at Dean. Dean had pointed the knife he was using to spread peanut butter. “Don’t.”
“My girlfriend–”
“I’ll kill you.”
Now she sits on the towel beside him, one knee tucked toward her chest, eating pesto pasta while the medical centre moves through its afternoon behind them. Cars roll in and out of the lot. Someone’s toddler is crying near the pharmacy entrance. Garrett has practice in forty minutes, but his gear is already in the back of the car and the rink is seven minutes away.
She looks exhausted. It’s in the small things: the way she keeps rubbing her thumb over the side of her index finger, the slow blinks, the faint crease between her brows even while chewing.
Garrett puts the strawberries closer to her without mentioning it. “Eat those too.”
She glances at the container. “You sound like Tucker.”
“Tucker packed them.”
“Of course he did.”
A nurse comes out carrying an empty mug, sees them and smiles. She’s younger than Janelle, maybe late twenties, with bright blue glasses and a name badge that says MELANIE, RN.
“There’s our lunch visitor.”
Garrett lifts his hand. “Hey.”
Melanie looks at her. “I meant to tell you before you disappeared– you were excellent with Noah this morning.”
She straightens slightly. “The asthma review?”
“Mhm. His mom said nobody’s ever explained the spacer properly without making her feel stupid.” Melanie shifts the mug between her hands. “You gave her time to ask questions. That’s harder to teach than people think.”
Her fingers curl lightly around the plastic fork.
“Thank you,” she says.
No apology attached. No immediate reason it didn’t count. Just thank you, quiet and a little pink around the cheeks.
Melanie grins. “You’re welcome. See you inside.”
When the door shuts, Garrett looks down at his own lunch because he knows better now than to turn every moment into an audience. Beside him, she takes another bite, chews, then says, almost carefully, “I was good with them.”
His whole chest seems to shift forward. He keeps his eyes on the container for another second so he doesn’t frighten her by looking as pleased as he feels. “Yeah?”
She nods. “The little boy wasn’t using the spacer right, and his mom thought she’d been doing something wrong, but nobody had actually shown her. So I demonstrated it, and then I got him to teach it back to me with his teddy first.” Her hands start moving as she talks, fork drawing small shapes through the air. “He kept putting the mask over the teddy’s whole face, which was, like, completely ineffective, but he got it eventually.”
Garrett watches her now. He cannot help it. The tiredness is still there, but something brighter has pushed through it, colour high in her cheeks and the words coming faster because she knows this, because she had been useful in the middle of somebody’s confusing morning and knows exactly how.
“You taught a teddy bear how to use an inhaler,” he says.
She gives him a look, but her mouth has already betrayed her. “Technically.”
“That’s huge.”
“It’s a bear.”
He shrugs. “Could’ve died.”
“It was stuffed.”
“Still. Brave work.”
She laughs, leaning sideways until her head rests against his shoulder. Garrett puts his container down and slides an arm around her, his hand settling over the soft cotton at her waist. She smells like hand sanitiser, rain caught in her hair and the faint medicinal sweetness of whatever soap sits beside the clinic sinks.
For a minute, neither of them speaks. She eats one strawberry from the container in his lap, then another. Garrett watches a leaf drag along the wet pavement near his shoe and thinks, with an intensity that would make Dean genuinely ill, that there may be nothing better than this.
Her weight against him. Food packed by Tucker. Practice waiting. A plastic fork balanced crookedly across her container. The knowledge that people inside that building see what Garrett sees when she talks about work with her whole face.
She nudges her nose into the shoulder of his jacket. “What?”
“What?”
“You’re doing that thing.”
“What thing?”
She smiles up at him. “Looking pleased with yourself.”
“I’m not pleased with myself.”
“No?”
Garrett turns his head and presses his mouth to her hair. “I’m pleased with my girlfriend.”
She groans, but her body folds closer, one hand slipping into the pocket of his jacket like it belongs there. “The boys must hate you.”
“They’re jealous.”
“They’re exhausted,” she sighs.
“Tucker supports me.”
“Tucker feeds you so the rest of the house survives.”
He takes a moment to consider this. “That’s still support.”
Her break alarm sounds from inside her cardigan pocket. She doesn’t move immediately. Neither does Garrett. They sit through the first three beeps with her cheek against his shoulder and his thumb moving slowly over her side.
Then she sighs and lifts her head. Garrett catches her chin before she can stand and kisses her, gentle at first, then a little firmer when her fingers curl into his jacket and pull him closer.
When they separate, she keeps her forehead against his. “Thank you for coming all week.”
“Course.”
She presses her forehead against his harder. “You don’t have to come every day.”
“I know.”
“You have classes and practice.”
“I know.”
“And Dean said you missed lunch with them yesterday,” she murmurs.
“Dean was offended because nobody wanted to hear his story about a girl from his economics class.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. I was having lunch with my girlfriend.”
She closes her eyes. “There it is.”
Garrett grins and kisses the corner of her mouth. “Go be good at your job.”
“Placement.”
“Mm. Go be good at that.”
She gets up, gathers her stethoscope and starts toward the side door. Halfway there, she turns. Garrett’s still sitting on the towel with the empty containers stacked beside him, watching her like he plans to keep doing it until the building physically removes her from view.
She lifts one hand. “Bye, baby.”
“Bye.” He waits until her fingers touch the door handle. “Hey.”
She looks back.
Garrett’s grin spreads slowly, helplessly, all bright teeth and curls and entirely too much feeling for a staff car park at one-thirty on a Friday afternoon. “Proud of you.”
She rolls her eyes so hard it should hurt, but she’s smiling when the door closes behind 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.
synopsis – as Hannah’s maid of honor, your duties are simple: keep Hannah relaxed, make sure the wedding runs smooth, and do not, by any means whatsoever, fall for the best man
warnings – language, SO MUCH FLUFF, love is in the air, sexual tension like a mf
note – OOOOH this concept is TOO good. i may do a smutty part 2 if requested. enjoy ♡
✧･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ*✧
Dress. Veil. Shoes. Bouquet. Food. Bar. Decor.
The words cycle through your head, you faintly say them out loud to yourself to ensure you don’t forget anything. Your childhood best friend was getting married for crying out loud, this day needed to be perfect, no matter what.
Arriving extra early to the venue, you set down all the bags you could fit in your hands before heading back to your car, making trip number three of the morning.
You were taking the position of Maid of Honor very seriously. From the moment Hannah asked you, you went into full planner mode, planning every aspect of her wedding, down to the number of mini cheeseburgers they wanted on the buffet.
Oh yeah, it was that serious.
You couldn’t lie, at first, you didn’t see her and Garrett together, living the 'happily ever after' fairytale. Hannah clued you in on the fake dating ordeal over a FaceTime call when you both were in college, across the country from each other and in that moment, you tried reasoning with her, but she just kept saying, ‘trust me, it’s gonna be fine’.
Here we are 4 years later, and oh yeah, it's fine.
Seeing your best friend beam at any mention of her fiancé warms your heart. She deserves this. She deserves true love and you will be damned if this day gets ruined by so much as a wrong shade of white in the roses she requested.
Once you arrive back at the venue, having brought the last of the hero items, the catering and décor teams have also arrived, setting up their respective areas. You exhale, heading into the dressing room, prepping Hannah’s dress, shoes and putting all her favorite snacks in the room for her.
Hannah, her parents, Allie and Sabrina all arrive about 10 minutes later, and the pre wedding plans commence.
Music is blaring through the speaker as you continue to help Hannah with her makeup, as her mom is doing her hair. Allie, Sabrina and you are already ready, you all dressed in matching colors, per Hannah’s request.
You wrap up Hannah’s makeup around the same time her hair is done. She walks into the changing room with her mom. As you walk closer to the door, you hear male voices approaching.
Oh hell no.
A knock on the door makes your heart drop and before you can even think, you shout, “Nuh uh Graham, no seeing the bride until she’s walking down that aisle, you know it’s bad lu-“
You’re cut off when you swing the door open, your eyes meeting a very tall, very handsome man, holding a white rose pin in his hand.
“Garrett said Hannah requested something borrowed from his mom, he told me to come find you..” he drops your name with a questioning tone at the end, as you nod. You watch his eyes trail up and down your body, taking in your beauty before holding the pin up to you.
“Oh,” you sigh, taking the pin, “Thanks, sorry I thought Garrett was about to barge in here,” you chuckled. “I’m sorry, and you are..?” you ask politely.
He chuckles as he holds his hand out again, waiting to shake yours. “I’m John, Garrett’s best man”, he says, smiling charmingly at you.
Fuck.
You shake his hand lightly. “I guess we’ll be seeing a lot of each other today then,” you reply, a cheeky grin on your lips now.
“I guess so,” he replies. He looks you over once more before taking a step back, “Well, I’m gonna go find the guys and get ready. It was nice meeting you,” he says, and with one more smile, he turns around and walks away.
‘Remember your duties,’ you think to yourself. You cannot afford a distraction. This was Hannah’s special day and nothing was going to ruin that. Not even a handsome, tall, charming, flirtatious man.
Fuck. Again.
You head back inside to see Hannah in her full wedding get up and your eyes immediately tear up as you bring your hands to your face.
“You look absolutely beautiful Han,” you say genuinely. She looks at you through the mirror, tears welling up in her eyes too.
“Don’t you start,” she jokingly threatens, “You just did my makeup, damnit,” she says as you join her in laughter.
She truly looked like a princess. The strapless top supporting her chest, the corset waist accentuating her natural curves, into the flowy bottom of the dress, she looked absolutely unreal. Garrett was so lucky.
You check the time on your phone before walking closer to Hannah.
“Okay, seating chart is put up, the food and the bars are almost done setting up, DJ is good to go, decor team has placed all the flowers on the tables, I have your bouquet and-“
Hannah cuts you off, putting her hands on your shoulders.
“Please take a deep breath,” she says and you do, probably for the first time today. You inhale, hold and exhale with her before she continues, dropping her hands from your shoulders to your hands.
“This day is going to be perfect, please do not stress yourself out. You should enjoy yourself today too,” she says sincerely and you nod in agreement.
“I know, I just want today to be amazing for you,” you admit, horrified that something will go wrong and the blame will get placed on you and Hannah will never talk to you again.
Maybe you were being a bit dramatic.
“I’m here, with all my closest friends and family and I’m marrying the love of my life, today is already amazing,” she says, grabbing your hands. Your eyes well up again, seeing the little version of Hannah standing there inside adult Hannah.
You squeeze her hands, not wanting to risk hugging her and ruining her dress or veil, “I love you so much Han,” you say, full of so many happy emotions.
“I love you too,” she says. Before you can pull away, she grabs your hands again, her eyes wide with excitement, “Oh! Have you met Logan yet? You’ll be walking down the aisle with him,”
You shake your head, not recognizing the name.
“Don’t worry, he knows what time to be in place, just meet him by the doors,” Hannah states. You nod and look down at your phone, 10 minutes before showtime.
You make sure everyone is sat in the garden before cueing the DJ to start up the music. Soft music echoes through the garden as Garrett walks down the aisle first, taking his place up front. Tucker and Sabrina walk out next, followed by Allie and Dean.
You stand behind the doors, awaiting your cue in the music, when John approaches you, in a stunning all black suit, a white rose pinned to his suit pocket.
As if this man couldn’t get any handsomer.
You turn to him, asking frantically, “Hey, do you know where Logan is? Hannah told me he’d be walking down the aisle with me and it’s almost time and I’m kinda freaking out about it,” you say bluntly.
He finds your urgency absolutely adorable as he chuckles softly before looking back at you.
“That was probably my bad,” he starts, “My last name is Logan, everyone usually calls me that,” he says, holding his arm up, waiting for you to link yours.
You look at him and sigh a huge sigh of relief, “Oh, duh, that actually makes sense,” you say, still flustered from all the wedding prep. It didn’t even cross your mind that despite the different name he gave you that he did tell you he was the best man.
You smile slightly, linking your arm with his. The doors open right on cue and you both walk down the aisle, smiling for the photographer as you make you way to the front, going your separate ways.
Lastly, Hannah comes walking out with both her parents. Garrett immediately begins tearing up, as do you. You glance over at Garrett, seeing Logan pull out a perfectly timed tissue from his jacket pocket, handing it to Garrett. You smile as you redirect your attention back to Hannah, who has now made it to the front. She hands you her bouquet, as you adjust the train of her dress and veil.
The ceremony could not have been more beautiful, their exchanged vows only showing a fraction of the love they have for one another.
“You may now kiss the bride,” you hear and you usher the officiant to move out of the way to not be in the shot. He stares at you weird before realizing what you were trying to do.
‘We went over this’ you thought, rolling your eyes at the slight inconvenience. Logan catches the entire interaction out of the corner of his eye, smiling to himself seeing you so passionate about today.
He already gets the impression that you’re an amazing friend.
And you're fucking beautiful. But with that, he’s just stating the obvious.
As Hannah and Garrett walk back down the aisle, he can’t help but glance at you once more. He sees the beaming smile on your face as you watch your best friend. His eyes trail down your body, noticing how your hair is perfectly done, how your dress hugs you perfectly, how you are just purely stunning.
You and Logan meet in the middle once again, him holding his arm out as you take it, smiling at him before you both walk down the aisle, Allie and Dean trailing behind you, Tucker and Sabrina behind them.
✧･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ*✧
The transition to the reception was smooth as ever, everyone being greeted with a welcome glass of champagne or sparkling juice. Everyone gets settled in their seats and await the arrival of the bride and groom.
The DJ hypes everyone up, welcoming Hannah and Garrett in with a loud,
“EVERYONE, LET’S HEAR IT FOR YOUR BRIDE AND GROOM, MR. AND MRS. GRAHAM”
Everyone cheers and claps as the happy couple walks in, huge smiles gracing both their faces as they walk up to the front of the room, sitting at their designated table.
The welcome speeches start, family and friends giving their congratulations, tears flowing, laughs are had and before you know it, it’s Logan’s turn. He takes the mic and stands up, adjusting his suit before speaking.
“Garrett Graham is one crazy motherfucker,” he starts out, gathering a laugh from the crowd. “Garrett has been my best friend since college and I can say nothing but congratulations. I am so happy you and Hannah have found each other. I think we can all say that the love you share for each other is something we all should aspire to have someday. Cheers,” he says, raising his glass as everyone follows suit.
His eyes find yours, knowing your speech is up next. You stand up and take the mic from him. He notices the tears already starting to well up in your eyes, whispering a, 'you got this,' to you before he finishes his walk to his seat.
You sniff lightly before bringing the mic up to speak.
“Please excuse the tear streaks that’ll be imprinted on my face for probably the entire evening,” you chuckle, the crowd laughing as well.
“Hannah and I have known each other for a very long time. We have been there for each other through so many phases in our lives and now we get to check the ‘wedding’ box off of that list. I genuinely could not be happier for you. You deserve to be at peace and in love and I am so happy you have found that with Garrett. I love you both so much and if I keep talking, I’m gonna cry again so I’m just gonna cheers to you both,” you finish, holding your glass up as everyone cheers the bride and groom.
Hannah and you exchange glances as she blows you air kisses. You blow them back, handing the mic to the DJ and sitting down, conveniently, next to Logan. The DJ then asks Hannah and Garrett to hit the dance floor, as their first dance commenced.
That dance alone got the tears flowing again. Logan noticed a tear fall from your cheek onto your dress. He pulls out another conveniently timed tissue from his pocket, nudging your arm subtly. You look at him, then down. You laugh quietly, taking the tissue and blotting your cheeks.
“Thanks,” you whisper. He nods, smiling at you as you turn away, focusing back on the happy couple.
✧･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ*✧
The party kicks off and you can feel yourself relax. Your duties are officially done for the night and you can finally let loose. You feel yourself relax as you approach the bar, asking for your preferred drink.
“Didn’t know you could drink on the job,” you hear from behind you. You thank the bartender as he hands you your drink. You turn around, a grin already on your face and make eye contact with Logan.
“I’ll have you know, I’m off the clock now,” you sassily say as you walk towards him, maintaining eye contact as you take a sip of your drink.
He doesn’t break eye contact, only when his eyes drop to your lips as you swipe the bit of drink off your lips with your tongue. His eyes come back up to yours, the tension between the two of you growing stronger by the second.
“So… does that mean I can steal you for a dance later?” he asks, the boldness surprising you. You cock your head to the side, the grin not leaving your face as you step even closer.
“Whenever you wanna dance, you know where to find me,” you say, the sultry tone of your voice not going unnoticed by either of you. You back up, your eyes not leaving each other, his pupils dilating the longer he looks at you. You smile at him once more, glancing down to his lips and back up before walking past him, heading to the dance floor.
He turns around, watching you as you place your drink on your table, asking Allie and Sabrina to dance. They excitedly agree, as you make your way to the dance floor. He can’t help but watch you as your hips sway to the music, a smile never leaving your face as you dance.
He is completely enamored by you.
Unbeknownst to either of you, Hannah and Garrett had seen that entire interaction at the bar, fist bumping each other under the table, their very subtle plan coming to life.
Hannah knew the second she met Logan that you guys would be a perfect match. And by pure luck, all these years later, you were both single and open to the idea of dating. She knew it was fate and the plan was hatched. All they needed to do was wait and watch the connection between you two blossom.
✧･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ*✧
The party slowly died down as the night continued, some family and friends making their exits. You finally take a break from all the dancing, heading to the dressing room to freshen up, when you spot Logan out of the corner of your eye. He’s standing outside by the portable firepit, motioning you to join him outside with a slight head movement.
You hold up one finger, giving him a ‘one minute’ hand motion and he nods before you enter the dressing room. You inhale and exhale, freshening up, touching up your hair and makeup, throwing on some extra deodorant and body spray (just in case, dancing is a workout after all) before heading outside.
The sun has now set, the cool air hitting your exposed skin as you step outside, folding your arms to keep yourself warm. Logan sees you and as if he couldn’t be more charming, he swiftly takes his jacket off and drapes it over your shoulders, smiling at you the entire time.
“Thank you,” you say, wrapping the jacket around you. It smells like his cologne and you curse at yourself internally for finding yet another thing about him attractive.
You both stand outside for a minute in a comfortable silence, staring at the fire before he checks his watch and perks up, remembering, “You owe me a dance, I think it’s time I take you up on that offer,” he says. You glance over at the dance floor, hearing the music playing, before turning back to him.
“Oh, you wanna slow dance to the cha cha slide, huh?” you joke with him.
It was almost as if the timing was magically perfect, you turn back to face the party as the song ends and the DJ gets back up on the mic,
“Alright y’all, last song of the night, I want everyone to grab that special person and let’s end the night out right,” he says, turning down the lights and putting on your favorite slow dance song. You look in shock, knowing that song wasn’t in the playlist Hannah and Garrett approved that you sent to the DJ.
“I may have learned a thing or two about you while you were out dancing,” you hear and you whip your head towards Logan, who’s looking at you with what one would describe as admiration.
“H-How did you...?” you ask, genuinely confused.
“I asked Hannah, she was more than happy to let me make the change. Something about wanting you to enjoy yourself tonight too,” Logan says. Your heart flutters at his and Hannah’s consideration. You take his jacket off and hand it back to him. After he puts it back on, he holds his hand out, asking, “May I have this dance?”.
You can’t help the grin that crosses your face as you grab his hand, your fingers intertwining as you make your way inside to the dance floor, finding an empty spot around all the other couples dancing.
His hands comfortably find their way to your waist, holding you close to him as you wrap your arms around his neck. You both sway to the music, the moment incredibly intimate as you both find yourselves looking at the other’s lips. Despite the urge for both of you to lean in, you move your head slightly backwards.
“Not here,” you state, “I don’t wanna take away from Hannah and Garrett’s day,” you say. Even though you were technically done ‘working’, the last thing you wanted to do was take any attention off the happy couple. Logan smiles and nods, respecting you even more for that.
He brings you in closer, tightening his grip on your waist ever so slightly, before saying, “Then I guess we better find somewhere more private,” that damn smile not leaving his face.
synopsis – meeting Logan’s friend group is definitely nerve-wracking, but nothing says 'nice to meet you' like gift giving
based on this request!
warnings – none, just wholesome interactions between reader and the girls/hockey boys
note – my first request omg🥹 if you want to request something, you can submit it by clicking the ‘♡’ button on my page or commenting under this post! enjoy ♡
masterlist
✧･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ*✧
You and Logan were relaxing, his head on your chest as he cuddles up to you in bed. You run your hands through his hair, soaking up the moment while you both watched your favorite movie.
Your relationship has been blossoming, almost feeling too good to be true. You both were continuing to fall for each other as time passed, quite literally becoming two peas in a pod. Although, there's one thing that hasn't happened yet.
You haven't met his friends.
Logan talks about his friends all the time and your heart warms, knowing that he's got a good circle of friends around him. You feel like you know them personally, without even meeting them. An idea sparked in your head about a week ago, shopping around until you had everything you needed.
"I had an idea," you say, Logan's head lifting from your chest, smiling at you before you continue.
"I thought, since it's the first time I'm meeting all your friends that I should bring gifts. Nothing too crazy, just little things," you smile at the end of your sentence, Logan staring at you with so much admiration at your kind nature. He sits up, you doing the same before he smiles at you.
"Yeah I think it's a great idea," he replies, "I can tell you a little bit about them-"
"Oh no need," you cut him off, pulling a gift bag out from what looked like thin air. Logan looks at you with bewilderment.
"How did you-"
"You love your friends, you talk about your friends, I pay attention," you reply, riffling through the tissue paper, “Although, I do need you to make sure they’re gonna like all their gifts,” you say, getting a chuckle out of Logan. He laughs, insisting you keep everything in the bag, saying how they'll appreciate the gesture, no matter what you ended up getting them.
“What’s your love language again?” he sarcastically asks. You playfully shove his shoulder, grinning back, trying to look ‘mad’.
“Fine, then I guess you don’t want your gift,” you tease. He raises his eyebrows at you as you reach in the bag and pull out a box that has a 'J.L.' written on it.
“What’s this?” He asks, looking down at the box.
“You think I wasn’t gonna get you something too?” you ask, holding out the box for him.
"You didn't have to do that, baby", he says before taking the box and looking up, seeing you give him a look that screams 'really, have you met me’.
He chuckles, opening the box, his smile fading slightly in shock. You watch him as he lifts the silver chain out of the box, the light catching it as it sparkles.
“I noticed a few spots on your current one that are starting to tarnish, so I wanted to get you an upgrade,” you say, gauging his reaction.
He looks at the chain, then you, overwhelmed by your attentiveness. He places the chain down on the bed next to him, before leaning in, giving you a kiss, his hand coming up to cup your cheek. You smile into the kiss before he pulls away.
“Thank you, it’s perfect,” he says, as you smile at each other. “Tomorrow’s gonna be great, everyone’s gonna love you. The girls are dying to have another girl to hang out with too,” he says, you smiling at him.
“I’m excited to meet them,” you reply, grabbing his hand, interlocking your fingers.
✧･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ*✧
After spending the night with you, Logan drives you both over to the hockey house. Nerves sink in your stomach and it’s almost as if Logan can sense it. He reaches over the center console, grabbing your hand, rubbing small circles on your hand with his thumb.
“Everything’s gonna be great. Tuck’s making lunch and we’re just gonna chill. You’re gonna fit right in, I promise,” he reassures you, glancing over to you and smiling before moving his focus back to the road.
You rub his arm with your free hand, exhaling trying to calm your nervous system.
Within minutes, you pull up to the hockey house. Logan honks his horn twice, making you jump at the unexpected action. The front door opens moments later, as two guys walk out, you knowing it’s Garrett and Dean, having seen their faces in pictures on social media with Logan.
You both get out of the car, you grabbing your bag that has all of the gifts in it before walking over to where the guys were standing. The guys all dap each other up before Logan introduces you to them, you smiling at them, shaking their hands.
“So, you’re the girl that’s got John Logan all head over heels in looove, huh?” Dean says, looking between you too.
“Guilty as charged” you reply confidently, holding your free hand up, making the guys laugh.
“Well, let’s head inside, it’s cold as fuck out here,” Garrett says, letting you walk first before the guys follow behind you. You don’t see the guys elbowing Logan, them teasing him about how the hell he managed to score someone like you.
Walking inside, you’re greeted by the smell of something incredible, as a girl’s squeal grabs your attention. The guys head into the kitchen as you chat with the girls.
“Oh my gosh!!!” Allie yells, getting off the couch and immediately pulling you in for a hug. You chuckle as you hug her back, Hannah getting up to join you.
“It's so nice to meet you, we’ve heard so much about you, I’m Allie!” she exclaims, her smile wide. You return the smile, introducing yourself to her and Hannah as she walks up to join you both.
“Hi, I’m Hannah, we’re so happy we finally get to meet you!” she says, the nerves already leaving your body. “Are you hungry? Food’s almost ready,” she says.
“I could definitely eat” you say, making the girls laugh. You put down your bag before joining everyone in the kitchen.
Logan’s eyes meet yours as he wraps his arm around Tucker’s shoulders, him focusing intently on plating the dishes. He introduces the two of you, you waving at him from a distance, not wanting to interrupt his cooking.
“Nice to meet you! Food is almost done,” he says, smiling at you.
Soon enough, everyone is sitting on the couch or in the lounge chairs, hanging out in the living room, eating and chatting. You didn't feel any bit of awkwardness or discomfort, everyone in the room giving off an inviting energy. Tucker makes his rounds, grabbing the dirty dishes before heading to the kitchen and putting them in the dishwasher before returning to the couch.
“So…” you say, grabbing everyone’s attention. “I know I literally just met you all but I have a thing for gift giving, so with Logan’s help, I thought I would get little gifts for you all”, you say, pulling your bag in your lap.
“What?!” Allie asks.
“No way!” Hannah says.
“Oh, I like her even more now,” Dean says, laughing.
You pull out the labeled gifts for everyone, passing them around, as it feels like Christmas, the joy on your face watching everyone open their gifts.
“Oh, sick,” Garrett says, staring down at the new set of hockey mouth guards, “I’ve been needing to replace mine for a while now, thanks,” he says, smiling at you.
Hannah gasps, seeing the guitar pick with a tiny ‘H.W.’ engraved into it, “This is so amazing, wow thank you so much,” she says, her radiant smile filling up the room.
Tucker opens up the box, grinning wide as he pulls out a meat thermometer.
“Oh shit!” he says, “The last one blew up at Thanksgiving, I’ve needed a new one, thank you,” he says, flashing his smile at you.
Allie beams, seeing a pair of chunky gold hoops sitting inside the jewelry box,
“Ahhh I love them!!!” she says, holding the box up and grinning.
Attention turns to Dean, who’s sitting next to you as he pulls out what looks like a mini figurine of a roller coaster. His eyes slowly look up at you, hoping not to offend you by his confusion.
“Logan said Allie had mentioned something about you liking Six Flags…?” you trail off, your eyes slowly making their way to Logan, who was sat on the other side of you.
Allie presses her lips together, trying to stop herself from laughing, mumbling a, 'more like being Six Flags' as Dean laughs, wrapping his arm around your shoulders, "Oh, I really like her Logan,” he grins, holding the figurine up, laughing at something you clearly don’t have the full story of yet.
Your eyes meet Logan’s again, the love for you beaming from his face. You smile back, knowing you feel right at home here.
pairing – garrett graham x briar media!reader
summary – garrett finally agrees to film a personal tiktok after three weeks of begging, one threat involving dean, and absolutely no concern about being climbed mid-story.
warnings – fluff, established relationship, suggestive ending, social media/tiktok trend, teasing, hockey house antics.
notes from me – as requested here, thank u babes!!
word count – 1.6k
navigation – masterlist |
The problem with dating Garrett Graham was that he had absolutely no respect for production timelines unless the production timeline involved hockey, which meant she could get twenty-one sweaty men to stand in formation for a Briar hockey media day carousel with less resistance than she could get her own boyfriend to sit still for one personal TikTok.
“It’s not even for the team account,” she said, folded sideways on the hockey house couch with her socked feet tucked beneath his thigh and her phone held in both hands. “It’s for me. My personal brand.”
Garrett, who had been lying there with one arm stretched behind her head and the other hand absently rubbing over her ankle like he’d forgotten he was doing it, looked away from the game playing on mute. “Your personal brand is bullying me with good lighting.”
“My personal brand is being adorable and underappreciated.”
“By who?”
“By you.”
He gave her the kind of look that would have been more effective if his thumb hadn’t moved automatically over the knob of her ankle again, warm and steady through the soft cotton of her sock. “Baby, I let you post a photo of me holding a latte with the caption ‘hockey boy enrichment activity.’”
“And the people loved you.”
“The people thought I was stupid.”
“The people were moved by your range.”
He snorted, turning back toward the television like the conversation had ended. It had not. The conversation had been going on, in some variation, for three weeks. She had brought it up in his car, at the rink, in his bed with his hand under her hoodie, once while he was eating cereal directly from the mixing bowl Tucker claimed was for shared use only.
Every time, Garrett had made the same face: amused, suspicious, too handsome to be allowed, and deeply aware that agreeing to anything involving her personal TikTok was how men ended up edited to Sabrina Carpenter and mocked in the group chat.
Fine. She had been patient. She had been respectful. She had been, by most accounts, a saint. She opened her mouth and said, “I’ll ask Dean.”
Garrett’s head turned so fast she heard his neck crack. There it was. “No.”
She blinked at him sweetly. “No?”
“No.”
“Dean likes content.”
“Dean likes attention. Different disease.”
“He’d do it.”
“That’s exactly why he’s not doing it.”
“He’d probably be really committed, actually.”
Garrett sat up properly, the couch shifting under the weight of him, broad shoulders rolling forward as he reached for her phone with the resigned aggression of a man accepting a prison sentence. “Set it up.”
Her smile spread before she could stop it.
“Don’t look that proud of yourself,” he said.
“I’m not.”
“You’re literally glowing.”
“That’s my personal brand.”
He muttered something about social media ruining society, but he stayed where she put him: in the middle cushion, hoodie sleeves pushed up to his forearms, hair still a little damp from the shower he’d taken after practice, mouth curved like he was trying very hard not to let her see how much he liked being wanted for ridiculous things.
The living room around them was its usual hockey-house disaster, half-clean in the way men considered acceptable if the sticky things had been wiped and the visible socks had been kicked under furniture.
A controller sat abandoned on the coffee table beside two water bottles, a roll of athletic tape, and a bowl Logan had absolutely eaten ramen from hours ago and decided was now part of the architecture.
She propped her phone against a stack of textbooks Dean definitely wasn’t reading and checked the frame. Garrett watched her with the wary focus he usually reserved for penalty shots and any text from his father.
“So I just talk?” he asked once she slid back onto the couch beside him.
“Yeah, babe.”
“To who?”
“The camera.”
He looked into the lens, then back at her. “Right. Normal.”
She pressed record, settled beside him with one knee tucked under her, and nodded encouragingly.
Garrett cleared his throat. “Uh. Hi, TikTok.” His eyes cut to her immediately, already embarrassed. “I’m Garrett. This is my girlfriend.” He paused, brow creasing. “Wait– what am I doing, baby?”
She bit the inside of her cheek so she wouldn’t ruin it too early. “Just tell them the story of how we met.”
“Right. Okay. Um, well.” He leaned back a little, one hand landing on her thigh because he couldn’t narrate their relationship without touching proof of it. “She worked for Briar media, and I played hockey, obviously. I mean, I still play hockey. That made it sound like I retired at twenty-two, which would be embarrassing.” His mouth twitched when she laughed silently beside him. “Anyway, she used to come to practice with the camera and act like she wasn’t judging all of us, even though she was definitely judging all of us.”
She began shifting closer.
Garrett didn’t look down. “And I thought she was cute, but she was also, like, terrifyingly unimpressed by me.”
She slid one knee over his thigh.
“She once told me my ‘good side’ was whichever one was facing away from her deadline.”
She climbed fully into his lap.
“Which was rude,” he continued, one hand automatically moving to her waist like she had simply changed seating arrangements and not started crawling over him mid-sentence. “But, uh, accurate, because I was being annoying on purpose.”
She braced a hand on his shoulder and started climbing behind him, biting down on a grin so hard her cheeks hurt.
Garrett adjusted. That was it. No blink, no curse, no startled what the fuck for the camera. His arm hooked behind her knee before she could wobble, palm spreading firm over the outside of her thigh, and he kept talking like this was an entirely normal development in the story of their meet-cute.
“She kept asking me to redo this stupid intro clip because I wouldn’t answer the question normally.”
“It was not stupid,” she said from somewhere near his ear, hauling herself up with very little dignity.
“It was ‘what’s your pregame ritual’ and I said ‘winning.’”
“Because you’re annoying.”
“Because I’m honest.” He ducked slightly when her leg came over his shoulder, then straightened with her perched across the back of him, thighs bracketing him, his hands holding her calves like she weighed less than his hockey bag. “So, yeah, I had a crush on her for a while. Logan knew. Tucker knew. Dean knew because he’s nosy and unemployed.”
From the kitchen, Dean yelled, “I heard that.”
Garrett didn’t even turn. “Good.”
She had one hand planted in his hair now, the other gripping the couch for balance, laughter fizzing through her ribs, warm and bright and impossible to hold neatly in her chest.
The whole point was that he was meant to react. The whole point was that the boyfriend looked increasingly alarmed while the girlfriend climbed him like unsafe playground equipment.
Instead, Garrett was sitting there broad and steady beneath her, voice only slightly amused, like this was lower on the list of strange things she did than rearranging his kitchen cabinet for better morning light.
“So eventually,” he said, glancing up at her for half a second with that smug little curve of his mouth, “I asked her out. She pretended she had to think about it, which was bullshit.”
“I did think about it.”
“You texted yes in eleven seconds.”
“I think fast.”
“Sure.” His thumbs rubbed once over her shins, easy and unconscious. “And now she makes me do TikToks on my own couch under threat of Dean. There you go. That’s, uh… that’s how we met.” He looked up again, eyes warm and pleased with himself. “Was that okay, baby?”
She stared down at him. “Why didn’t you react to me climbing on your shoulders?”
Garrett blinked. “Was I supposed to?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.” He thought about it, then shrugged carefully beneath her. “You do a lot of weird shit, baby. Sorry. Didn’t really notice.”
She lasted one second before she broke, laughing so hard she folded over the top of his head. “Garrett.”
“What? You climbed into my laundry basket last week because you said you wanted to know if you could fit.”
“That was research.”
“That was weird.”
She slid down off him in a graceless heap, landing back on the couch with her legs over his lap and her hand still caught in the front of his hoodie. Garrett caught her before she could knock the coffee table, tugging her into his side with a grin pressed against her temple.
“Can we film another kind of video now?” he murmured, low enough that the phone probably wouldn’t catch it, but close enough that the warmth of it moved across her skin.
Her laugh changed shape in her throat. “You’re disgusting.”
“You threatened me with Dean. I’m healing.”
She grabbed her phone and ended the recording, watching the final frame freeze on Garrett looking stupidly handsome with her half-draped over him like a victorious cat.
From the kitchen, Dean called, “For the record, I’m available for content.”
Garrett stood, hauling her up with him by the hand before she could answer. “No, you’re not.”
She tucked the phone against her chest, smiling as he pulled her toward the stairs. “Where are we going?”
Garrett glanced back at her, all dark curls and smug mouth and trouble sitting easy in his shoulders. “Upstairs.”
She let him tug her along, already laughing. “For content?”
“For my personal brand,” he said.
And then he closed his bedroom door before Dean could offer notes.
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pairing – garrett graham x reader
summary – a low blood sugar scare at beau’s frat house cuts the party short, but garrett handles it with juice and crackers.
warnings – diabetes, blood sugar drop, dizziness/lightheadedness, alcohol, frat party, food/juice as treatment.
notes from me – hi my babes!! as requested here, thank u so much!
word count – 0.8k
navigation – masterlist |
The first warning isn’t the Dexcom alert, because Beau’s speakers are trying to shake the plumbing loose and her phone is buried beneath three coats on the kitchen counter. The first warning is the hollow tilt of the room when she turns her head too quickly, the red cup in her hand suddenly heavier than a cup containing two melted ice cubes and one mouthful of vodka soda has any right to be.
She blinks at Blair, who’s halfway through a story and hasn’t noticed that the kitchen tiles have begun moving unpleasantly beneath her shoes. Heat gathers beneath the collar of her top. Her fingers feel distant Badly connected, like her hands have been assigned to somebody else for the evening.
“Are you listening?” Blair asks.
“Mhm.” It comes out soft enough that Blair’s face changes.
She sets the cup down before she drops it, which feels like excellent planning from a brain currently buffering, and looks toward the living room. Garrett’s beside the couch with Logan and Beau, laughing at something Dean’s performing with both hands and no dignity.
He looks unfairly solid from here. Grey Briar hoodie, one hand around a beer, feet planted like the floor has personally promised not to move for him.
She leaves Blair with, “One second,” and crosses carefully, brushing past warm bodies and somebody wearing enough cologne to qualify as chemical warfare.
Garrett sees her before she reaches him. His smile stays, but his attention leaves the conversation so completely Dean could probably set himself on fire without winning it back.
“Hey, baby.” Garrett’s hand finds her waist. “You good?”
She presses her fingers into his hoodie. “Don’t feel good.”
That’s all it takes. No panic, no loud questions, no Garrett Graham Medical Emergency Spectacular for Beau’s entire fraternity. He puts his beer into Logan’s hand and bends slightly, bringing his face closer. “Low?”
“Think so.” She rubs at her forehead. The music seems to be arriving from far away now, each beat landing late. “Feel weird.”
“Okay.” His thumb moves against her side. “Phone?”
“Kitchen. Coats.”
Blair’s already there, holding it and her bag. The Dexcom graph glows when Garrett checks it, his mouth flattening at the number and arrow.
“Alright,” he says, still maddeningly calm. “Couch first.”
“I can stand.”
“Thrilling. Sit anyway.”
She might argue if the couch weren’t suddenly beautiful. Garrett guides her over with his palm firm at her back, waits while Beau evicts two freshmen, then lowers her onto the cushions and crouches in front of her. His knees bracket her shoes while he searches her bag.
“You have juice?”
“Side pocket.”
He finds the little carton, stabs the straw through the foil with more aggression than the juice has earned, and passes it over. “Drink.”
She takes three pulls, then lets the straw fall from her mouth. “It’s warm.”
“Yeah, Beau’s frat house failed its Michelin inspection. Keep going.”
A laugh catches weakly in her throat. Garrett’s eyes lift to hers, steady, checking more than her number without making her feel inspected. She finishes it while he stays crouched there, thumb moving over the inside of her wrist where her pulse is quick beneath the skin.
By the time the room stops slipping sideways, tiredness has moved in behind it, thick and immediate. She sinks into the couch and presses her hand to her forehead. “I’m gonna go home.”
Garrett nods like she has suggested something ordinary. “I’ll take you, baby. We’ll go to mine, yeah? Get you something proper to eat.”
“I’m so tired, baby.”
“I know.” He sits beside her, tugging her gently into his side while they wait for the next reading. “Come on. We’ll go.”
She tips her face into his shoulder. He smells like detergent, beer he barely drank, and cold air caught in his hoodie. “I don’t wanna ruin your night.”
“You’re not ruining anything.” His mouth brushes her hair. “Dean was explaining cryptocurrency. You saved me.”
From behind them, Dean says, offended, “I was not.”
Garrett does not turn around. “See? Already feeling better.”
Her mouth twitches against his shoulder. When the number begins nudging upward, Garrett hands her crackers from her bag, then stands and pulls her carefully with him, taking her coat from Blair and slinging her bag over his own shoulder.
“I can walk,” she murmurs.
“I know.”
“I’m not dying.”
“Also know that.”
“You’re being bossy.”
He tucks her coat around her and kisses her temple, warm and absent-minded, as though caring for her isn’t an interruption but simply the next thing his hands were always going to do. “Yeah, baby. Terrible character flaw. Let’s go home.”
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pairing – garrett graham x nursing student!reader
summary – after ten hours under hospital lights, the body makes the decision before the brain can catch up: go home to garrett.
warnings – post-shift exhaustion, tired driving, hospital mentions, mild confusion.
notes from me – requested soooo long ago i'm sorry babe!! but here's some NS!reader and garrett fluff 😌
word count – 1.1k
navigation – masterlist |
The drive back from the hospital exists mostly in fragments. The green glow of the dashboard. Her indicator clicking for several seconds after she has already changed lanes.
The heater blowing directly into her face because cold air feels medically irresponsible at six in the morning, even though the warmth keeps making her eyelids drag lower at every red light. Her scrub top scratches beneath her jacket.
Her ponytail has been pulling at the same patch of scalp since midnight, and the backs of her knees ache with that strange, deep heaviness that comes from standing for ten hours beneath fluorescent lighting while pretending crackers eaten beside a medication trolley count as dinner.
She normally takes the bus. The bus requires no decisions beyond getting on and trying not to fall asleep against a stranger.
But Garrett has started paying for food with the irritating consistency of someone who refuses to call it paying for her food. He orders too much. He already has his card out. He tells her she can get the next one and then develops selective amnesia when the next one arrives.
Somewhere between takeaway containers appearing after placement and Garrett filling her fridge shelf with things that contain actual nutrients, she has stopped watching the fuel gauge quite so closely.
So she drives.
She pulls into a driveway just after six with no real memory of choosing it. The engine goes quiet beneath her, and she sits behind the wheel for several seconds with both hands still resting on it, staring at the dark garage door while her body waits for further instructions.
Eventually, she gets out. Her bag catches on the handbrake. She nearly shuts the car door on the hem of her jacket, corrects it with the slow dignity of someone completing an advanced clinical procedure, then walks toward the porch with her keys already in her hand.
The lock opens. Inside, the hockey house is awake in that unpleasant, predawn way usually reserved for airports and men with scheduled ice time. The kitchen lights are on. Something is sizzling in a pan.
Logan's standing at the island in grey sweats, eating eggs directly from a plate with his fork held like a shovel, while Dean leans against the counter in half his practice gear and drinks coffee from a mug that says WORLD’S BEST MOM.
Both of them look up when she comes in.
Dean lowers the mug. “Hey?”
She shuts the door behind her, then remains there with one hand still on the knob. Her hospital badge swings lightly against her chest. “Hi.”
Logan pauses mid-chew.
Dean’s eyes move over her slowly–the creased scrubs, the puffer jacket hanging open, the dark half-moons beneath her eyes, the fact that one of her shoelaces has come undone without her apparently noticing. “You good?”
She frowns at him. It takes more effort than it should. “Why’re you in my house?”
Logan stops chewing completely.
Dean glances at him. Logan glances back. Whatever silent conversation passes between them isn't reassuring.
“Your house,” Dean repeats.
“Mhm.” She steps around the shoes near the door and begins moving toward the stairs. Her shoulder clips the wall on the first attempt. She corrects her trajectory without acknowledging it. “You’re being really loud.”
“Okay,” Logan says carefully. “Sorry.”
Dean watches her start climbing. “Should we stop her?”
Logan looks toward the stairs, then at the fork still suspended in his hand. “From going to Graham’s room?”
“Good point.”
She reaches Garrett’s door and opens it without knocking. Garrett jerks around so quickly the towel around his waist nearly loses its argument with gravity.
He has another towel in his hands, halfway through rubbing his damp curls dry, his bare chest still shining slightly from the shower.
“Hey–!” His hand catches the knot at his hip. Then he sees her properly and the alarm leaves his face in pieces. “Oh. Hi, baby.”
She stands in the doorway, blinking at him.
Garrett drops the second towel onto his desk chair. “You good?”
Her brows pull together. “Baby, why’re you in my dorm?”
For one second, Garrett only looks at her. Then his mouth presses inward around a smile he's clearly trying not to let become disrespectful.
“Baby,” he says gently, coming closer, “you came to my house.”
She stares at him. Garrett waits.
“Oh,” she says eventually. “Did I?”
“Mhm.” The smile reaches his eyes now, soft and helpless and much too fond for six in the morning. He takes her bag from her shoulder before the strap can slide down her arm and sets it beside the dresser. “You did.”
She looks past him at the unmade bed, his Briar hoodie thrown over the desk, the textbook facedown beside his pillow. Familiar enough that her body had apparently navigated here without consulting anybody.
“I came home,” she murmurs, more to the room than him. “To your house.”
Garrett’s expression changes so quietly she nearly misses it. His hand settles at her elbow, warm and steady.
He guides her toward the bed without making the sentence any bigger than she can hold right now. “Sit down.”
She sits immediately, knees parting around his legs when he crouches in front of her. Garrett unties the lace she's been dragging across the floor, then pulls off one sneaker, then the other, setting them neatly beside his bed.
His thumbs press briefly into the arches of her socked feet before he stands. He bends and kisses the top of her head.
“Go shower, baby,” he murmurs into her hair. “Then go to bed.”
She tips her face up toward him. “I’ll… see you later?”
“You will.” His palm smooths once over her ponytail, then he kisses the same spot again, slower this time. “Quickly, though. Before you fall asleep in your scrubs and convince me hospital germs are part of this relationship now.”
Her eyes close for a second beneath his mouth. “They’re not germs. They’re microorganisms.”
“Sorry. You're so right.”
She nods like he's made an excellent point, then stays seated.
Garrett cups her jaw gently. “Shower.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Now, girlfriend.”
Her mouth twitches. She stands, sways slightly into him, and Garrett catches her around the waist without comment.
Downstairs, Dean shouts, “Did she know where she was?”
Garrett looks toward the door. “No.”
A pause, then Logan calls, “That’s kind of cute, man.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Garrett says, but his hand tightens warmly at her waist as he walks her toward the bathroom.
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